Tag: Resolutions

New Year, New Blog Post – 2023

Posted on by Reema

Happy New Year 2023 Image

As the bell of 2023 rings across the country, I find myself entering the new year and a sense of hope fills me. I’m not one to believe that the new year will drastically change anything for me, nor will I become a brand new person. However, I do believe in trying and the 1st of January is always a good time to forgive yourself for any mistakes made, start over and try again. Today, I am forgiving myself for the past times when I failed to do my resolutions or complete a project. Today, I am making a vow to simply try again in the hope that the coming year will be better.

Resolutions are being made by many today and whilst I am awful at sticking to them, there’s a sense of community that comes with making resolutions and actively working on bettering yourself in some capacity. They don’t work for me personally but I appreciate the concept of them. This year, instead of making specific resolutions, I am going to focus on having a Word of the Year. For the last few years, I have been focusing on surviving, coping with life and healing. This year, I want to focus on changing it from surviving to thriving. There are many ways in which I need to improve and how this could be incorporated into life. For starters, I want to actually get organised once more, working towards flourishing. As such, my Word of the Year is Flourish.

For me, that means a few things. It means to improve what I already do in a positive way, grow wherever I can and do actually succeed in places. I know there are some specific things that I need for this to happen, such as being more organised again.

How do I plan to Flourish?

1. Coming up with a few specific goals for the year (SMART goals!) or having a vision board to work towards
2. Having a planner again (something I’ve neglected recently)
3. Making time for self-care and working on forming better habits
4. Regularly being creative

5. And in addition to the above, maybe even finishing a few creative projects

To start, I wanted to create a short blog post to help keep myself accountable. After all, end and start the year as you mean to go on – right? This is how I mean to go on. I will be making these goals and getting more specific in my planner. I also want to share some exciting things that I have been working on in the coming weeks. Perhaps 2023 can be the year I flourish in blogging once more.

What about you? Do you have any Resolutions or a Word of the Year that you will be focusing on in 2023?

Goals for 2018

Posted on by Reema

Hello and welcome to the long over due post – my goals for 2018.  I know it’s already past mid-Feb and therefore we’re already over a month behind but this is actually my first post this year.  I decided to take some time out of blogging and focus on my health.  The hiatus was a little longer than I anticipated but it’s definitely been required.  However, without further ado, I wanted to jump in and start blogging again.  There’s so many exciting things that I’ve wanted to share with you.  I really missed blogging, so hopefully I can start sharing these great things with you again.

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Goals for the rest of 2017

Posted on by Reema

The last few months, in particular, have been pretty hard…  Though, in all honesty, I could easily say it’s been over a year (almost two) of difficulties.  Things that have made life challenging, for the lack of a better word.  Some of you may know about a few of the things I’ve gone through.  I imagine most people don’t.  However, this post isn’t about all of the negative things that have happened in life.  It’s about moving on – and more importantly, moving forward.  I feel like I’ve been stuck in the same place, perhaps even going backwards, in this time.  And that’s not okay.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been plenty of good moments in that time.  It’s just the bad ones are ones I never imagined could or would happen.  Recently, things have been getting better.  A lot better.  The hope that I had lost is starting to return.  The fear that I’ve been harboring is starting to fade.  It’s almost like the fire inside of me has been ignited again.  It’s not completely better, that’s for sure, but I have a lot more hope these days that things will turn out okay.  A lot of this is thanks to someone close to me.  Someone who made me realise how much I had neglected my self-care routine.  The Stationery Self-care challenge I started in September was due to him.

So, to help me get back onto my feet, I wanted to set some goals for the next two months.  These are things I aim to achieve by 2018.  Being productive helps me to feel better.

