Goodbye 2018 – December Reflections

December, as it usually is, has been an exhalation: of stress, work, chaos. I spent the first week up at university, catching up on lectures and bits of reading I missed throughout the term, before enjoying a couple of days in London with some friends. From there, I headed back home to be with my family for Christmas.

We did the typical yuletide activities – making a wreath for the door, going on cold woodland walks, shopping for and wrapping presents, baking festive-flavoured things – and ate lots of yummy comfort food. It was a blessing to be able to use a proper food processor to make vegan nicecream again – I miss it so badly when I’m up at uni with just my cheap smoothie blender to rely on.

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Reflecting on My 2018 Goals

We have reached that reflective point in the calendar, a week in which lots of us cast a thought back over the previous 12 months and linger on the good and the bad the year had to offer. I thought I’d take a moment to wrap up by looking back on the goals I set way back in January.

Physical Health

I wanted to spend lots of time outside and move more in an effort to improve my general wellbeing. I think my success with this varied over the months but I did get out the house quite a bit and I did give basketball, yoga and running a crack. Through these activities, I attempted new things and overcame old anxieties; I’d say that’s a win even if exercise did fall off my radar as the year toppled into the colder months.

2018 Bujo Flip-through: 12 Lessons From My First Year of Bullet Journaling

December marked my twelfth month of using a bullet journal. In the last year, my method and style for creative organisation have changed dramatically; I’ve learnt a lot through this process and thought it could be helpful to list a couple of these lessons for those of you looking to start a bujo in the new year.

January setup post

Start with the bare minimum

To avoid becoming completely overwhelmed in my first month of bullet journaling, I stuck to a one purple pen and a bunch of straight lines to create all my spreads. Yes, it looked a little boring. And nope, I didn’t satisfy the creativity lurking within me. But I did get over the hurdle that is starting something new.

The Bullet Journal Stationery I Used Most in 2018

2018 was my first year of bullet journaling. Rather accidentally, I stumbled into it in January in a very, very minimalist fashion. I almost had to trick myself that I wasn’t entering the world of arty bujos through my stubborn use of a single pen to create spreads for the whole first month. That way, I wouldn’t overwhelm myself and run away from the whole thing in a blind panic.

Throughout the year though, my confidence and creativity grew. As did my desire to fill old jam jars and the living room coffee table (much to the annoyance of everyone else) with various bits of stationery.

Brighton Pride 2018 Photo Journal

The celebration of Pride has exploded all over the world in more recent history, and with that comes a whole host of colourful celebrations. I always associate Pride with sunny weather, and seeing as it’s been raining here for the last few days (I think summer has definitely decided to show its face somewhere else at this point) I decided to have a look back through some of my more sun-soaked images from the past few months, plenty of which were taken at Pride. And so, for those of you currently experiencing a winteresque summer day, I thought I could put together a little photo journal to brighten things up a bit.

On 4th August, Pride came to Brighton and I headed down to the parade armed with my camera to try to capture everything that was going on. It became obvious pretty fast where the parade would be coming through as people started lining the streets well in advance.

Reviewing My 2018 Goals

We’re more than halfway through the year now, can you believe it?! You probably can as that’s perhaps the most oversaid sentence around the beginning of July. As well as being the perfect moment in the year for grabbing an ice cream or acquiring a sunburn, the start of July is a great time to pause and reflect on how your life is being lived and whether this matches up to your expecations and wishes from January.

At the beginning of 2018, I wrote a post about 18 things I wanted to focus on for the year, kind of like a list of resolutions but also not really. Resolutions aren’t particuarly my thing, but I thought by having a few aspects of my life to hold in mind over the months I would find it easier to define my priorities.

Stating all the wonderful things you’re going to do is all well and good until life take over and you forget all about them three weeks later. Which is why this check in of sorts could prove useful. Throwing it right back to my school days, in which I had to identify bits of my work that went well and skills that could be improved in some way, I’m going to evaluate the good, the alright and the not so good aspects of my progress with these goals since January.

My February Bullet Journal Setup

I finally bit the bullet (bad joke, I know) and created my first ever bullet journal in January this year. As I explained in my January setup post, I had resisted creating one at first because I felt intimidated by the beautiful layouts I’d seen on Pinterest. I was overwhelmed by the intricate detail, stunning sketches and of course, gorgeous typography.

In the end I decided I didn’t actually want to create a journal for it’s appearance, but for it’s practical use as an organisational tool. Something that would help me to be more productive, keep track of certain parts of my life and reinforce good habits. That change in attitude is what eventually tipped me over into a late night session drawing out my January setup.

My Vegan Story – Veganuary

Today is an exciting day, and not just because it’s January 1st. It is also the first day of Veganuary: a global, month-long challenge for people to change their eating habits by following a vegan diet. This means that a person’s food consumption is plant-based, and doesn’t include meat, fish, dairy, eggs or honey. That can sound extremely daunting to a lot of people, because ‘what am I going to eat?!’ and ‘how can I possibly be healthy?’.

But you shouldn’t worry, many vegans now living happy and healthy lives also experienced concern when facing these questions, amongst a catalogue of others, yet still managed to make the change. And if this is something you want to do, it is totally possible and plausible, it just takes a little education, experience and support.

18 Things I Want To Do In 2018

It’s the start of 2018: a new year and therefore the month in which, due to socially constructed values, we pressure ourselves to be ‘better’ and change who we are. I don’t necessarily think this mindset is productive or conducive to becoming the people we want to be – personally, I like to take this moment to reflect on what’s happened over the past 365 days and highlight bits from that which I’d like to carry over into the next year. I don’t just do this process in January though, I like to reflect most months, it just comes to the forefront of my mind when there’s such a strong culture around doing this at the start of the year.

So I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the things I’m looking to do more of in the coming year, especially as Lucy tagged me on Twitter to do something similar to this a few days ago. Her post is more about sports and other activities she wants to do in 2018 and is well worth a read, so go and have a look over there!