It was about this time last year that I made a post with my New Years resolutions for 2024. From the beginning of the post I acknowledged that I was going to fail my goals. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps. Likely though it’s just years of experience of living with myself and understanding that overall, most of us are terrible at sticking to our New Years resolutions. One little failure or setback can cause us to trip and abandon everything we’d been setting out to do.
That said, one of my goals for 2024 was to “learn to show myself grace and kindness”. I would argue that one is still a work in progress—and it has a long way to go—however, I definitely became more forgiving of myself as the year wore on.
It was a year of highs and lows, and the lows last year often left me feeling severely depleted in my energy reserves. Yet still, I made it through, and I learned more about myself as the year progressed.
By July, I’d been streaming for over a year on Twitch, which was something I hadn’t anticipated doing. Twitch was something I started as a way to make me feel like I was doing something at least vaguely productive. I’d been stuck in a severe depressive lurch, and had been doing little more than spending every moment I could playing video games. Earlier that year I’d graduated from university after studying creative writing and digital media. I felt so far down a dark hole with my creative writing projects, but figured if I started streaming it would give me the opportunity to still keep some spark alive for my love of digital media and content creation, while still playing games.
I had numerous fears starting streaming, of course. Like: I’m terrible at games and only tend to play cosy games. I knew cosy gaming was a niche on it’s own, but I also knew that my loud voice, often obnoxious laughter, and thoroughly bogan Aussie accent lacked those cute cosy vibes. I also worried because I’m “old” and overweight. It took a lot of mental effort to get started, but I did.
That I’m still streaming now was not planned, but I’m proud of myself that I am. It hasn’t been without crushing anxiety and the overwhelming sense that I’m a failure and terrible at streaming—but I’m proud of myself for still showing up. It’s given me the opportunity to forge friendships and connections with others I otherwise wouldn’t have had.
In it’s own way it has felt like taking control of a situation that wasn’t good and forcing myself to do the work to make this negative something more positive.
New year, no goals, only vision and action
I decided that for 2025 I don’t want to worry about “new years resolutions” at all. Instead, I created a vision board on Pinterest and spent some time breaking things down into bite-sized action tasks. I’ll get through each of them when I do, but it feels so much more productive than simply throwing ideas out there of what I want to achieve, and putting the limitation of “this year” on it. I know some days are higher energy days than others, so some days will be more productive than others. There will also be unforeseen challenges and barriers. Beating myself up mentally on those lower days isn’t going to help anyone—least of all me.
Oh! Wait! I do have one goal … again though, it’s something I’ve broken down into smaller chunks. Last year, this avid reader only completed one book (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring). So for 2025, it’s my goal to read at least one book a month. My book for January is The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon. It was originally my absolute favourite Reylo (Star Wars) fanfiction and I loved her writing style for that, so I’m hoping it’s going to be good!
I’ll keep you all posted on how this new plan plays out for me!
Anyway, I wanted to come here and wish all of you a belated Happy New Year! I hope your 2025 is full of creativity, adventures, fun, meaningful connections with others, and everything else your heart desires!
We’ve got this!
xx
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