Mid-Year Goals Follow Up

Hello friends!

Happy October! In our little blogging world, October brings forth a month of hectic posting, creatively dubbed “Blogtober”. Over the years, I have made an attempt to do variations on Blogtober - posting two to three times a week, or flat out using the challenge as a way to state why I won’t be joining in. This year, however, I’ve decided to just give it my all and post, post, post! Everyday for the month of October, there’s going to be a new post up on this here blog, with a weekly round-up of all posts in my newsletter. I thought I’d kickstart this Blogtober talking about GOALS because you know I love a to-do list and upon some reflection, I’ve realised that for the first time EVER, I stuck to my goals and now I’m happier for it.

Back in June, I wrote a post about mid-year goals that I thought would make my life infinitely better should I actually stick to them. Well, slap my ass and call me whatever you want, because I actually stuck to them. I set 5 goals for myself and I am still in shock from the realisation that I had inadvertently done everything on the list. Let’s break down how I did it.

Me, toasting myself for completing all of my goals without trying (ha! take that anxiety!)

1 / Decreasing Scroll Time by Reorganising my Values (and my apps)

Getting sucked into a Reddit hole or an Instagram liking trap is something I still do occasionally but nowhere near as much as I once did. The catalyst for this change was a small shift in my mindset and a large shift in how I organise my apps. I realised that in order to pull myself out of post-grad depression I needed to get out more, get more social, and figure out what actually matters to me. Figuring that out didn’t take a huge amount of time because I am truly a creature of habit and it was just about prioritising things a bit more effectively. I decided that I wanted to spend more time being social with my friends and checking in with them, I wanted to put more effort into photography and learning skills surrounding editing and processing photos, and I wanted to spend more of my down time on other hobbies. This all culminated in the ultimate app-reorganisation of the century, where I took a page out of a friend’s phone and reorganised my apps by colour.

BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE?? WHY NOT BY GENRE??? Ok LISTEN. I know you know the colour of your apps without thinking about it. Facebook? Blue. Twitter? Blue. YouTube? Red. Hell even the niche ones I know you know. Tripadviser? Green. Uber? Black. Deliveroo? Teal. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Sure it takes maybe 20 minutes of not knowing where your things are to get used to it, but I have since freed myself from the shackles of scrolling endlessly because I honestly don’t want to swipe to the blue folder to open Twitter every morning. By sheer laziness of not wanting to swipe to my folders to open an app, I no longer scroll through Facebook, my Twitter usage is down to under an hour a week, and my time spent on Reddit has plummeted.

The other big app reorganisation I did was on my “homepage”, where I used my rows for things that aligned with my values more. The top row was for things that matter most, talking to my friends (Messenger), engaging with content that I enjoy (YouTube and Reddit), and planning for the future (Pinterest). Middle row is all about photography because it’s a hobby I love and want to put more effort into. Third row is for miscellaneous apps that I use less frequently but are important. Bottom row is for games and productivity based apps for planning and down time.

2 / Be More Consistent

This goal was originally meant to help me be more consistent in all areas of my life. It worked well in some areas and not so well in others. In terms of being more consistent with my friendships, my little app reorganisation definitely helped in that respect. Since I prioritised chat apps over scroll apps, I actually ended up talking to way more people and staying consistent with keeping in contact. This lead to actually planning to visit friends more, a weekend trip to Dublin, and a full heart because I just love my friends.

Be consistent was also meant to help me stay active on the blog and for June and July I was golden. Then I went travelling and totally fell off the bandwagon. Also, my home was in absolute shambles and I couldn’t bring myself to write anything. However, being active also meant being physically active and working my little butt off at the gym and ya girl, did it. I managed to consistently go to the gym when I wasn’t travelling and it helped lift my spirits so much. Overall, I think being consistent in all areas of life was a big goal to set and I’m proud of myself for having successes in more areas than I thought.

3 / Take Care of Myself

Being more consistent helped lead my down the path of daily self-care. I started eating better, working out more, reading more, being more assertive with what I did and didn’t want to do, and it feels great. I think I knocked this goal out of the park because my physical and mental wellness of truly off the charts since June.

4 / Go Home

It’s happening. It’s actually bloody happening, but it’s a huge undertaking so I will detail this more in a future post. Just know that it. is. happening.

5 / Recognise my values and strengths

This was a bit of a wishy-washy goal and really was just meant to be a lesson in confidence. I think it’s the only goal here that is going to be a daily battle because it’s hard to constantly and consistently feel worth it especially since so much of my own worth is tied to having a steady and stable job (still working on having that), living somewhere that I thrive in (work in progress), and being in shape (personal training is kicking my ass). So far, I think having this as a goal has been a nice window to the past, to a point where I felt so low that I had to actually actively remind myself that being unemployed doesn’t define me and that there’s more to life than work.

Looking back at these goals was really interesting and eye-opening to how much has changed in the past couple of months. Especially since I was truly feeling paralysed back in June when I wrote the post. I’m glad that my overactive, goal setting self actually made the positive changes I needed to in order to get myself to the places I want to be. Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing my end-of-year goals, so stick around to see my hopes, wants, dreams, and everything in betweens before we hit 2020.

Until next time,

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