Hello, lovelies! Happy New Year! I can’t believe it’s already 2021. Normally, I’m more on top of my end-of/beginning-of the year posts when I’m not traveling, but last year was a lot. I’m surprised that I blogged anything at all, but I managed to write something every month. January will definitely be spent posting my annual posts like this goals post and my “Top 10 books” post, so I hope you enjoy those. I know I love reading that type of content. After that, I have some fun and different blog posts planned for the year, so I hope you stick around.
Like last year, my first three goals are my “main goals” for the year, while the rest are more subjective intentions or habits.
1.//Get A Job In My Field
Last year was a blessing in disguise in this regard because it forced me to rest after graduating college. Now, I’m just ready to start my career. This is an even scarier prospect than before because the pandemic is a lot worse. I may end up working in a clinic or hospital setting, and that’s not the safest place to be right now. I’m hopeful that it will go okay. I don’t plan on getting a “real job” immediately, but I would like to start a career in my field by the end of the year. Ideally by this summer. I probably won’t get a vaccine before I start applying. I know that should, but I want to start applying sooner rather than later.
2.//Get Financial Life Together
There are a lot of specifics to this goal that I won’t be sharing here. Most of my mini-goals for this are about paying off my relatively small amount of student loans, saving for retirement, investing, etc. Most of this I’ll do once I start a new job, but there are some things I can do now with my current online job. I lived off of my savings for a good chunk of 2020, so I want to build that up again.
3.//Move Out
I wasn’t really sure about moving out in 2021 because the majority of my post-grad goals shifted forward due to the pandemic. I originally wanted to work for a year to save more money before moving out, but on my birthday, I realized that I don’t want to do this for another two years. I’m very lucky that my parents want me to live with them, but I’m ready live on my own. I don’t want to do the typical brown girl things and live at home until I’m married, especially since I don’t want to get married anytime soon. This of course depends on my finances and when I start my career, but it is feasible for me to move out by the end of this year depending on how things go.
4.//Follow A Workout Schedule
I’ve been working out at home consistently since last summer, and it’s been going great. I want to start adding a bit more structure to my workout routine because I’ve mainly been doing dance workouts 5-days a week with some weightlifting. I want to add more to that. Here’s my goal:
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- Upper body twice a week – arms, back, chest, etc.
- Lower body twice a week – legs, butt, waste, etc.
- Ab workouts 2-3 times a week
- Dance 3-5 days a week – This is the workout I enjoy the most, so doing this every day will help me stay consistent with exercise.
- 2 Rest Days – Taking rest days is important for recovery. My rest days are usually Sundays and Wednesdays depending on the intensity of my workouts.
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This goal gives me the flexibility I need when it comes to my working out, while still improving upon the workout routine I already have. I’ll mix and match however I feel each week. As long as I’m doing 30-60 minutes of exercise each day, I’ll be happy. This is the only habit I’ve consistently kept up with in quarantine, so I’m not concerned about frequency. Just the structure. I’ll continue working out using YouTube videos, but we also have a bench press and a Ring Fit now for the Nintendo Switch, so there are ways to mix my workouts up.
Related – How I Learned To Enjoy Working Out At Home
5.//Enjoy Blogging Again
To be clear, I don’t want to stop blogging. I genuinely have fun doing this. It’s a great hobby, but I honestly don’t know why y’all are still here. My content was all over the place last year because life was all over the place, but engagement went up. Pageviews were down a bit because I wasn’t writing as many self-development posts, but people kept reading.
And while I do enjoy ranting about the state of the world (despite holding back like 80%), I want to have fun writing again. Having life updates to reread in the future is great because this blog is essentially a public diary, but I want to go back to writing evergreen content because it’s fun. I also want to write more intentional discussions and write about nerdy things in more detail. I don’t particularly enjoy writing travel blog posts because I think, “Who am I to write about this topic?” but I enjoy reading those blog posts so I’m sure people will enjoy if I write about that (even though I do not condone travelling right now).
I’m not holding myself to a schedule because no matter how many times I try, I cannot follow one consistently. I know myself. I’ll try to post something once a week, but it won’t be on the same day every week.
6.//Take A Trip With My Friends
I doubt I’ll be able to travel internationally by the end of this year even if I get the vaccine because my American passport is useless now and I have other financial goals. That’s why I didn’t set a big travel goal like I have in previous years.
My best friends and I have been very on top of social distancing and wearing masks when we meet up. Honestly, the closest we’ve gotten to each other has been for 10-seconds at a time to take some pictures, and even then we wear masks. I’m glad that we’ve been so on top of this because I don’t have to worry about infecting my family the few times I’ve spent time with friends, but I miss hugging them. I would love it if we could all get tested before renting a cabin or something for a weekend for a relaxing trip. We’d just cook, play board games, and hang out. That just sounds perfect right now. I don’t know if this is going to happen because my friends and I are terrible at planning logistics. We also talk about how we’re wusses and not outside people, so it may take some convincing to get everyone on board. It also depends on finances and such.
This is a pretty tentative goal compared to my other ones because there are so many factors. After getting the vaccine, I may take a trip at the end of the year on my own, but everything is up in the air. I’m not making solid plans in regards to travel and there are other financial goals I want to focus on.