Blog related goals:
  1. Blog more often – At least 12 posts in November & during Blogmas!  I love Christmas so Blogmas sounds like a lot of fun to me.  I already have tons of ideas for it.  However, due to the issue of time, I feel like I would struggle to keep up with it.  So, as a compromise, I’ve opted to attempt to do it but I won’t be harsh on myself if I struggle.  At the end of the day, my mental health is more important.
  2. Instagram regularly – Post 3 times a week.  I have so many draft images or pictures I’ve taken to Instagram but fail to post regularly.  I would love to reach 1000 followers before the end of the year so posting regularly is definitely the first step to doing that.  If you want to help, please check out my channel and follow me!  (Incentive: I actually post discount codes there sometimes, which don’t make it to my blog or Twitter!)
  3. 2018 Project – There’s a challenge I want to set myself in 2018, so preparing for it before then will be key.  The project is a bit of a secret at the moment but it’s been hinted at a few times.  So you may be able to guess it but let’s see how it turns out!
  4. Twitter Chats – I love Twitter chats but often fail to make time for them… So this goal will be to try and participate in at least one chat a fortnight.  I know that’s not a lot but that’s one more than I’m doing every fortnight right now, no?
Sort of related goals….
  1. Christmas Cards – Make Christmas Cards to send out to friends & family!  I love handmade cards so I want to try and make more this year, enough to send them to everyone.  Perhaps include a letter with them!
  2. Stationery Self-Care – Incorporate self-care into each week and make time to have fun.  I’ll be sharing some of these things on my Instagram or Twitter, using #StationerySelfCare, please do join me if you wish to!  Find out more here.
  3. Set up 2018 Planners – Being a “planner girl” means I have so many planners.  I want to make sure that I set up the ones I plan to use in 2018 now.  This way I’m ready to start the year.
  4. New Year Resolutions – I love setting resolutions but struggle to keep them up.  This year, I want to decide on the resolutions in advance and prepare for them.  Some of them, for example, exercising regularly are ones I could start now.  Hopefully, this will help me to form a habit that will last into January and longer.  This could be art journaling!

So there you have it!  Eight goals that I hope to work on in the next two months to help make me more productive in 2018.  These goals will, hopefully, help my mental health too – especially the ones that require me to get a bit creative.

Do you have any goals for the next two months?  I would love to hear what you’re planning to do and how you get on with them!  We can keep each other accountable!

Stationery Self-Care

Posted on by Reema

Self-care is a topic that I preach all the time. It’s so important for your wellbeing to make time for yourself. However, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve neglected my own self-care in the past few months. I have spent most of my time wallowing in self-pity, for sure, at the problems I was going through. My self-care game has been pretty lacking. In all honesty, I actually only noticed this because a friend made me promise him to look after myself when he’s not around. And on reflection, I realised that he may be onto something… So, in order to keep this promise, I’ve decided to make the rest of September the time where I try to reinforce the habit. And stationery makes me happy… Thus, Stationery Self-Care!

Since stationery makes me happy (I’m an addict, okay?!), a lot of my self-care ideas actually revolve around it. There’s plenty of ideas that don’t involve stationery but… eh! I thought it might be nice to create a list of stationery related self-care ideas that I can practice in the next few weeks. I figured, if I list them all now then I can use it as inspiration on the lethargic days. Since this is a long term game, I’ll definitely be putting non-stationery self-care on the list afterwards too. For now, this is a fun way to get started!

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Mental Health Awareness Week 2017

Posted on by Reema

I don’t know about you but I’ve had an incredibly busy and stressful few weeks.  I’ve gotten to the point where I have so much to do that I don’t even know where to start.  It’s kind of hard to prioritise when at least half of your to do list is important and needs to be done immediately.  So today is the perfect time to take a moment to take about something vital: mental health.  Being stressed, overwhelmed or anxious about things can have a negative impact on your mental health.  So many people experience mental health problems – and yet we don’t talk about it enough!  Monday 8th May will mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week.  This is such a crucial topic so let’s talk about it.

I wanted to talk a little about the topic today, in advance of the week to give you time to get involved.  In particular, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve found that help me to cope.

Mental Health Awareness Week 2017 - Surviving or Thriving?

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