Happy New Year! Welcome back to my blog! So this one is about my goals for this year
I purposely didn't call this my 'new year's resolutions'. Why? Well I'm not one of those people that can stick to resolutions. I don't feel guilty by not sticking to them and so I think that 'resolutions' would be the wrong word to use. My second reason is that we're already past the first week of January 2016 so I'm a little late on the whole new year thing.
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| Firework Show at Nottingham Castle |
I would say I've had a tough year in reflection. University has presented me with a few difficult challenges and its often been stressful. I know I need to focus on my achievements and my strengths and simply work on things I'm not as good at. I'd recommend this to anyone, as it allows me to set realistic expectations for myself.
My first goal is to take more pictures.
I find photography both relaxing and entertaining and I don't think I'd get bored of taking pictures very quickly. Over the last few years, I've taken more and more pictures. The rest of my family doesn't and that's sort of what started my passion. I looked back through family albums and pictures on the computer and found gaps. I'd suddenly jump from one picture of me in January at my brothers birthday meal, to Christmas at the end of the year! Looking back at pictures is so important to me and so it's probably one of the reasons I love it so much, because I know the end result will provide me with memories that I can save and cherish-sorry for the yucky sentimentality, I'm very emotional :').
This year I want to spend more time taking pictures and go to different places specifically to take pictures. My favourite shots are of landscapes and nature, because they're just so amazing. My parents love long countryside walks and as much as I don't like the walking, the views have often been breathtaking. I also need to think about the different settings I can use whilst taking the picture, even before I think about editing. I often don't add filters to my natural shots because the landscapes speak for themselves, but recently at university, I sat through a seminar about the controls of their hefty, ridiculously clunky video cameras. I took the opportunity to ask a few questions about shutter speeds and gain etc and tried to tailor it to photography and not filming. So that's what I shall think about doing whilst out enjoying myself taking snaps of the world, my family and myself. Not to be vain, but I would like to see how I change through the year and by the way my stress levels are, I'll probably have some greys coming through!
Goal number two is to express myself more.
I love my colouring book. Sounds mad I know, but it has really helped in the past week. I have a deadline coming up with university, in a module I don't really enjoy and it doesn't help that I'm rubbish at it. I needed to get out and felt like running away from everything. Music helped a bit, but I still felt like I was listening to music whilst feeling unhappy. Instead I got out my colouring book and completed a whole pattern. It sounds childish but the book does have the word 'adult' on the front, just to prove to those who find it funny that I have been colouring. I also wrote a bit of poetry/ story as English has always been something I've loved, poetry especially. I'm not planning on being an author or a poet, but I'm just doing it because it lets me release all the mess in my head and put it down on a page.
Organisation
At the start of this year, I used a notebook for all my to-do lists and kept note of upcoming dates on a calendar that Uni gave me for free. However, I think in the next few days, I will go on the search for the perfect diary, to do list, notes, goals...anything I want to write down. It must be the right size to be carried everywhere. The one I was using was a little too big to carry around with me everyday but I loved it regardless. It really helped me with anxiety and stress because I could put down everything I needed to do and it gave me great satisfaction to cross out the ones I had completed. The one thing I didn't like about that, was that it left crosses and mess in the book, which made me feel cluttered and confused.....When you get in a flustered state of mind it's easy for the smallest thing to annoy you and the mess in my notebook does that for me.
To have accomplished something
I would love it, if at the end of the year or throughout it, I could think wow, well done Charlotte. I want to be able to be proud, and I mean really proud, of something I have done. I'd love it, if I could finish this year at university with an amazing grade, I wish to pass my driving test and my biggest task I'm setting myself for this year is to get myself sorted. I might do a blog about it, but since starting university, I've realised how much of a big step it has been and how it has narrowed down my learning so much. In sixth form, I chose four subjects to learn; Drama, Media, English Language and Psychology and realising that they were just subjects and not career choices has come as a surprise to me, as I now have no idea what to do once my degree is over. At the end of the academic year/this year, I want to have narrowed down my career choices, as it has been one of the factors giving me anxiety.
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| One of my funnier achievements of last year |
I hope you've enjoyed reading this post and that it may have inspired you.
