Thoughts on Life

How I Am Choosing to View This New Year

We are already 3 weeks into the year 2020. If this had been previous years I would have long forgotten my New Year’s resolutions by now and I would be back in the slog of doing life exactly the same way as I had been previously with not much improvement on myself or progress on my goals.

This year I treated New Year’s Resolutions a little bit differently. 

As 2020 approached I actually didn’t have any idea what my year was going to look like. I had been pursuing an internship with an organization close to my heart but I didn’t know if I would actually get into that internship. I wasn’t sure what my financial situation would look like. I didn’t know what my time constraints would be. You get the picture. Because of this, I wasn’t really able to plan my 2020 with goals and resolutions because I simply didn’t know what my life was going to look like. The only goal I actually made was to read a lot more than I did last year and so I set my Goodreads reading goal to 70 books.

I spent the first few days of my New Year recovering from a really bad bout of sinusitis and a stomach bug. I read two books in three days, I watched a fair amount of TV and I hung out with my family. On the Tuesday after New Years, I found out that I would not be doing the internship this year. I thought I would feel devastated and anxious, instead I felt excited and like I had an opportunity for a fresh start and good goals.

On Wednesday I went out and bought myself running clothes. My dad runs three times a week and I want to get a lot fitter than I am right now so I decided to join him (we don’t run the same route because he’s a lot more experienced than me but running at the same time helps with accountability and motivation).

After that, I decided to start tracking my water intake because I want to be better at drinking water. Then I messaged my writing accountability group and told them I would be getting back into writing the next week, promising myself that no matter what I will write on Monday (which I am doing right now, yay!).

The real test will obviously be in 2-3 months time, seeing if I am still going to be pursuing the goals I have set for myself. But right now I am doing my best to make healthy choices and to stick to them, allowing myself the fresh start of 2020. 

My encouragement to you is to go do that thing. If you have been meaning to pick up reading or writing or running or needlepoint or bullet journalling or cutting sugar out of your coffee or something else; go do it. It’s the middle of January but honestly making goals and healthy decisions can take place any time of year and doesn’t need a big event like New Years, just a conscious decision to start and an action to follow. Don’t wait for “the right time”, just start and then keep going.

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