My Goals for 2018 | Blogmas #28

Hey everyone! It's not long now at all until the start of 2018, and it's really got me thinking about how I want next year to be. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that 2017 has not been the best of years for me. It's been super stressful and I've had lots of personal and family problems going on. All of the things that have been going on in my life have made it very tough for me to complete the goals that I made for this year, and I'm trying my best to not let myself get annoyed and sad because of that. I've been spotting some really encouraging quotes on tumblr & twitter over the last week or so, reminding people that it's okay if all they did this year was get through it, and honestly these posts have been so helpful for my mental health. Thankyou to all of the wonderful people who have taken the time to share these kind words, because it really is lovely for people to read and distract themselves from their intrusive thoughts about how little they've done this year ♥ Ignoring the way the past year has gone and focusing on the year ahead of me has been helpful, and today I came up with my goals for both my personal life & blogging. I thought I'd share those with you for my Blogmas Day 28 post :) 

I am yet to get myself a nice new calendar for 2018, so I've used my mom's calendar for this photograph, haha! How cute is this dancing Shiba Inu though!? My best friend spotted a calendar of one of my favourite #MCM celebs, the gorgeous Norman Reedus, in our local town centre the other day so I'm hopefully gonna be able to get that soon! Have you all gotten yourselves a 2018 calendar yet? If so, what's the theme? I'm planning to use my Filofax planner to keep track of important dates, but I still find it helpful to have a calendar up that I can quickly look at to remind myself of the more important things on my schedule. If I can't get my Mr Reedus calendar, I'm probably going to get a Pusheen or Sanrio one instead! I'm gonna end up making this post all about calendars... so on with my goals for 2018! 

♥ My Personal Goals ♥

Dye my hair a bright colour or two 

Many of the goals you'll see on my list today will be very similar to the ones I shared for 2017 and that's because they are something that I didn't manage to complete, but really want to do. I have been wanting to dye my hair a bold, bright colour for a long, long time, and I need to just do it! I would love to make 2018 a year of vibrant hair, and experiment with several colours but we'll see how I go. I am determined to have at least one mermaid-esque hair colour next year! 

Go to Lisbon, Portugal for the Eurovision Song Contest 

One of my best friends & I went to see the Eurovision live final show back in 2016 and it was honestly one the most amazing musical experiences of my life, and we would really love to go back for 2018! We are not going to be able to attend the final this time around since the queue online earlier this month to get tickets was absolutely ridiculous. I was on the website on time and I still had 54,000 people ahead of me :O It's such a shame, but instead we are going to try to get tickets for the semi-finals shows and still go over to Portugal. If not then my goal of 2018 is to visit another country :) 

Practice my German lessons at least three times a week!

I want to really put my all into learning German next year, and I'm going to aim to revise/practice a little everyday, even if it's just for 30 minutes. I have re-start my 60 day Pimsleur language course, or at least pick up where I left off and it requires you to do them every day! Of course, there will be days when life will get in the way so I don't want to set a goal that I might not be able to realistically do, so I think that three times a week is still a great attempt :) 

Get my geocache finds up to 10

Geocaching is a really fun hobby and I would love to invest more time in it (If you don't know what geocaching is, why not have a read of my post all about it here?). Being a spoonie makes it difficult to hunt for new caches, especially since I don't have a car, but I'm going to challenge myself to look for them whenever I am in a new place. I have found three in my hometown so far, so I have to find seven more in 2018. 

Read 15-20 books

I want 2018 to be the year that I really get back into reading! It was one of my goals for this year to read more books, and I have accomplished that (even though I would have liked to have read more than I actually have)! However for this coming year, I am determined to read all of the Harry Potter books that I've purchased and also as many of Stephen King's novels as I can :) I can do this! 

