If you know me, you know that I emphasize the reflection process in my life as a way to learn, grow, and improve. Also, life moves fast, and so this is one of my favorite ways to capture the moments and look back on them too.

Without further ado, this year’s top 10 moments in chronological order.

we Visited Australia 

In May, my husband (then fiance) took a trip to his home country, Australia.

It was my third time visiting, and we fit in quite a bit during our two-week stay.

• We traveled to Sydney and stayed in Coogee Beach.
• We walked the botanical gardens and took a cruise around the harbor with family during Vivid.
• We visited Canberra (their version of Washington DC) and sat in on Question Time.
• Took a trip to “the country” in Mansfield.
• Ended our trip with a visit to Melbourne.

 

I Left my job AT hUBspOT

Six years in life is a long time, and even longer at one company. After more than six years, I decided to leave HubSpot. I left to experience more of life, diversify my professional experience, and increase my contribution to the world. This was especially difficult because I was leaving one of the teams that I helped build – the HubSpot Academy team.

When I left, I posted an update to LinkedIn to share some career highlights, which you can see here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6301814278504611840/

Here are some of my career highlights:

• Started the HubSpot Academy division with two other remarkable people, and grew the team to 23 people.
• Along with the team, conceived and built our training webinars and videos, courses, the certifications program, inbound training day, and more. We started from ground zero and had zero users and nothing built when starting out, and when I left we had awarded over 73,000 certifications to the market. This was one of the more fulfilling roles because we were able to help thousands of folks get a job, promotion, a seat at the marketing table, and more. Talk about meaningful work.
• Responsible for transitioning us from webinar-based training to video-based content. This was a big and scary proposal, but after figuring out how to best approach it – our team manager gave me the go-ahead to test it out.
• Built HubSpot’s Learning Center with a few others. This was a vision I pursued relentlessly at all costs, and now it’s an integral part of the company’s offering.
• Lastly and my personal favorite, building a ridiculously excellent team. When I think of rockstars, I think of every single person that’s we brought on to the HubSpot Academy team. When it was three of us in the beginning, we knew that every hire would change the dynamic tremendously and it was critical to bring on folks that would add unique value. Now people are writing books, innovating like crazy on certification courses, developing new types of education products (like Lessons. Go Lindsay go!), and more. If you have the chance to connect with one of them, don’t pass it up. Tell them I sent you. 😀

Leaving the company and the team was no easy decision. I sought the help of many mentors and even a career coach. If you’re contemplating the difficult decision to stay or leave your current job, check out Red Cape Revolution. Darcy Eikenburg is an excellent career coach who has helpful content and ways of thinking. She offers a course chalk full of introspection exercises and activities to better uncover your superpowers, passions, and goals in life. Also, this TED Talk helped tremendously to make the decision, and so did the book, Designing Your Life.

I Traveled throughout THE US (WITH MY FIANCE)

When I decided to leave HubSpot, Ken and I decided we’d use this time to proactively plan our next chapter together.

When we took a step back, we decided to use this time to travel, potentially move to a new city, and do some formal training.

Thus, we embarked on a journey that we both always wanted to do – travel the entire United States.

We traveled for 45 days and drove about 11,000 miles on our little Hyundai Elantra. We drove as far south as New Orleans, as far west as the coast of California, north as Seattle, and then came back through the middle of the country.

Based on what I saw on our trip, I also was inspired to start Tech Job Training for Americans.

we Visited 12 National Parks

Up until this point, I’d only been to Acadia National Park. On our trip, we traveled to the following parks:

1. Shenandoah National Park
2. Great Smoky Mountains National Park
3. Guadalupe National Park
4. Petrified Forest National Park
5. Grand Canyon National Park
6. Bryce National Park
7. Zion National Park. We hiked the Narrows, which wasn’t what we were expecting at all.
8. Death Valley National Park. It was 107 degrees Fahrenheit when we arrived.
9. Yosemite National Park
10. Grand Teton National Park
11. Yellowstone National Park
12. Rocky Mountain National Park

 

we Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon

One of the most physically demanding challenges I’ve undertaken in recent years, hiking into the Grand Canyon was nothing to scoff at.

It was unusually hard because of the challenges we unintentionally added into the equation, like:

• We did our hike in the middle of August, one of the hottest months of the year in Arizona.
• We left way too late in the morning. We began our descent at 9:30 am. That is a huge no-no because….
• We also picked the one trail which doesn’t have access to water or shade, the South Kaibab.

