How is it the 12th of December already?! We are halfway into Blogmas and I still don’t feel very festive! I am in a lot of pain today but I’m super pleased with myself for getting halfway through the challenge. Whilst this post isn’t very stationery related, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts today.
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.
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!
I cannot contain my excitement right now. Going self-hosted is something I have wanted to do since I first started blogging. In fact, I even brought this URL almost a year ago. However, the original web host I used caused me endless problems and I struggled to see my dream turn into reality. So I’m incredibly please to say that this right here is the very first blog post to go live on my brand spanking new domain: www.aumsome.co.uk. And with a new domain you also need a new layout and design, right? Let me know what you think of the new look!
I think it’s only apt that I start with a massive shoutout to thank a company that I don’t think I could have done this without – JollyLeaf. They are an amazing UK based web hosting company that’s incredibly affordable and just outright awesome! Frank from JollyLeaf replied to all of my long emails – which were full of stupid questions – with a lot of patience. He made the entire progress to move from wordpress to a self-hosted domain easy, without making me feel stupid at all. I was so fed up with my old host that I almost gave up with the whole thing but he helped make the transition a whole lot nicer and easier. And most importantly, he helped make it happen – which is not something I thought would happen a few months ago. So I cannot recommend them enough if you are thinking about going self-hosted, they are amazing.
But they aren’t the only ones who’ve supported me in this journey. I also cannot thank all of you enough. To each and every single person who has supported me in my blogging journey – from everyone who silently reads the posts to the amazing commenters to those who I talk to on social media to businesses I’ve had the pleasure of working with to once strangers who’ve become friends… All of you make me love what I do – and I can’t even begin to try and convey how excited I am. My fingers are literally trembling with excitement as they hit the keyboard right now… Thank you, for being you.
To thank all of you properly, I am super excited to announce that I’ll be holding several giveaways throughout the month. All of the giveaways will be stationery or planning related but I won’t tell you too much about them right now, as I am currently finalising them. I am hoping there will be at least four different prizes to win – which is four chances to win! And each prize will be a little stationery or planner “bundle” to get you started and allow you to use your prize straight away. A few of the prizes have been donated by some amazing people or businesses – which just emphasises how much support I get and I’m grateful for every single bit of it. That’s all I’ll say about that right now but watch this space. Be sure to sign up to the newsletter so I can let you know when the giveaways are open as they won’t be open for long!
My email account is up and running once more too. Drop me an email to hello@aumsome.co.uk – I would love to hear from you, even if it’s just to chat! I would love to know what you think about the new layout of the blog. If you have any suggestions for the layout or find any old links, please let me know! I’ll also be happy to hear any suggestions you have for prizes for the giveaways, I am currently on the look out for more!
Oh wow, I’ve missed blogging. I just don’t feel the same when I’m not able to call myself a blogger – so what better day to relaunch my blog than my birthday? It’s been a hectic few months – what with volunteering abroad for 2.5 months, the run up to Christmas and my travel plans for NYE – and I came back to find that I couldn’t access any of my 32 WordPress drafts! (Yes 32… I don’t even know why I have so many. They may need a little bit of a clear out, to be quite honest). For some reason, none of the drafts seemed to appear – which caused a little state of panic in me. I thought I had lost all of my drafts – which was only made worse by the fact that my phone randomly died in October! After losing all of my photos and data, I’m a little weary of technology failing me. Has this taught me to back up things? No. But that’s another story entirely.
What I wanted to do was quickly update you all and just get back into blogging, now that I have figured how to finally get my drafts to reappear. And what better time to get back into blogging than the new year, on my birthday? Because a birthday is like another year – instead of saying “I will achieve this in 2017”, you could easily use your birthdays to say “I will achieve this at the age of 26”. I know that January will be fairly busy for me as I have just returned from Bali and have to catch up with all I missed from Christmas, especially all of the work that’s mounted up at the office for me. So it may be unrealistic to even pretend that I’ll start blogging regularly straight away. However, that is definitely a goal for 2017 – something I am determined to stick to, as I absolutely adore blogging and I miss it every time I stop. There are a lot of ideas that I have, perhaps too many, which will take way too much time to complete and it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by that – which I believe is a reason for my inconsistency in the past. That is something I am trying to work on and my plan is simple. It’s literally just to start doing it by taking one step at a time.
