First week of Jan is never the one. Mainly cos CRY Christmas is over for another year and CRY I have to go back to work and CRY I finished my chocolate orange.
And CRY the ‘new year, new you’ and ‘get your bikini body ready for summer’ hell hole that we now have to push our way through on our way to work.
Like the commuters, raised rail fares and darkness wasn’t enough to be getting on with.
So yes, FYI, I am not about to talk about how I’m going to improve myself. I LIKE ME ALREADY THANKS.
But I do love a chance to reflect and think about what I would like to do in the next twelve months. I love analysing things and planning and making lists but if I don’t actually achieve any of the below, THAT’S OKAY. I’m not big on making myself feel like a failure because I didn’t make a scrapbook.
The Big Stuff
Make a decision about my working life
Something I’ve been trying to do since, lol, leaving university tbh. But this is a different kind of decision. I’ve moved on from I’M AN EXPERT AT DRINKING VODKA PLEASE EMPLOY ME that was the post-uni days to being more selective about what I want from a working life. After internships, temp jobs and a somewhat nightmarish six months working in a business, I’ve been at my current job for nearly two years and it’s lovely in many ways. But I’m restless. I’ve realised more than ever that the one thing I want to do is write, and it would be great to have a job that allows me to pursue that, to see if I can make it work. I made the first step last year (see here) but I’m already ready to take a bigger step. Whether that’s getting a job out of London which would give me some extra time, or potentially even taking a part time job, I don’t know. But it would be great if 2017 was the year I actually made the decision.Write
This is very dependent on the above decision but I would LOVE it if, instead of stealing little snippets of time here and there, writing became all-consuming again (within reason obvs. Girl still gotta eat). I do miss the days of accidentally staying up until 3am typing and I have two novel ideas I want to get stuck into.Travel
Our big New York adventure is lined up for the beginning of April and we have a week in Greece following on in May so I’m already feeling 2017 is lucky travel wise. But naturally that isn’t going to stop me planning more adventures for the next couple of years (big American road trip anyone?) cos that’s half the fun. Later on in the year, I’d also like to explore more of the UK and maybe a cheeky weekend in a new European city?The Boring Stuff
Finish my course
I took an accidental break from my proofreading course back in November and suddenly it’s the new year and, lol, I don’t know what happened. Back to it, back to it.More savings
Less candles. More savings account. Cos apparently candles don’t pay for holidays and houses. Rude.More exercise
It’s no secret that I don’t enjoy exercise; I blame the asthma and my middle school PE teacher from hell. But I would like to be fitter. NOT because the bullshit January ads are telling me to but because I want to be a reasonable, normal-person level of healthy and I fall down on the exercise side of things. I just about walk those 10, 000 steps a day (well the app says I do anyway) but I want to do some more swimming and more yoga cos those are the only two sports I’ve found that I don’t completely hate.Less anxiety
I started today pretty chipper, despite the fact that it’s January and despite the fact that the flat has been smelling super dodgy the last couple of days, thanks to some RIPE af cheese (too ripe for even me to handle). But then I had a phonecall that sent me into a wave of, what I like to call, my irrational anxiety. And by irrational, I don’t mean the feeling isn’t real and shouldn’t be taken seriously (big fat no to mental health stigma kay) but I know that the reaction doesn’t correlate to the situation. And I do this, on varying levels, all the time. As do thousands of other people I’m sure. I hate it and want to learn more ways of being able to move past it. Not that the poltergeist-sat-on-my-chest feeling isn’t fun of course.Less scrolling
Enough with the aimless phone scrolling. It’s dull, turns my brain to mush and wastes precious time. I know there will be bored moments at work where I end up flicking through insta for the 100th time but on the whole, I need to implement some rules in the phone-scrolling side of life. Maybe turning my phone off in the evening? Maybe having a dedicated half an hour for social media and then bam, alarm goes off, phone goes in drawer and I get on with life? PLEASE GIVE ME TIPS.The Fun Stuff
Promote my blog more
I do the bare minimum when it comes to promoting my blog and I think it’s probably time to get my act into gear a tad if I want to push my writing out there a lil bit further. This kinda contradicts the above goal because more blog promotion inevitably means more social media but, hey, I never claimed I had it all figured out.Photo albums/scrapbooks
Because I’ve been saying I’ll put together my photo albums/scrapbooks for actual years and it would be nice if I finally made the bloody time to start.Iceland video
I took so many little videos in Iceland and I so desperately want to compile them all sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed I can take advantage of a few quiet weekends in the next couple of months.Buy Olympus Pen camera
I’ve just slipped this one in at the end because I know it’s materialistic and probably shouldn’t be included in my yearly goals. BUT I’ve wanted this baby for months and months and I’m very nearly there savings wise so I might just be able to achieve my goal of having one to take to New York with me...More than enough to be getting on with me thinks. I'm off to make cheesy bean quesadillas before heading out to the cinema. Let me know your 2017 goals <3
Comments