Work on my mental health

Throughout this past year, I have done quite a few little things that have challenged my anxiety. They were only small things but nonetheless important to me! With my year being filled with setbacks, I wasn't able to work on some of the things that I had talked about with my therapist in our last few sessions at the beginning of 2017, and I need to pick up where I left of and challenge myself more over the next 12 months. I won't share my specific goals because they are very personal, but I might write some updates throughout 2018 with how I'm getting on with them. I'm going to take them one step at a time, but hopefully by the end of the year I feel at a better place than I do now :) Oh, and I also want to explore private therapy since I've apparently had all that there is to offer in my hometown >.< Have any of you had private therapy before? How did it compare to NHS therapy? I'd love to hear any tips and personal stories that you might have :)

Get another tattoo

I have so many dream tattoos planned and so little money to get them done this year! I would love to get some new ink in 2018, even though I'm such a crybaby so I'm dreading the actual act of getting the tattoo itself haha! But it's so worth the pain when you have a beautiful piece of artwork on your body that lasts forever. I just need to overcome the pre-tattoo nerves and go get them done!

Start up my Youtube channel

I have been wanting to branch onto YouTube for ages and ages now! I spend a lot of time watching videos on Youtube and I have so much inspiration for my own videos that I want to film, but my anxiety disorder has really been holding me back. I would love it if I could share some content onto my channel in 2018, even if I end up deleting them, I want to take that big step for me... making them and sharing them! Wish me luck guys :)

Experiment with bolder lipstick shades

I absolutely love seeing people wearing bright, eye-catching lipsticks, in blue and purple and orange and all sorts of exciting shades! It makes me so inspired to wear them, but then I'm just never brave enough to get some for myself. I need to just try them and stop worrying what other people will think! I'm hoping that when I have a bright hair colour, that it will encourage me more to experiment with all the bold makeup looks in general. I have a lot of things that I want to get better at, so I'm hoping that 2018 is the year!  

Write up one of my stories properly

I have always loved writing, and throughout my teens I would write a lot of short stories and found it to be a great outlet for my depression back then. After years and years of having no motivation to put pen to paper when it came to writing fiction, I finally wrote something earlier this year :) I have only written about three chapters but I'm pretty proud of myself for getting that far. It might not seem like a lot, but after so long it's an accomplishment. I'm hoping that I can continue this particular story next year, and also write up some of the other ideas I have. I'm nowhere near ready enough to write a full storybooks worth, but hopefully I'll get there eventually. It's something that I have wanted to do since I was a kid, and it's on my bucket list. 

I have lots of other little goals that I want to accomplish in 2018, but I'm trying my best not to overburden myself with resolutions that might make me feel super pressured. I don't want to end up beating myself up emotionally over the things that I don't manage to get done. I'm looking at my goals for next year as more of a guideline or a wishlist sort of thing, of stuff that I want to do but if I don't do it, then at least I tried and that's okay :) 

I'm going to finish this post with some of the main goals I have relating to my blog.

♥ My Blogging Goals ♥

1. Buy my domain
2. Read more blogs 
(I have been seriously slacking when it comes to this over the last year. Sorry guys!)
3. Get a custom header 
4. Dedicate more time & effort to my social media accounts
5. Post on blogging Facebook groups 
(I joined loads of blogging Facebook pages & then didn't even share anything, oops!)
6. Come up with a social media schedule
7. Join in with more twitter chats & interact more with other bloggers
(I am so socially awkward but I'm going to try my hardest!) 

I hope that you've enjoyed reading about my goals :) If like me, you didn't complete all of your goals for this year, try not to feel bad about it. There's no rush to complete these things, they take time to do and that's okay ♥ Just give them another go & don't be so hard on yourselves. You are trying your best and that's all that matters. Try to set yourself smaller, more achievable goals that make you feel good when you complete them, such as finishing all the episodes of a TV show you want to watch, or doing a little DIY project. Look after yourselves, and remember that your mental health is more important than any goal that you've set yourself. I hope that you all have a wonderful, fun-filled 2018! 

Thankyou for reading!

