HAPPY FREAKING 2021!
YOU GUYS! We’ve finally fucking made it! Excuse my language, but whew – 2020 was a year. 2021 will hopefully look a little bit better, but some parts of 2020 will trickle in. I haven’t been as excited as I am now for a new year in a while. I’m not really sure why. Nothing really is shaping up to be too different, but something about it just feels… momentous. It feels like it will be an important year in my life, so we’ll see what that exactly means! Anyway, I just wanted to share these pictures we’ve been sitting on since August and share a little bit of a life update/2020/2021 thoughts content in today’s post.
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FOREVER 21 SWEATER (SIMILAR) // BLANKNYC DENIM // FRANCESCA’S BAG (SIMILAR) // STEVE MADDEN PUMPS (SIMILAR) // H&M EARRINGS (SIMILAR)
MY 2021 GOALS
Similar to 2020 and 2019, I’m using a week-by-week spreadsheet. A lot of the same goals are still on it. BUT actually, I’ve been slowly ticking away, removing one or two per year while the others linger on to the next year. Kinda feels a bit like throwing darts at the wall and seeing what sticks. But while I was brainstorming my goals for this year, there isn’t really anything new I’d like to achieve. It’s still the same goals, minus the 3-4 accomplished in the last two years.
SO I’m sticking with the spreadsheet, though updated, again this year. I also added in one rather audacious goal, that I think may be a little unrealistic, but I want to try for it and see what happens because I have no real way of setting smaller goals for it until I see what happens attempting the big goal. …I’ll explain in a minute, but here’s my goals:
- Wake up at 0530
- Doodle-A-Day
- Read 30 min/day
- None for April
- Be back at my “healthy” weight (I hate saying weight, but I feel my best at about a size 2-4)
- Do a little something pampering to my hair or skin daily
- Do a short yoga session daily
- Run 3x/week minimum
- No phone in bed
- Do some kind of workout daily
- Hit 10K on Instagram
- Update all my old blog posts
A LITTLE ABOUT MY GOALS
Okay, so let me share some things that I think will be questions off the bat. First of all, my big audacious goal is Instagram. That’s a new one for me, but I haven’t really been consistent and I would like to eventually hit 10k. I figured I could make it an 11 month goal and just see about what it takes for me to build a habit of consistency and see what my growth rate will be. It’s really difficult to make these predictions, though I did try to do some research and, in theory, this is completely within the realm of possibility. But we’ll see – it’s more specific than “be more consistent on IG” and allows me to use an actual formula to create milestones. If I find my growth rate will not meet those milestones, I can just change up the final number to something my actual rate reflects as possible.
The questionable one…
The next one that may be an eye-roll or cause questions is the weight one. Let me just say that I’ve gone up 4-6 pant sizes and almost 40lbs in the last 4 years. I feel unhealthy, too. When I walk, I tire out. My heart races way too easily. My body is not pleased and it is all my fault that I’ve fallen into inactivity. So, I would like to feel healthy again, however, that’s not easily measurable, so I’m setting a weight/size goal to help me set milestones which I can then use to evaluate how I feel physically and mentally.
Most of the rest of my goals surround my mental and physical health, these goals will ultimately be important for achieving the above goal and then establishing the habits for maintaining it longterm. I may find that these specific numbers aren’t realistic, and then they will need some change, but we’ll see. And again, I can usually accomplish about 2 a year (I couldn’t even think of one for April this year), so if this set of goals becomes my 5 year plan, that’s totally cool as well. These are just the things I’m working toward, with a plan for if-everything-goes-perfect.
MY THOUGHTS ON 2020
I learned a lot about myself this year, a lot more than I was expecting to. Personally, all of the hurt I keep bottling up kept bottling up, but I was also able to finally name a lot of feelings which I think is an important step. I learned that I don’t have control of the things that I really need to to feel fulfilled and I tend to over-control the things I can control as a result. So next year will be a step in taking back the right kind of control, namely, my time and my creative energy. I give those two things away like candy at The Good House on Halloween, next year I need to practice saying no when people ask for those things in particular.
It would also be ignorant to not mention everything that happened this year. While I’d like to believe we’ve grown as a society, I know that’s not the case. But I hope that some parts of our society have. Personally, I still have a lot to learn about the ways that I’ve been privileged (as a white woman); and communicating that and providing support, and communicating the ways in which I have been disadvantaged (as the proud owner of a V) to help further missions that seek to balance that. I’m going to keep this mention short, though, because frankly, I don’t know enough to speak. I’m attempting to more deeply understand the things I can and learn about the things I’ll never be able to truly understand. But all that begins with listening and that journey continues on to this year and every year after that.
And on that note, I will leave you, and in confidence that I will take back my creativity and my time, I will talk to you next week.
What is something that you learned about yourself this year?
