rosie abigail

We are back baby! Back with a New Year, and back with some more No Year’s Resolutions.

Personally, I hate the framing of ~resolutions~ – something that you only resolve to do once the new year starts, and these tend to be tasks with a short lifespan. I’m talking crash diets, immense workout schedules, unreachable reading goals. So many of these resolutions come with inbuilt toxicity (here’s looking at you, ‘super quick’ weight loss), that I just don’t want to associate myself with them. 

But I do, however, want to achieve my goals. I want to go out there, use the momentum of a new year to continue building towards them, and become the badass, best version of myself that I know I can be. So I created the idea of No Year’s Resolutions to check in with myself, check in with my goals, and see how they’ve adapted for this year. I don’t have to achieve these outright, but it allows me to set the intention and start. Shall we dive into my 2023 No Year’s Resolutions? Let’s!

Solo Travel

Start therapy

I’ve been tiptoeing around this ever since I was put on anti-depressants seven years ago. When I was first diagnosed with various mental health struggles, it was urgent that I got quick support, so medication was the correct route. But now, after years of changing circumstances, as well as personal development, just being on just medication isn’t right. I need to develop coping mechanisms, delve into my triggers, and have techniques that go alongside the medication. I’m not making it my goal to get off antidepressants this year, or maybe ever. I just want to explore other ways of managing my anxiety and depression. So, let’s finally book some therapy.

DIY my kitchen

Less of a personal goal and more of a home goal, but my goodness I need to DIY my kitchen. We bought a project house in 2021 and it was filthy. And I mean that. After cleaning everything from top to bottom (including the fridge that had been left there for eight weeks, unplugged, full of food) we’ve been left with the bones of a structurally sound Victorian house. We’ve even renovated a few of the rooms already and it is really starting to spark joy! But the kitchen? That sparks despair. 

The floor is peeling, the paintwork is beyond chipped, and the wallpaper is deciding it would rather fall off than stay in this kitchen. What was once painted white is now a horrible gone-off colour. A full kitchen renovation isn’t on the cards. Who has ten grand stored away in this climate? But I do have leftover paint, wood-working skills, and a Pinterest board full of inspiration to make this kitchen my happy place. 

Make fitness part of my routine

So I am going to make time to workout. I won’t be blasting it in the gym or running five kilometres every day. But I will be tuning into Yoga With Adriene or EMKFit a few times a week. Trying a swimming class. Taking myself and a podcast for a jog. Just as long as I do something a handful of times a week, I know this will be a positive change. 

Get off birth control

I am approaching eight years of my life on some kind of birth control. This is no bad thing – I mean, I’m not pregnant yet! But since then, I’ve been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, and I no longer know how my body naturally works. If I want to learn more about my body on PCOS, it’s time to give my body a break. Also, my husband and I are approaching the time where we would like to consider starting a family (any family reading this, please drop the party poppers, this is not happening soon). I’d simply just like to know if my fertility is in check, but it’s hard to know with both PCOS and birth control! So I’m going to say farewell to the implant and hello to painful periods once again. 

Make blogging my part-time job

This is probably the biggest goal on this list in terms of practicality. However, I am going to quote Self-Esteem here and say “all the days that you get to have are big” which does help when I think of this goal. Back in October, I secured my first paid blogger/content creator campaign. I loved creating content for this campaign – mind mapping ideas, looking at briefs, challenging myself creatively. There came a moment when I was looking at the brief and seeing how I could align it with my own ethos as a creator, when I felt a shot of lightning up my spine. This came with a whisper in my head of “you could do this you know, as a career”. Now I’m not going to drop everything, let the mortgage payments on my house slide, and suddenly invest in a co-working space. But I’m not going to shy away from the work that comes with trying to make something of this writing malarkey, and trying to make the world all that more positive.

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So, those are my No Year’s Resolutions for 2023 – a series of goals and things I will achieve this year. If you are someone out there, like me, who struggles with the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, let this be a sign that it’s okay to do things your way! Bin the diets and short-term wins, aim for the life you want in the long-term. 

Tell me, what are your No Year’s Resolutions for 2023? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Rosie x

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