7.//Have A Better Reading Year
Last year was a pretty lukewarm reading year. I read 71 books, which is amazing, but I didn’t love most of the books I read. Many my five-star reads were due to the prose rather than how I felt about the novels. There are a bunch of reasons for this, the main one being that we were in a worldwide pandemic and I only wanted to read “light” books. I typically lean towards books about racism, war, abuse, etc. I love reading really sad historical fiction, dystopian books, and diverse contemporaries. It’s just what I prefer and you’ll notice that in my favorite books of 2020 post.
I spent a lot of time this year reading middle grade books, contemporary romances, rereading old favorites, etc. Honestly, a highlight of my quarantine was rereading Harry Potter until JKR made me feel guilty about reading Harry Potter. It wasn’t until the end of the year when I began loving the books I was reading again because I was finally in the mood to read my favorite genres.
This is a very subjective goal. I’ll know if I’m completing this goal based on how I feel, but I’m going to write some things out to make this more measurable. I’ve set some quantitative goals for my favorite genres.
- Read 12 Science Fiction Novels – This is my favorite genre, but I don’t read enough of it. I know technically dystopian and sci-fi/fantasy count for this, but I want at least half of the books to be “high” science fiction. I want to read more books about aliens, robots, cyborgs, genetic mutations, other planets, epic space odysseys, and what humans are gonna do when we eventually fuck up the planet. I love those types of books, but I rarely pick them up because most of my peers don’t read or recommend them to me.
- Read 10 Contemporary Novels – These are fun and quick reads for me. Most LGBTQ+ and diverse books are contemporary now-a-days and I really enjoy them even if they don’t make my favorites list. It’s also a cool way to see the different ways people experience life now.
- Read 6 Historical Fiction – I love this genre, but I have to be in a very specific mood to read it because it makes me sad. It’s very difficult to find historical fiction books that are happy. I’ve loved the ones I’ve found, but a lot of them are understandably depressing. Most of them are also about World War II, so I have to really search to find historical fiction that aren’t romances about other time periods. I’ve made a list of some to read this year that I’m excited about.
- Read 6 Classics – I’ve talked before about my love of classics. I’m not going to make a list like I did the last two years. I’m just going to read the ones on the original lists that I haven’t read yet, along with any others I feel I’m in the mood for.
- Read 6 Graphic Novels or Comic Book Volumes – Many new graphic novels have come out in the past few years, and I want to continue reading them. I’ve also loved comic books since I was a kid and I can easily access them on my phone.
- Read 5 Series – I mainly read stand-alones last year. I miss becoming really invested in a world and characters. I read the first book to a few series last year, but I didn’t like them enough to continue. For this goal, I don’t need to finish the whole series. I just need to finish at least two books in each series. This means I won’t count any finales or companion books to series I’ve already read if there’s only one book left (i.e. Ready Player 2, Midnight Sun, A Sky Beyond The Storm, etc.)
- Read 3 Thrillers & 2 Horror Novels – These are just two genres I’d like to get into. I’ve steered away from horror most of my life, but after reading Carrie by Stephen King and Coraline by Neil Gaiman, I think I could get into it.
- Read 2 High Fantasy/Adult Fantasy – Fantasy is my least favorite genre, specifically YA fantasy, because it contains a lot of tropes I don’t like (unhealthy/abusive relationships, bringing dead people back to life, deus ex machina situations that mess with the magic system, etc). I’m sure I’ll still read some this year because I don’t want to write genre off entirely considering my friends keep recommending them to me, but I would like to try some more advanced fantasy novels to see if I like them. Adult fantasy tends to be very long (Like 1,000+ pages long), so my goal for this year is two.
- Read 15 Books That Take Place In Another Country – This could work for any genre as long as the book doesn’t take place in the U.S. I love reading books that take place in other countries because it shows a completely different perspective. It would be cool to read a book that takes place on every continent, but I’m not going to focus on that. I’ve read over 50 books for the past several years, so fifteen books is definitely doable.
I know this looks like a lot, but this is fairly doable for me because a lot of the prompts cross over. Obviously, I’m going to read other genres like middle grade, romance, general fiction, etc. but I want to focus on my favorite genres this year while still mixing it up a little. I’ll give a mid-year update in June on how I’m doing on these numbers, but you’ll see what I’m reading in my monthly wrap-ups. I’m already really excited about this year reading-wise. I asked my friends to get me a 6-month Scribd account for my birthday because I’ve listened to most of the audiobooks I’m interested in from my library, so that should be fun.
8.//Do Something Creative Everyday
When I was writing out my ideas for 2021 back when I was setting my goals in November, creative activities came up over and over again: painting, drawing, writing, singing, photography, etc. Things like that just kept popping up. I wanted this year to be filled with creativity and I wanted to have fun with it. No one has to see it. I just wanted to do it.
Instead of keeping it too general, I decided to turn it into 30-day challenges. This was inspired by one of my friends who did self-discipline challenges every month in 2020 (i.e. no sugar for 30-days, cold showers for 30-days, etc.). I’m going to be a lot more flexible with this. I prefer doing everything in moderation. If I skip a day, I don’t think about it. This will more likely be a “25-out-of-30”-day challenge. Each month, I’m going to focus on a different creative endeavor, whether that’s learn a choreographed dance or 2,000 words of creative writing each day. This will just be a fun way to hone in on my creative skills.
I’ll share what creative skill I’m focused on each month in my monthly goals.
Well, that’s it for now! Let me know what some of your New Years Goals are if you decided to set any. Until next time! 😀
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What are some of your goals for 2021?