In My Life,  Lifestyle,  Thoughts & Inspiration

2017 Goals & Looking Back on 2016

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Happy New Year!I hope you had a lovely and safe night ringing in 2017 – I kissed my dog at midnight 🙂 This probably won’t feel like a typical post on my blog…but I’m feeling particularly introspective today haha

I haven’t always been the type to make annual New Years’ resolutions. I sometimes feel like I shouldn’t need a new year to make changes in my life, but it seems like as good of an excuse as any to do so. For the past two years now, I have made a list of things that I hope will happen in the coming year. Then I keep it in a safe place to look back on at the end of the year. It’s by no means an original or new idea, but I like having a physical list to read over and think about the things I have accomplished (or what I was too optimistic about accomplishing!)

Lots of people are saying that 2016 was a horrible year, and it was very difficult in many ways for me too. Medical issues, work drama, politics, celebrity deaths (I watched Singin in the Rain and cried my eyes out last week), family stress, financial stress, stress about being stressed…I had an immense amount of anxiety about different things over the year and it wasn’t fun. Sometimes it felt like just when something good would happen, 25 bad things would happen and they just all piled on top of the other. I would wake up in the morning feeling anxious and go to sleep still worried about everything.

But I think it’s unfair to say that 2016 was the worst year ever or anything like that. I’m still alive and I still have a ton of great people who care about me. I still have a job and a cute apartment and a roommate and a fiance and a puppy to come home to every day. In some ways, 2016 was also an amazing year for me – I went to Disneyland for the first time, visited my siblings in Seattle, got a puppy, moved into a beautiful new home, GOT ENGAGED (!!!!)…..how can I look back on this year and ignore all these amazing things that happened by focusing on the negatives?

As we leave 2016 I’m trying to remember the good things that happened, rather than the bad. I will never forget how happy I was the day Chris proposed to me, or when I met Teddy for the first time. I don’t want to look back on this year and remember the things that made me upset (and believe me, there were a lot of those things). And I think that mindset as a whole is something I want to focus on in 2017.

I think my big goal for this year is going to be to worry less. I get so much anxiety about everything…even things that I don’t have any reason to be worried about. I’ve worked a lot this year on getting less worked up about things, but it can still be difficult to keep my focus when lots of negative things are happening at once.

Other things I want to do in 2017, in no particular order:

  • spend less money on makeup – I’m working on a plan for just how I’m going to do this, but I spent SO much this year and don’t wanna do that again in 2017!
  • keep up with my blog and instagram
  • maintain a cute and well-decorated home
  • plan our wedding (!!!) and stay on track with the planning goals I’ve made
  • eat healthier and make more meals at home, which should be easier to do in our beautiful fresh new kitchen!
  • take a weekend trip somewhere, maybe for my birthday? we can’t do a big vacation like Disneyland again this year because we’re saving for the wedding, but I’d still like to do something small
  • worry less about things that don’t matter, and cherish more the things that do.
  • maintain relationships and make plans with more people in smaller groups – I feel like I have a lot of friends that we hang out with in large groups more often than individually, and while it’s fun to be with lots of friends at once, it feels less personal sometimes. I want to focus on maintaining individual relationships with our friends rather than only ever seeing them in a group setting.
  • take steps to move forward in my career, whether it’s in my current role or moving somewhere else
  • be an amazing dog mom to Teddy!

I’m sure not all of those will happen, but I can be hopeful! some things on my list from last year that happened were actually some of the most major things in my life this year – get a dog, go to Disneyland, get engaged…kind of funny that the big things were the ones that I actually was able to do haha. And I’m sure that 2017 won’t be without its share of difficult things too. But instead of focusing on that, I’ll keep my mind on worrying less and savoring the positive moments more. Perhaps I’ll even blog about a few of them 🙂

Hope you had a wonderful New Years celebration and that we all can make use of the fresh start we’re getting in 2017. I’m sure it’s going to be a great year! and I hope my wordy introspective post with few pictures didn’t bore you too much haha. until the next one,

xo – Kaela

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