Halfway down our hike, we came across a small bathroom building which had a thermometer on it – it read 110-degrees, in the shade.

When we got to our campsite at the bottom, another thermometer read 130-degrees in the sun. No wonder when I got to the bottom, after a 5-hour hike I was loopy.

we Imposed ourselves on friends while traveling

One of the beautiful parts of traveling the country was being able to see so many of our friends who now live across the US.

We stayed with friends who newly moved to NYC. We met new friends in Raleigh, NC. We stayed with our good friend Brin in Austin and saw other friends who have recently moved there. We visited Sara in San Francisco and Rachel and Ryan in Seattle. We stayed with Ken’s uncle in Vegas, and grandfather in Chicago.

We’re truly blessed to have such great people in our lives who are willing to let us both crash there and show us around their new city or hometown.

If you travel across the country, you have to impose yourself. This was great advice I got from my friend Evan, and I’m so happy we took it.

we Got married

If you read my top 10 blog post from last year, then you know that Ken and I met in Rome. One year and nine months later, we formalized our union by getting married with 50 of our closest family and friends in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

we DID A VEGAN 30-DAY CHALLENGE

One day after our wedding, Ken and I watched What the Health because a close friend recommended it. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s a documentary which “examines the link between diet and disease, and the billions of dollars at stake in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and food industries” Ken and I decided we’d try a 30-day vegan challenge.

After 30 days of no meat or dairy, I lost 4lbs and returned to my high-school weight, had tons of energy, and ditched caffeine since I no longer needed or wanted it. I also didn’t need my allergy-induced asthma inhaler which was an excellent benefit as during the fall months I typically would rely on it.

However, it wasn’t easy in the beginning. At the four-day mark, I began to feel listless and wasn’t sure I was going to make it through the 30-days. I felt sick and thought either I started battling the flu or I was ill because of the diet. After a new friend on Twitter generously sent me a free Purple Carrot box, we began to understand the power of nutritious vegan meals.

Some of our favorite vegan recipes:

• Tomato Braised Artichokes with Bright Dill Sauce and Farro
• Fall Vegetable Hash with Herbed Tempeh and Maple Tahini Dressing
• Beetroot Tacos with Avocado Salsa
• Spaghetti Squash Pad Thai, and Asparagus and Mushroom Pesto (Video of them below, and full recipes here).

After going vegan, I’ve remained a vegan at home and a vegetarian outside the house.

Learn more about 30-day challenges here.

I mEDITATED MORE often and fullY

This year I meditated almost 100 times.

Meditation was something I never thought I’d do, be interested in, or need. However, when a colleague said he meditated to “add some yin to his yang,” it got me thinking. I worked at a fast-paced company, on a fast-paced team focused on innovation, and my workouts were HIIT. Everything in my life was yang, so much so that I didn’t truly understand the yin side.

After meditating, I’ve noticed the following perspective shifts:

• I’ve become a spectator of my thoughts. I don’t always let my thoughts or emotions at the moment drive my interactions, as I can now see them for what they are – they’re akin to clouds floating by as they’re never permanent.
• I’ve begun to appreciate silence, solitude, and being with myself.
• I learned about stoicism while talking about meditation, which is a philosophy I now subscribe to and study.

There are so many quality meditation apps available for download for you to choose from. I’ve been using Calm, and I love it.

I Signed on to my next career challenge

I’ve recently signed on as cofounder and head of marketing at an early-stage startup based out of Boston.

 

Honorable mentions:

I started to write again and on Medium this time. You can see my few posts here:

• A Case for Finding the Intersections: Inbound Marketing and Instructional Design
• Do NOT Set a New Year’s Resolution; I Beg You. Do This instead.
• Attention Inbound Marketers: Here are 5 Exceptional Examples of Educational Videos To Inspire You
• Marketers can save the world AND deliver tons of business value by creating online courses.

I also went back to my alma mater, the University of Florida, for a football game with my husband and parents. I loved being able to show them where I took business classes, my favorite restaurants/ bars, and take them to a game to give them some insight as to what it’s like to be a Florida Gator.

Another excellent year full of exciting moments has passed, and I look forward to seeing where 2018 takes us.