The new year is in full swing and its been impossible to check social media without seeing “intentions + goal setting” content galore and whilst I love a post like that, this isn’t going to be a tutorial on setting goals and planning for your “best year ever” but I thought I would share some of my personal goals and plans for 2021 and maybe that will give you some ideas for when you’re setting your own.
So lets talk 2021! Having given this blog a mini face lift last year, it doesn’t need redesigning or tweaking with, my focus is going to be content and writing. I’ve put together a loose content calendar of topics and posts I want to write, with my focus steering more broad than before, whilst I love writing about beauty as I’m getting older and my routines and lifestyle are changing I find myself reading a whole host of different posts and I think this blog will grow and evolve to match that. So expect the usual beauty content but with some cooking/baking, organisation/productivity, and social media content as well.
A recent addition is my new iPad Air that my parents gave me for Christmas! A new iPad was on my radar for early 2021 but I’m so excited and thankful to my parents to have it to start the new year with! The apps are endless and its so much more portable than my laptop and has less notifications than my phone which I love. I had an iPad mini previously and what I loved that for was that I had all notifications off, no email loaded, no messenger it was just predominantly for Pinterest, Kindle, Netflix and blogging but no distractions which I loved, and although this iPad Air is a productivity powerhouse I still plan on keeping notifications to a minimum to help improve my focus.
Even with all the challenges of 2020 I still feel like, it was a good year for me. If you haven’t read my 2020 year in review post maybe check that out first.
Running was such a huge part of 2020 for me and I went from barely being able to run 30 seconds to running 5K multiple times per week. My goal for 2021 is to A/ keep up the running and B/ (and I may regret this) but I’d love to be able to complete a half marathon. Last year I ran a timed 5K virtually and got a medal in the post! I liked that I was able to go out and do the run in my own time and didn’t have the nerves of pacing myself against other runners, so I think I’ll try and do a virtual half marathon.
Another goal of mine for this year is my reading challenge, last year I missed my goal but this year I’m not only determined to be reading more but to also be more mindful about what I’m reading. It’s a very easy habit to fall into to keep reading online book club recommendations or the newest book from your favourite author, but recently I took an evening and really researched the authors I’d been reading and I’m not proud to admit the lack of diversity in gender, ethnicity and topic was alarming to me. I’ve since taken time to refresh my “to read” list and pre-order some books to arrive throughout the year. As I recently learnt on Tik Tok, pre-order sales are so important to any author and counts as part of the first week of sales, which is the authors best chance of making a best seller list, this might be common knowledge but it was new to me!
With the vaccines being rolled out and the world hopefully returning to some new sense of normality in 2021, I hope I’ll be less apologetic about how I choose to spend my time. Pre-pandemic, my job was quite social with all the travel we did and I often didn’t question if going out was what I actually wanted to do or if it was just what was expected of me. I know I’m probably not alone when I say that your twenties are such a strange time in your life to navigate, I’ve never really loved going ‘out out’ and have actually really come to enjoy the slower pace of life we’ve all had to adapt to in the last year. I’ve always said to my boyfriend I feel like I’ve been in my thirties since I was about 19, I’m never happier than when I’m spending time with a few good, select friends, cooking and chatting, a club or a bar just isn’t my idea of a good time #GrannyLife4Eva. So I hope that when we have the option to return to normal, that I’m less apologetic about how I choose to spend my time.
This looks like the first year in our entire relationship that we might not move! We’ve always had to change where we’re living for uni or work or just needing more room, but since we moved into our own 1 bed flat last summer, we really have no immediate reason to move this year at all. Although I do love moving and get so much joy from decorating, I’m also very ready to embrace our new home and focus on making it our own. As I’m writing this we’re in another national lockdown and my boyfriend and are I both back home with our separate parents, so I’m very much looking forward to getting back to our flat, giving it a spring refresh and making some memories there.
Well that was a very rambly start to 2021, but hopefully I’ve summed up what I’m hoping for from this year and given you some inspiration for your own goal setting. Obviously for me, number one is to see the pandemic improve, but from a personal stand point, it’s another year of focusing on health, both mental, physical and intellectual, the people who matter most and embracing the stability of a slower pace of life, and maybe posting her a little more often.
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