My 2021 New Year’s Resolutions // reflecting on last year and starting a digital reading journal

Happy new year!

I haven’t done one of these posts since 2018 (three years ago!?!), so I thought I would finally do one in the spirit of 2021 being a better year than 2020 🤞.

The overarching theme that I’ve set for myself this year is: I can do difficult things. It’s pretty much the same as my 2018 theme to “push myself outside of my comfort zone”, and as it silly as it sounds, it’s actually effective having something like a saying that I can remind myself of all year. (It’s better than not having anything to guide me like last year 😅.) Although my resolutions are very general and don’t appear to fall under “I can do difficult things“, it’s all cohesive in my head 😂:

one. live in the moment and do what i can in the present.

Last year, I compiled clips I had accumulated on my phone over the span of five years into a very sappy video, and one of the biggest takeaways I had by making it was that I need to live in the present more.

TWO. let go of negative feelings more easily.

Like everyone else, this year I want to feel lighter, and for me, I think most of that is going to come from making an effort to practice more positive self-talk.

THREE. reach out to people more and check up on the people i love.

Over the summer last year, an alumni from my high school wrote an extremely eye-opening article about our school that made me think more deeply about its culture. One of the things they touched upon was the student body’s poor mental health and how the school’s approach to it should go beyond telling students to seek help if they need it and blaming them when they don’t. It made me think about how awesome it is that it’s become more acceptable for people to open up about their mental health in recent years, yet actively asking people and showing genuine concern about how they’re feeling is so important because it’s still an extremely terrifying thing to express the problems you’ve only ever sat with by yourself.

FOUR. be more open.

This was one of my resolutions last year, and I think I succeeded in it in certain ways (namely by starting a youtube channel). However, I want to continue to challenge myself to be generally more honest and less guarded about what I’m thinking and feeling so that I can –

FIVE. take myself and life less seriously.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the song i think of when i think of being less serious 😂

ONE. read more intentionally.

This is another extremely broad resolution and something I’ve done incrementally more over the years, but this year I want to diversify my reading even more. Seji from The Artisan Geek made a fantastic video last year about Intentional Reading and How to Diversify Your Reading Material that helped me expand what I can consider as “diverse”.

TWO. start and keep up a digital reading journal.

“Digital reading journal” sounds pretty much like a blog 😂, but this will be a new ~feature~ that I’m going to try out this year. I was quite sporadic with blogging for the past several months for different reasons, and I’ve been trying to think of ways that I can approach consistently writing blog posts more casually.

This video from Nat at anattynook gets full credit for giving me an idea to start a digital reading journal where I will share three, key things I’ve learned from my recent reads in each journal entry, or post. While they may not be as helpful as book reviews, I’m hoping the entries will help me continue to share my reading on this blog while allowing myself to reflect on books a bit more quickly than when I write reviews 😅.

(I’ll still write book reviews though!)

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Thanks for reading this far! Happy new year again! Do you like making resolutions? General or specific 😅? What are some of your new year resolutions? Let me know 🙂.

WHERE ELSE TO FIND ME: GOODREADS / YOUTUBE / BLOGLOVIN’