The Best Part of a New Year is Starting a Fresh Planner
Life updates, words, and general chit chat from the week
Hello, dear friends, and Happy New Year! Yes, technically today is January 2nd, but let’s be honest, January 1st is a bit of a wash after staying up until midnight. Just me?
Even though I know you can start new things any time of the year, I love the feeling of a brand new year. I get to crack open my new 2024 planner (or planners, as the case may be) and imagine what I will build my life into.
2023 was kind of a big year for me, what with the leaving my old full time job and pursuing writing thing. I’m really happy with the progress I made, but I will admit that focusing so much on my career left other aspects of my life a bit behind.
This year, I’m hoping to keep pushing for my career, but to build back in a bit more balance. More movement, more attention to eating healthy foods, and that sort of thing. Also leaving the house sometimes. That would be a good thing for me to do.
Oh, and of course, I want to make good on my promise that I’ll actually use all three of the planners I bought this year. We’ll see how that goes.
What I’ve Been Up To
Work/Writing
Other than a few bits and bobs here and there, I more or less took last week off since things were so slow. I have enjoyed leaning back and spending full days without looking at my computer screen, but I’m also excited to get back into a routine.
General Life Updates
My favorite planner sticker shop permanently closed at the end of the year, so I’ve been exploring other ways to make my planner bright and fun. I have acquired so much Washi tape.
If you’re curious about how I could possibly think I’ll actually use three planners this year, that’s valid. But I do have a system. I use a Passion Planner for general day-to-day appointments, responsibilities, etc. It’s the overall life planner. Then, I have a Writual planner to record my daily Tarot card pulls. In 2023, I stuck with both and it worked really well.
This year, I added in a spiritual/witchy planner from Goddess Provisions, which has astrological dates and things in it. I’m going to use this one as a sort of journal to track things like my symptoms and energy levels throughout the month, plus my daily gratitude lists. We’ll see how that goes, but I’m hoping I stick with it.
Current Obsessions
Movement
January brings another 30 days of Yoga with Adriene, a challenge that happens every year. I’ve been doing it since the beginning, 10 years ago now, and I always look forward to it. This year, the new series is called Flow and I am so excited to get started.
(P.S. if that sounds good, today’s actually a great day to jump in since January 1st is always Day 0, a short orientation video).
Every year, after seeing how good it feels to do yoga every day for 30 days, I promise I’m going to keep it up. But then I don’t. This year, I am trying to take on the yoga every d*mn day challenge and do 365 days where I get in at least 5 minutes of yoga a day.
Food
Since my doctor told me my cholesterol levels are a bit elevated, I’ve been paying more attention to food. I love finding new recipes, even though it can be a bit of a challenge since my husband is a bit picky when it comes to cheese and cream. Thankfully, those are assets given my current goal of getting my cholesterol levels back down.
Lately, I’ve been really enjoying two plant-based recipe creators, Plant Based RD and Plant You. They both have a great catalog of free recipes online, and I also bought the Plant You cookbook, which I adore. I make small tweaks sometimes since Andy and I aren’t actually vegan and some ingredients are fussier to find or costly, but overall I really enjoy pretty much everything I make from both of them.
Books
I spent so much of the break reading, since I didn’t have the same pressure to keep up with video games that I do when we’re going full swing. It felt so good to sit back and read, and I even managed to hit my 80 book goal for 2023, which I wasn’t sure was going to happen.
One of my 2023 intentions is to get back to reading in the mornings as a way of being more mindful and also cutting back on screentime. I really enjoyed this morning’s reading and hope to keep it up.
Words on the Web
Not much to report here, since I have been mostly taking the week off. I did do a little reflection on the year 2023 on Medium and a few year-end blog posts over at Your Book Friend, but otherwise, pretty quiet.
That’s it for this week, friends. If you’ve got any New Years goals/intentions/dreams, I’d love to hear about them. I am kind of a huge New Years nerd, if you couldn’t tell.