I have never actually made a new year’s resolution in my life (aside from trying to con my way out of vegetables as a child – ‘no mum I can’t eat broccoli it’s my new year’s resolution’), but this year the change in the calendar seems to have coincided with a general feeling of personal evolution for me. 2015 is inevitably going to be a year of quite vast change; right now I’m half way through my final year of university meaning that, provided all goes to plan, I will be graduating this summer. I almost feel that writing this now, in January, is premature, because little will change for me in the next 5 or 6 months, but with the new year coming in one can’t help but get a bit swept up in resolutions and dramatic life change proposals and all those other rather silly things.
Anyway I digress, the main point is that 2015 will be the first year in my living memory that I won’t be in education, which is frankly terrifying. I will certainly be sad to leave university but I am looking forward to finishing my degree (I have considered post-graduate study, I think I’m going to at least have a year off first), however I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to (or even what I want to) do come the summer. This combined with being consciously aware that I am changing and evolving as a person at the moment is just the strangest feeling, and I think writing this post is a way for me to get my head around that, and to have some evidence of how I thought or hoped my year might go to look back on come the end of it. I also hope it might give some of you some ideas or inspiration, if you’re feeling a little stuck in limbo like I am! Here are my life resolutions for 2015:
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TravelI’m starting with this because it’s all I’ve been thinking about as of late. I’m not sure I’ll get the opportunity to travel until the summer (although fingers crossed a European trip around spring could be on the cards), but I just want to experience as many different places as I possibly can whilst still young and lacking in responsibilities. I was incredibly lucky with travel in 2014; in May I had a weekend in Belgium seeing Title Fight and visiting Antwerp and Brussels, I went to France (specifically Paris and Lyon) and briefly Switzerland (a day in Geneva before flying home) with my family, to Florida for Fest with my friends in October/November, and then back to Paris again at the end of November. 2014 has cemented the idea that travelling isn’t as big a deal as I had previously thought. Before visiting the US alone (I was with friends not entirely by myself, but by this I mean that I was in a position of responsibility when travelling whereas previously I had left everything to my parents) I built it up to be a much bigger and scarier thing than it really is. A long flight isn’t exactly fun, but it really isn’t that bad either, and flying alone (we all flew alone due to having other things going on both at home and in America) is actually quite pleasant. By the end of 2015 I’m hoping to have done at least one European trip and gone back to the US twice: I have rough plans to travel around it (or at least the east coast) for as long as I can afford to as soon as I finish my exams in the summer; and my friends and I will almost certainly go back to Florida in October/November for Fest as we honestly had the best time.
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Stop eating meatThis is an easy one – I have been eating ‘less’ meat for some weeks now, but as of a few days after Christmas I haven’t eaten any, and so I guess it’s an obvious thing to ‘resolve’ to continue with throughout 2015. I’ve never really made a commitment like this before, but it is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. The majority of my friends are either vegetarian or vegan, and there’s no question in my mind that they (particularly those who are vegan) are the ones who are morally in the right both with regards to animal rights and the planet in general, I’ve just never had the inclination or selflessness to make steps towards that myself. I hope I can keep this up!
- Read more for fun
Another relatively straightforward and more typical new years resolution – save for a few books read on holidays, I’ve hardly read for fun since school and that is really sad. I’d mainly like to explore more classic authors (of all kinds – novels, short stories and poetry) because I have read shamefully few. I think this one is quite achievable, and alongside it I’m going to make a conscious effort to improve my writing too (perhaps with some more posts of this nature, rather than a constant stream of ‘I like this outfit because it is nice’). -
Enjoy lifeI guess this is the big one. I think that travel is part and parcel of this and is the main means by which I intend to enjoy myself this year, but I don’t really want to ‘go travelling’ in the *gap yah* sense for months on end and so I would like to enjoy myself when at home too. Thus, I am very concerned with not spending my time fretting about what to do with my life. As you may or may not know prior to reading this post, my degree is in law, and whilst I absolutely have not written off a career in that field as it is still one that interests me deeply, I want to focus on my blog and the more fashion and writing related sphere of my interests whilst I am still mildly relevant (ha). On a side-note, I’m in the process of writing a (less feels-y, you might be pleased to hear) ‘blogging resolutions’ post in which I’ll talk more specifically about what I’m hoping to do with my blog this year! In summary, once I’ve finished university I want to spend some time learning and doing for the pure fun of it, not because I have to or because I’m working towards another goal, or because it will look good on my CV. If I can successfully balance the practical need to earn money with this in 2015, then I think I will be happy.