Speaking of goals, I feel like that is a very apt topic for this time of the year. Everyone’s been busy preparing for Christmas and the start of 2017, which brings us to resolutions. I normally don’t set resolutions as I don’t think you should wait until the new year to do something you want to do. If you think you should stop smoking or lose weight, there’s no better time than right now, right this minute to make that decision. You don’t have to wait until the 1st January to do that. I also don’t like that most resolutions are broken faster than they are set. I know plenty of people who talk about how they’ve broken their resolutions – some within weeks but others within only hours or days. Yet not many people who talk about how they’ve managed to keep it.
All that being said, I love the idea that everyone sets resolutions together and attempts to achieve them together. Whatever your resolution is, having someone keeping you accountable can certainly help you to feel more motivated to do it. So although we shouldn’t wait for the new year to make the changes we want to make, we can definitely take advantage of the opportunity when it arises and set our resolutions!
I haven’t really thought of specific resolutions yet – I’ve only just decided that I should set some and make changes that will help me to achieve my goals. For a while, I have been aiming to do one thing: to simply be the best me I can be. This involves improving myself wherever I think I need to – from changing bad habits to developing my skills. This is definitely a goal that anyone could have. What it means for you depends solely on yourself. To help me to become the best version of myself, it’s important to sit down and have a think about what I want to improve or change. This is where the specific resolutions come in. They’ll be some of the things that I want to change or improve upon – so, it’s now time to start thinking what they could be!
Whilst I think of mine, I’d love to know what are your resolutions?
![On Holiday [India]](http://www.aumsome.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/on-holiday-india.jpg?w=300)
Hello! It’s been a while since I last checked in so I wanted to quickly pop in to update you all. In fact, it’s been a while since I got some time to myself at all. It’s been a busy few weeks as I finished up at work whilst doing a huge spring clean of my house. I also had to make time to as prepare for a long trip abroad. If you follow my Instagram, you may already know this… However, for those that don’t, I am currently writing to you from India.
I am really excited about this trip because it’s far longer than my usual travels. Instead of briefly visiting a country for a long weekend break or a week or two, I have the opportunity to stay in India for 75 days. Yes, 75 whole days… Aka two and a half months. During this time, I will be volunteering at a charity I used to fundraise for and donate to (which is really exciting as I get to see where the money has gone and see firsthand what the charity does) and I’ll also be able to spend time with my relatives that live over here. I’ve just spent a few days at the charity and have been introduced to a few of the projects they do. They do amazing work – I may have to share some of it with you after I’ve gotten to experience it more. This is something that I have not had the chance to do before so I’m really excited to have such an opportunity. There’s no doubt that this will be a busy holiday for me, rather than a relaxing one but that’s how you truly discover a country and feel satisfied right? Plus I prefer it this way as I get bored easily if there’s nothing to do. Of course, I will try to stay on top of the blogging too. I have tons of amazing things to share with you, including some product reviews, new card designs and a travel related collaboration that’s coming up soon. I am hoping to stumble across a few stationery stores whilst I’m in India and find some treasures to add to my collection too. The biggest hindrance to my blog activity, however, will be access to the Internet, as I’m pretty dependent on that!
The internet is iffy here, to say the least, which has prevented me from posting sooner than now… Furthermore, I have been travelling around to different houses or cities as I visit different people in the area, which has definitely not helped with internet access. Being out and about has meant my blog has, unfortunately, had to take a little bit of a backseat during this time. This should settle down over the next few days, giving me a little bit of a structure to plan my weeks in advance… Hopefully. That’s the plan, at least!
So I just wanted to quickly check in to update you all about the irregular activity recently and warn you that I might not be able to get a post up weekly, as I usually aim to do. Let’s see how this works out…
For now, this is Reema over and out. See you soon!
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