New year, new me?

Hey everyone, I’m baaack!

I know what you’re all thinking… “Let’s see how long she manages this time!”  

Now I know many, many people set new years resolutions for themselves every year and don’t succeed for whatever reason, giving up after years of failed attempts to even bother – indulging in that take away on Jan 2nd, tossing aside their gym pass after the first week, cheekily buying cigarettes instead of more patches or giving up on that language class having had invested in books etc… I think a lot of people don’t think deeply enough about their intentions, wanting to achieve something takes work and far too often we shy away from effort on our parts.

Over the past few years, around this time of year, I find myself looking back on the previous year and mulling things over, recalling, reflecting, reminiscing and most importantly, evaluating.  This year I’ve been struggling to come up with something, I know I’m not perfect, far from it in fact but that’s a different story. I found myself looking back on the previous years for inspiration…

Last year I remember having two key goals and another as an after thought – so in order of importance:

1. Get a job – at the time I was interning at a charity.
2. Lose weight – I’d put on a fair amount of weight due to medical issues.
3. Possibly, maybe read more, perhaps.  – I’d been meaning to delve back into books for a long time.

Happy to say to some degree I managed them all. I’m happily employed in a graduate job – didn’t come easily but my hard work paid off. Feel as though, slowly but surely I’m working my way up the ranks there. Weight loss went really well for me in hindsight – mostly, this stemmed from watching what I ate. I won’t lie, it didn’t come without pain, bouts of having to test my self-control and multiple occasions of nearly giving up after seeing little or no progress. I’m proud to say that all in all, I managed to shed a (what I think is) rather impressive, 10kgs. I’m not done in that department, hoping to lose more this year, but that’s more of a maintenance task, which is now coming naturally to me anyway. Lastly, towards the end of the year I was very kindly gifted a kindle – you know who you are, thank you! As a consequence I find myself reading far more, especially whilst travelling back and forth from work, on average I get through a book a week which, although could be better, could be a lot worse too.

The year before I was at uni and I set myself the goal of attaining a 2:1, which considering the grades of my first two years, seemed rather bleak. After some serious struggles, sacrifices, hard work and HELLOVALOT of lot of hours in the library I somehow pulled off.

Anyway, back to the present, after thinking things over, I’ve decided that my goals for this year *drumroll please* aaaare:

• Go to the gym at least twice a week, preferably thrice weekly.
• Blog more regularly, aiming, at minimum, to make set monthly benchmark.
• Get promoted at work by the end of summer.

Let me elaborate…

With regards to gym, I’m one of those people who go frequently for a month or two then end up taking a long break of another few months before starting again. Of course, not before promising myself that I won’t let it happen again, and that I’ll be more dedicated this time round. So I’m scheduling in one gym session on Tuesdays after work and another on Saturday mornings… I figure that along with watching my food intake this will supplement the rest of my weight loss well. I’ve found that the more weight I lose the harder it is to lose it – and scientifically this makes sense. The larger you are, the more calories you need to go about your daily life, so the more you lose, the harder you have to try…

Number 2 – blogging. I think initially when I set this up it was probably a distraction from degree but the more I think about it, I definitely need some kind of regular creative outlet. I also want to write more, I used to love writing when I was younger but that passion has over the years disappeared, so, I will aim to get a blog post up towards the beginning of every month. Unlike No 1, this one you will definitely see the proof, or even lack of it, right here!

The last one is more of a professional one, which, I know is within my grasp should all things go well in the near future – I just need to make sure I’m consistently outputting a high standard of work.

So, that’s me folks. I’d love to know, about you, do you set yourself goals at this time of year? What are your new year’s resolutions?

Wish me luck!

-K