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#DubaiLife, finding a key to brunch, avocado on toast and American Psycho, Dubai Marina, a very cold Canary Wharf, Brighton, Obama on my coffee,  a beach day (I've literally been to the beach four times this isn't representative at all...), my beloved Barbican. 

I'm typing this on my phone. Having found one of those moments between other moments - the last month has been ridiculously busy and, despite it being 25 degrees in Dubai and it feeling entirely un-December-like, the feeling that another year will soon be over is creeping up on me, adding more things to my ever-increasing to-do list. I'm finally ticking off "2017 blog post".

This blog has been quite of late, but life offline has been loud and busy and full. Time is skipping by - a whole year since I wrote my 2016 post (2015, 2014 and 2013 here - wowee), an entire ten months since I moved to Dubai, five months since I nervously met a boy in a bar on a Saturday night, three months since I turned thirty.

I'm living in a new city, a new country, coming home to a different apartment, still feeling "new" but also asking a friend how the weather is in "London" rather than at "home" and not knowing how I feel about that. My old life sometimes feels small and far away, like I am listening to someone else regaling their twenties while nodding along. My current life is different, in some small ways and some huge ways - like wearing new shoes which haven't quite found the grooves of my own feet, that make me take smaller, slower steps until they have. And they will.

Things that I always thought would be hard have proved to be the easiest, things I thought would come easily have been hard - I don't entirely mind being proved wrong. I think the current "me" is one of the better versions but I know I can do better still, that I've made things happen and can make bigger, better things happen - that good things are coming, that I'm not undeserving of them.

The highlights (not according to Instagram's "best nine") - shivering on the rooftop of the Queen of Hoxton in February saying a "see you soon" to my favourite city, the serene quiet of Ranthanbore National Park at 7am, my parents sprinting through Dehli airport to see me onto my flight, every birthday wish and gift from afar, snorkelling in the sea after a not small amount of encouragement, seeing Conor Oberst perform for the 8th time, finally being a bridesmaid aged 29, getting an impulsive (tiny) tattoo, one 5am bedtime and too many G&Ts to count (not that one ever should).

Thanks for the memories, 2017.