#idk I have to weigh all my pros and cons because I’m incredibly type A and can’t risk making a bad decision

[care666bear]

I volunteer at the thrift store again tomorrow & I’d rlly like to put together an outfit with my bow tights cause they’re just so cute but I’m also worried about overdoing it cause I’m just going to stock shit and occupy the jewelry counter but what if ppl don’t know I’m hip like them??? (Joking my mom use to say shit like that and I miss her today lol)

running the risk of being too plain is just a terrible way to spend a day I know that much but also what if I get cold which is very likely

[whenispeakicrossmyfingers]

the year ahead

I really liked @joyfulrachel‘s goals for the next ten years, so I’m going to do something similar to that, because maybe if I put these notions somewhere other than my own head, I’ll actually stick to them. (Probably not, but let’s humor ourselves). 

take better care of myself 

this is multifold I think. I’ve recently gone off birth control, which I’ve been on for the last 6 years (!?), and it has made some unwanted changes appear in my life. Namely acne and hormones. So that said, I want to be much more intentional about what I eat and how I take care of my skin and body because I’ve never really been good at that. 2017 I made the effort to have a face routine and I stuck to that fairly solidly for the year and only when I was traveling did I neglect it (I know that’s when my skin needed it the most but I’m still learning how to travel best for myself so maybe that’ll be a goal in the future idk). I also have started eating healthier since moving to France (because I have no friends and no one to go out to eat with lol) and I really like that I’ve done that! That’s something I want to continue doing in 2018 and hopefully it’ll cement itself into my life forever. 

I also want to exercise more. I’m not very good at it, but I want to improve it in a way that is good for me. I really enjoy walking, and I walk nearly everywhere I go, so I want to do that more often. Also yoga or some simple exercises I can do in my apartment that are relatively low impact and don’t leave me completely gasping for air. This goes with the whole intentionality goal that I have for 2018, but I want to be better about my overall health and well being and unfortunately exercise is part of that too. 

read more 

this is a huge goal for 2018. College kind of killed my love of reading because I was doing it so much, and now that I’m in France I can only find French books (still good, but I’m not quite good enough to read full novels in French yet). But in Dublin this past week I got two new books: Sive by John B. Keane, which is actually a play that I saw at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin four years ago that irrevocably changed me, and I’ve been searching for ever since.  The other is How Much the Heart Can Hold: Seven Stories on Love, and I’m v excited to read it because it deals with different types of love, not just romantic. The cover art is beautiful too and I might steal Rachel’s idea (again) and post some thoughts about the books I read this year. To both hold myself accountable and give more of my thoughts to people who haven’t asked for them. 

write more

I’m being published at the end of the month (!!) and I’ve been writing a lot more creatively (it’s all fan fiction tbh but there’s value in it so don’t @ me), and I’ve been talking a lot with @stardustheartbeats about creative writing and prose and basically everything writing related, and it’s reminded me how much I really do love it. I don’t necessarily have aims to write a novel or essays or even really publish anything, but I do miss fiction writing and the joy it brings me. So this year I want to be more intentional about writing and revising--especially revising because I’m terrible at it--so I want to look at old things I’ve written and see if I can breathe new life into them. Or write some new things. Or at the very least, journal with intention, not just when things are falling apart. So yeah, writing more is a big goal of mine just for life in general. 

apply to grad school

I’ve been thinking lately and this just feels like the right step. There are several programs I’ve been looking at, currently all in Europe, but I need to do more research on US based ones too so my mom doesn’t think I’m abandoning her. There are a few in Ireland that would be fantastic, and a few in Oslo that sound incredibly cool. I really need to sit down, weigh out the pros and cons of each, decide which ones I actually want to apply for, and then actually do it. This is actually my main goal for January, because this needs to be done soon. I might scream into this void to do that, so if anyone wants to chat about my future and help me figure out what I’m supposed to do, hmu. I like talking about myself and my passions, but I’m bad at being objective about my own life. 

apply for jobs

In case grad school doesn’t work out! I’ll also need a job when I return to America, so I’m going to need to do this anyway. I’ve always been bad at this, because my college gave me so many connections, that networking and getting jobs via that was so easy. So I need to polish up my resume and send it out to people and hopefully nonprofits will hire me so that I can make a difference in the world and not have to go back to the donut shop I was at. 

improve my languages (and potentially learn a new one?)

I really need to buckle down and work on my French. My goal by the time I leave at the end of April is to be mostly fluent. I know that’s not going to be easy, but that means I need to leave my house more, listen to more French podcasts, and talk to people in French instead of relying so heavily on English as I do.  I also really want to improve my Norwegian. I started learning it around this time last year because of Skam and I ended up really falling in love with it. When I was in Oslo for Christmas, I felt like I could grasp Norwegian about as well as I understood French when I first got to France, which is saying something for having only learned it for a year. It’s also just a really cool language and I like finding the nuances and connections between it and the other languages I know. So I’m probably going to do the same thing I am with French and search out more media in Norwegian (podcasts, movies, music, etc). 

That said, I think it would be really cool to learn another language this year. Probably, if I do, it’ll be something either Romantic or Germanic based (I’m not quite ready to tackle languages with completely different structures, but maybe one day!). So if anyone has language suggestions or wants to talk to me in another language, feel free! I want to practice more, and it’s nice to do it with someone else, rather than just myself. 

use this blog more intentionally

I’m still not entirely sure what I mean by this, but I’ll probably use this more to keep myself accountable of everything I just listed above. I tend to not put a lot of effort into anything I do. Call it laziness, call it a short attention span, call it me being a true Taurus and just preferring to stay in bed all the time. Whatever it may be, I’m going to try to be more intentional about what I do all the time. I’m going to curate my life to what I want it to be, and that might seem silly or superficial to do it with aesthetics and stuff, but knowing me as a person, that’s a good way to ease into caring about everything on a larger scale. So starting small and making a point of doing things, rather than just doing them willy nilly, I think will somehow work it’s way into my life. Hopefully. We’ll see. 

manage my time better

I’m horrible with my time!! I spend too much time watching netflix and not enough time doing other productive things! I need to force myself to be better about that, starting small with making myself write for a bit every day and focusing on my lesson plans. Then maybe making it bigger with other things like the first goal on this list. 

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me! It’s not ten, but this is all I can think of. These are things that I’ve been thinking about a lot. So, like I said, hopefully me writing them down will hold my accountable for my actions. I really have made strides in the last three months, being on my own and doing things for me, just because they feel good (read: doing the dishes every night, making my bed nearly every day, and actually cooking myself real meals). Here’s to 2018 and the growth it will inevitably bring. Hopefully it’s good.