HELLO TWENTY EIGHTEEN | CHALLENGES AND BLOGGING PLANS

It takes me a week to properly think about my New Year’s resolutions, or challenges (I don’t do resolutions – they’re too resolute and solid and therefore impossible!).  It takes me a few days to feel the year out, I think. The first week of the new year hasn’t been anything particularly spectacular or different. Other than a step-up in my dissertation research, and more exams and study, the first half of my 2018 looks like it’s going to be much like 2017 in it’s day-to-day-ness. (And then we don’t think about the after-graduation half). When I make goals before the new year has even begun, I run the risk of creating a list of goals that don’t fit into my year. ‘Write a blog post every week’ doesn’t fit into my year. I’ve trialled writing a little bit of my novel in a journal every day so far this year. I wanted to write a couple of pages a day. ‘A couple of pages’ doesn’t fit into my day, every day. A few lines, however, does.

So these are the goals I have settled on. The ones that feel like they can be carried along with me through the day-to-day of my 2018:

☆ Write every day – I plan to write something each day towards my novel, in a little notebook. Be that one sentence, or one piece of dialogue, a description, or a character’s thought. This is more manageable some days than opening up my laptop and following a chronological outline. So far, I’ve managed to write at least something each day all week. One day that was a few pages, another day it was three sentences. I’m hoping that this will keep me in my characters’ heads and their stories all year, even if I don’t get the chance to finish a typed-up novel.

☆ Read a broader range of genres – I don’t have specifics for this. I just want to give anything and everything a try, rather than my usual go-to’s

☆ Post on my blog at least twice a month – Twice a month doesn’t sound a lot, but posting even once a month has become a challenge for me over the last few months. I posted a lot less on here over November/December due to some intense deadlines (final year problems!). So I’m making a plan to post at least twice on here each month this year. And in the months where I’m not suffocated by essays, hopefully that will be much more!

☆ Combat feeling guilty for relaxing – By this, I mean that, rather than working 9am-11pm (that’s seriously what I was doing Monday-Saturday for the last few weeks of last term), I’m going to stop after dinner and read for an hour, or write for fun for a few minutes, or even just make myself a hot chocolate and listen to music. And I’m going to challenge myself not to feel guilty for doing it!

☆ Read my Bible more – my goal every year is to read my Bible every day, which is still my goal, but I am very bad at doing this. So I’m just going to carry on trying to read it more.

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Those are my five challenges for the new year, bookish and otherwise.

Have you set any challenges or New Year’s resolutions this year? What are you hoping to achieve/challenge yourself to do?