Learning from this year’s resolutions (and making next year’s even better!)

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I can’t believe December is already half way gone! From August onward, it feels like time sped up like crazy. And with the end of the year right around the corner, we all start thinking about resolutions for next year. There’s a post here on the blog on how to write resolutions you’ll really keep. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out!

But before thinking about next year’s resolutions, it’s important to remember the ones I chose for this year. It’s an interesting process to see the progress I’ve made and also to identify what I’d change for next year (be that the regarding the resolutions themselves or the process I created to keep track of them).

This is the list of questions I’m following to check in with my resolutions for this year. Do you remember yours? If you do, how about going through this list with me?

What were your resolutions this year?

I think I got a little carried away and chose too many! But three of my resolutions for this year were:

• Becoming more confident in front of the camera and exploring photography and self-portraiture;
• Posting consistently on the blog and Instagram;
• Reading 12 books.

What’s the current status of each resolution?

How much progress was made on each one? Well, this is when it’s really important to be honest with yourself, so here we go:

• Becoming more confident in front of the camera and exploring photography and self-portraiture
  • Out of all my resolutions, this is the one I’ve progressed the most in! I’m so lucky to travel the world for world, but since I travel alone I always have to take my own photos. It took a while to start making progress on this resolution, especially since I only bought my camera (a Sony a6300) in March, and really only started playing around with self-portraiture in August. But ever since then I’ve tried taking photos of myself everywhere! I confess it still feels weird to have people watching me while I set up my tripod, camera, and pose, but the final result is so worth it. I keep imagining: in 20, 30 years, I’ll be way happier having all of these amazing shots than if I had succumbed to my shyness and not taken them. But it’s interesting to note that I haven’t posted a lot of photos of myself on the blog’s Instagram—I guess I’m still a little shy in posting!
• Posting consistently on the blog and Instagram
  • I confess I’m still trying to figure out the ideal way to post consistently, both on the blog and on Instagram. I go through phases where I’ll post religiously, once a week on the blog and every day on the ‘gram, and then it feels like I hit a wall and won’t post for a while. On the one hand, I enjoy being able to give myself the flexibility to hit pause every once in a while, but next year I want to continue prioritizing the blog and create a more consistent prep routine. I have list with a thousand posts in each category to write! I need to carve out more time to plan content ahead of time to cover for periods when life gets really busy. In a perfect world, I’d use the holidays for that, but since we’re driving to Texas to see our family, I doubt I’ll have that much time!
• Reading 12 books
  • A bit of an arbitrary number, but I wanted to read at least one book a month. By my count, I’ve read nine books this year. I just started the 10th. I doubt I’ll finish this one and read two more after that before the end of the year… At the moment, I’m reading “The Value of Everything” by Mariana Mazzucato. It’s a fascinating read about the creation and extraction of value in the global economy. My larger goal with this resolution was to make more time for reading, and that I’ve definitely done!

What method did you choose to keep track of your resolutions?

I chose to write my resolutions down (both on a note on my phone and on a piece of paper) so I wouldn’t forget them. My first resolution was the most abstract, so the only concrete measurement of progress were the photos I’ve taken on my latest trips. The second is much easier to see: by the number and consistency of my posts on the blog and on Instagram. For the third, I should have done a better job writing down all the books I read, but at least I have a borrowing history on the Libby app and a list of books my book club read this year.

What would you change about your resolutions and/or the way you kept track of them?

Even though I wrote my resolutions down, the keeping track part was done entirely in my head. I wish I had taken more notes, and spent more time reflecting about them throughout the year. This is one of my goals for next year! Scheduling a resolution check in every three months to go over my progress.

Now that you know how the year unfolded, are your resolutions still relevant? Do they encourage you to grow as a person?

Absolutely! My resolutions were incredibly relevant, and several of them were part of a larger objective. None of them were so big or abstract that they weren’t measurable; and none of them was so small it didn’t have a positive impact.

Is it worth creating a version 2.0 of any of your resolutions to continue growing, or does it make more sense to create new ones?

The temptation to start fresh is so strong! But I’ve been reflecting on mine, and think that for some it’s better to adapt instead of starting from scratch.

What were your resolutions for this year, and how are they going? What other questions are you asking yourself to measure your progress? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Stay curious,

Nati