 
♥

I'd love to hear all about what you want to do in 2018

2016 Goals | Update

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. For today's post I've decided to do an update on how I'm getting on with my 2016 Goals. I can't believe it's already half way through the year; I seriously need to get crackin' with meeting my goals! I was inspired to write this post when facebook timehop showed me that it had been a year since I got my degree results! It made me realise how much time has flown by and think about what I'd done since I graduated. I'm so glad that I finally got the courage to make my blog in September 2015 and how much of an positive impact it's had on my life :) Thankyou to all my readers for supporting me and enjoying my posts! So, without further ado, here's are the goals that I've managed to achieve so far. 

 Go on holiday with a friend 

Last month, I was able to check this goal off my list as I went on holiday to Stockholm city in Sweden with my wonderful friend Aaron. We travelled over to Sweden to watch the Eurovision Song Contest and had an amazing time. Whilst there, we visited the ABBA Museum, had a nosey around Stockholm's Old Town and went to a zoo/museum called Skansen. I wrote a few posts about my little Swedish adventure, if you wanna check them out.

Get more involved & help people

This year, I wanted to get involved in more charity events and awareness days to do my little bit to help people. My health conditions mean that I can't get out and get as actively involved as I would like to at the moment so I'm doing anything I can to help in other ways. I took part in Time to Talk Day for the mental health charity Time to Change. I've also written some posts that may be helpful for my fellow spoonies, such as tips on travelling when you have a chronic illness. I'm hoping that I'll be able to find more ways to get involved with different events and causes throughout the rest of the year too :) 

Go to more gigs

  

I've been to three gigs already this year! That's the most gigs I've ever been to in a year before and I'm really happy that I've been able to experience more concerts. So far, I've been to see Bowling for Soup (and met the band members, omg it was awesome!), I've been to the Eurovision Song Contest and saw so many talented artists perform and I've seen Busted, finally! 10 years after I absolutely adored them ♥ I recently got tickets to see Melanie Martinez with my best friend in November and I can't wait! Who else has been to a gig this year?

Join in with twitter chats 

I have had so much fun joining in with twitter chats. It has really helped with my confidence talking to new people and sharing my opinions online. My anxiety makes it difficult for me to work up the courage to start conservations with people and usually my anxiety wins so I don't end up chatting to people even though I really want to (sorry guys!). Twitter chats have made it so that I can chat to lots of fellow bloggers and get to know you all better in way that doesn't make me quite so anxious. I've joined in with lots of different chats with a variety of themes and topics, which has been fantastic! One of the chats that has been most helpful to me is Spoonie Speak. It has given me a platform to talk about my health conditions with others who have the same or similar conditions to me, people who know what it's like to live with chronic pain and all the other symptoms that accompany it. Being able to share conservations about spoonie life has helped me cope with things so thankyou to everyone who joins in with the Spoonie Speak chat each week :)  

To be more open about my anxiety & depression 

This is something that I was really anxious about doing. Having grown up surrounded by a society that stigmatizes mental illness, I was pretty scared at the thought of telling those around me about my depression and anxiety. I was inspired by Time to Talk Day after reading about the experiences of others with mental health conditions to finally tell the people in my life what I had been struggling with. I posted a status on facebook telling everyone about my mental illnesses and I felt so relieved after doing this. I have been open with my close friends about how my anxiety affects my everyday life and I am a lot more comfortable discussing my anxiety with others. I was proud of myself for writing a post about how my anxiety impacts my blogging and explaining why CBT therapy didn't help me. Something that I still struggle to discuss is my depression but I am working on this. Thankyou to everyone who has been so supportive and has left me lovely comments, because they are been really encouraging for me. I am learning to feel more unashamed of my mental health conditions because they are part of who I am. 

I'm happy with what I've achieved so far this year and I'm excited for what I'm going to do over the next six months. 2016 has been filled with ups and downs, but overall it's been fun. I have done lots of great things with my friends and I have come a long way with my mental health. I may not be where I want to be yet, but I'm trying. Bring on the rest of the year! 

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

Did you set goals for this year? 

What have you achieved so far? What do you still have to do?