Plans For The Next 12 Months: Come At Me 2019

2 Jan 2019

Plans for 2019

H A P P Y  N E W  Y E A R ! 

G and I welcomed in 2019 by dancing away to the band who are going to play at our wedding. The night went from ‘if we want to leave at 10, we’ll leave at 10’ to eating cheesy pasta at 3am. It was such a gem of an evening.  

It does, however, mean that the first day of the year somewhat melted away without much thought in a hungover haze and, after several days of feeling rested and re-set, we have returned to reality feeling tired and hungover. 

But, hey, 2019 is here and I am so very excited for this year. If everything goes to plan, it will be big one for G and I, and I am itching to pull myself out of the new year hangover and crack on. So here are my plans and goals for the year ahead: 

Get married 

The most obvious one: I can now say I’m getting married this year! There are less than five months until our wedding and it does feel a lot closer this side of December. I have my first dress fitting in a couple of weeks and the wedding to-do list is feeling just that little bit more pressing. 

Take a photo a day 

Back in 2014, I took a photo every day for a year. There were days where I couldn’t be bothered and those days where literally nothing happened and finding something to photograph was hard work. But it forced a little slice of creativity into each day that didn’t revolve around staring at a screen, and the result was a year-long photo diary; a record of each day. I’ve been thinking about doing it again for a while now and seeing as it’s going to be quite a big year, 2019 seemed like a good one to document. So here we go!

Less sugar, more stretching 

Ah, a somewhat stereotypical new year’s resolution. Thing is, I’m a sucker for a goal and if I don’t write it down, it becomes this vague idea that I never follow through. So, yes, I want to cut my sugar intake. Hell, right now, post-Christmas, I’m pretty sure I should never eat cake, chocolate or cheese again but I figure this might be a tad unrealistic. But cutting down on sugar (okay and maybe cheese) is 100% something I generally want to do and a new year is as good as time as any to say LET’S CRACK ON. And when I say sugar, I mean ‘obvious’ sugar – I’m not about to cut back on fruit because cough I’m not an idiot cough. 

Oh and also, I want to stretch more. I’m thinking morning stretches as part of the routine as well as trying out more yoga and pilates. 

Refine my Instagram use

This feels such a daft one but I also think it could be really beneficial so I’m throwing it in as an attempt to hold myself accountable. Since my phone break-up challenge, I no longer have the facebook or twitter apps on my phone and, as a result, I barely use them anymore. Instagram on the other hand has been a harder cookie to crack. I think partly because I get a lot of enjoyment out of Instagram and, when used correctly, it fuels my creativity. But I know I’m spending too much time on the app and still find myself pointlessly scrolling. My aim for this year is to refine my feed and refine my use. I aim to reduce the amount of time I spend using it and I want to curate my feed so that I only see the people I really want to see. The people I automatically know I would seek out should I not see their posts popping up on my feed. This will involve a lot of muting/unfollowing and I plan to be ruthless at first – potentially only having a handful of people or so on my feed - and then see who I go to seek out. I’m hoping it will be a bit like starting again and will prevent me from having hundreds of photos to mindlessly scroll through. Hopefully it means I will spend less time on the app, but also really enjoy the time I do spend on it. 

Buy a house 

2019 is, hopefully, the year. We love our flat and living in St Albans but the moment we’re ready to leave is fast approaching, and we now feel pretty set on where we want to move to. We’re hoping to throw ourselves into the house-buying process when we get back from our honeymoon at the end of June and ideally, we’ll have moved into our new house by Christmas at the latest. But I am trying not to plan too much when it comes to buying a house because you hear so many stories of things going wrong. We’re just going to crack on in the second half of the year and see what happens. 

Travel 

After a year of squeezing in as much travel as possible in 2018, it does feel a little weird to not be making lots of travel plans for the year ahead. A small part of this is because we would be reluctant to book to go away at all post-June right now because we have no idea where we might be with the house buying process.

But mostly it’s because we are focussing on one big trip for 2019, which is taking up a lot of expense and annual leave. Two days after our wedding we will fly to America for an 18-day honeymoon, splitting our time between New York and California and I AM VERY EXCITED. 

Before then, I’m really looking forward to a few UK-based weekends. My family and I are staying in a big cottage in Kent for a weekend in January, I already have a couple of weekends with my girls planned in Jan and Feb and I’m taking G away for a surprise weekend for his birthday in April. I’m also so excited for my hen weekend in March! 

Depending on how the second half of our year goes, I quite fancy trying out a Srprs Me weekend. If you’re unfamiliar, the company books your city break for you and you don’t know where you’re going until you get to the airport. I’ve heard good things and I like the spontaneous nature to it; arriving in a new city without any prior plans weirdly appeals to my usual plan-loving self. I also love the idea of heading to Berlin for a festive weekend towards the end of the year. But these are very much just vague musings at the mo, and very dependent on all our other plans! 

Remember to pause

A reminder to myself to step away from screens, accept the days where it’s just not happening and take moments to pause and breathe when needed. 

Come at me 2019!

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