Goodbye 2019, bonjour 2020!
At last, 2019 is over.
In my first blog post of 2019, I remember writing about how excited I was for a fresh new year. Well, guess what? About a month and a half in, I exclaimed ‘phew, what a year, I’m done with it!’
I guess this is why I set myself goals rather than resolutions. I know that evidently some of the goals will extend longer than a year and I will not feel the pressure of having them absolutely achieved by 31st December.
So, rather than focusing on what went wrong last year, let me tell you about goals that did work. Because it was not all that bad, 2019 did have a good ending after all.
At last, 2019 is over.
In my first blog post of 2019, I remember writing about how excited I was for a fresh new year. Well, guess what? About a month and a half in, I exclaimed ‘phew, what a year, I’m done with it!’
I guess this is why I set myself goals rather than resolutions. I know that evidently some of the goals will extend longer than a year and I will not feel the pressure of having them absolutely achieved by 31st December.
So, rather than focusing on what went wrong last year, let me tell you about goals that did work. Because it was not all that bad, 2019 did have a good ending after all.
Let’s start with the biggest goal: moving out of Dublin. If you have been following along here, you will have read that we moved to Belfast in Northern Ireland 8 months ago.
We had been considering France for a while and some possible other European countries but very unexpectedly, an opportunity to move to the beautiful city of Belfast occurred. Then, it all happened quite fast and within less than two months, we had found a place to live in, sorted out our paperwork (despite still living on the same island, we now depend on the UK system), packed up and moved.
I would normally wait for an entire year living in a new city to assess how it has been so far but I really do enjoy Belfast and what a great place it has been to live in for these past 8 months! In all our searches, Belfast would never have occurred to us as a place to move to but we are so glad we did move here.
In 2019, I continued my reading goal which I reset at the start of each year. I had aimed to read 30 books and went a bit over that. You can see on my list on Goodreads what I read last year.
I have a big list of novels I want to read at the moment. Moving to Belfast also meant easy access to a great library system. I have been able to borrow a lot of the books on my list from my local library. They even have a brilliant app where I can search a specific book by title or author and place a reservation if there is a waiting list (which I can put on hold if I am going away too).
Let me know in the comments what were your favourite books to read last year!
I had hoped to start going to Pilates again but alas, my health issues still did not allow me to. And it looks like it might not be the ideal activity for me anymore so I moved on to yoga instead. I have been following along with the Yoga With Adriene videos on Youtube which I really enjoy. Her Dedicate series was great last year and I am now planning on going along with the ‘Home - A 30 Day Yoga Journey’ series. I am not the type of person who will practice every single day so I allow myself to do it at my own pace.
This has been a good goal achievement in terms of health, both physical and mental, last year.
I had set myself a goal to blog at least once a month and I have just realised I actually even managed to post 24 times despite feeling overwhelmed most of 2019. 2020 should be rather busy so I am not sure I will manage to post that often but let’s see how it goes.
For a while now, I had been wanting to learn how to paint with watercolours. And just like many things, I kept putting it off. Until just a couple of months ago when I grabbed a few brushes, paper and an unopened box of watercolour paints hidden among other painting tools. I watched a few videos, read on techniques and got started.
And to really get into it and give myself some painting time every day, I decided to set my alarm clock an hour early. Yes, this means getting up at 6am, sitting at the table and painting straight away for a full hour (I set up everything the night before).
I won’t lie, the first few days were difficult. But once I got used to it, I really started to enjoy this quiet moment when no one else is awake, everything is dark outside and it’s just me, the French radio in the background, my brushes and paint (and sometimes the hum of the oven and smell of croissants if I have a few frozen ones to bake).
This 2019 goal is definitely one continuing into 2020 as I now have watercolour related plans that I am quite excited about.
As usual, there were other goals. Some worked, some are ongoing, and some are brand new. And some are pretty big so I look forward to seeing what 2020 is made of. Only time will tell so let’s see in one year how that worked out.
We had been considering France for a while and some possible other European countries but very unexpectedly, an opportunity to move to the beautiful city of Belfast occurred. Then, it all happened quite fast and within less than two months, we had found a place to live in, sorted out our paperwork (despite still living on the same island, we now depend on the UK system), packed up and moved.
I would normally wait for an entire year living in a new city to assess how it has been so far but I really do enjoy Belfast and what a great place it has been to live in for these past 8 months! In all our searches, Belfast would never have occurred to us as a place to move to but we are so glad we did move here.
In 2019, I continued my reading goal which I reset at the start of each year. I had aimed to read 30 books and went a bit over that. You can see on my list on Goodreads what I read last year.
I have a big list of novels I want to read at the moment. Moving to Belfast also meant easy access to a great library system. I have been able to borrow a lot of the books on my list from my local library. They even have a brilliant app where I can search a specific book by title or author and place a reservation if there is a waiting list (which I can put on hold if I am going away too).
Let me know in the comments what were your favourite books to read last year!
I had hoped to start going to Pilates again but alas, my health issues still did not allow me to. And it looks like it might not be the ideal activity for me anymore so I moved on to yoga instead. I have been following along with the Yoga With Adriene videos on Youtube which I really enjoy. Her Dedicate series was great last year and I am now planning on going along with the ‘Home - A 30 Day Yoga Journey’ series. I am not the type of person who will practice every single day so I allow myself to do it at my own pace.
This has been a good goal achievement in terms of health, both physical and mental, last year.
I had set myself a goal to blog at least once a month and I have just realised I actually even managed to post 24 times despite feeling overwhelmed most of 2019. 2020 should be rather busy so I am not sure I will manage to post that often but let’s see how it goes.
For a while now, I had been wanting to learn how to paint with watercolours. And just like many things, I kept putting it off. Until just a couple of months ago when I grabbed a few brushes, paper and an unopened box of watercolour paints hidden among other painting tools. I watched a few videos, read on techniques and got started.
And to really get into it and give myself some painting time every day, I decided to set my alarm clock an hour early. Yes, this means getting up at 6am, sitting at the table and painting straight away for a full hour (I set up everything the night before).
I won’t lie, the first few days were difficult. But once I got used to it, I really started to enjoy this quiet moment when no one else is awake, everything is dark outside and it’s just me, the French radio in the background, my brushes and paint (and sometimes the hum of the oven and smell of croissants if I have a few frozen ones to bake).
This 2019 goal is definitely one continuing into 2020 as I now have watercolour related plans that I am quite excited about.
As usual, there were other goals. Some worked, some are ongoing, and some are brand new. And some are pretty big so I look forward to seeing what 2020 is made of. Only time will tell so let’s see in one year how that worked out.
***
What about you? Are you setting goals for 2020?
Or are you setting them up as you go and time will tell if they work or not?
***
What about you? Are you setting goals for 2020?
Or are you setting them up as you go and time will tell if they work or not?
***
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