Archives for January 2014

Happy new year! I hope everyone’s had a good holiday season – I’m enjoying my time off and haven’t eaten too many boxes of chocolates. (Roast dinners, however, are a totally different thing). I’m quite glad to see an end to 2013 – it didn’t feel like a very good year for many of us, but hopefully, things are lookup up for all of us!

Blogging is brilliant at keeping you accountable – I’ve blogged my new years resolutions for the past five years (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009) – it’s a lot easier to remind yourself of them on a blog than if you write them in a random notebook or diary somewhere.

So how did I do with last years resolutions?

• SIDE PROJECTS DAMN IT – heh. So when I wrote that resolution, I was in the middle of writing an eBook about blogging. I thought that it would be a case of writing everything I know down, putting it on Amazon, and sitting back with a brew, waiting for the money to roll in. I knew that I wanted to keep it updated, and I still do want to update it on a fairly regular basis, but I realised that a website would be a much better way to keep bloggers updated – so in May, I launched Bonjour, Blogger! I’ve really loved working on that site, even when I feel exhausted by it all!
• Read less blogs – I did so well at this at first! I took the opportunity of Google Reader dying (I’m still sad about that, you know.) to clear out the blogs I couldn’t bear for whatever reasons, but with the Saturday Summary feature on Bonjour, Blogger!, I needed to read more blogs, and my Bloglovin’ has crept back up. I am a lot less likely to stay subscribed to blogs I skip over or get annoyed at, so a partial win.
• Socialising – I don’t feel like I’ve seen more bloggers this year, but I’ve seen the same ones more often – and I love that!
• Exercise – In June, I started having some pretty ridiculous issues with my back, and exercising has fallen to the wayside – but let’s not pretend I was doing so well before that. Moving away from my gym and getting equipment at home meant I am less motivated to get on with it. Sigh.
• Finding Joy – I have been awful at this one. (Sorry Mia!) It’s been difficult to find the joy for most of this year, but I want to do better!

And for 2014?

• To become more confident when talking about myself – and by extension, Bonjour, Blogger!. I find myself shuffling my feet and looking down (metaphorically) when people ask about BB. I need to talk it up more!
• To hold a few blogger events – plans are afoot for this already, but I’m hoping to do something at least every other month! Ambitious? Probably.
• To do some public speaking – Working in accounts, you don’t get to see the outside world very much. On the rare occasions that I have needed to talk to a large group, I find I end up mumbling into the microphone and babbling. Need to get better at this – and I guess practice is the only way!
• Exercise! – not just getting on the cross trainer, or cycling, but walking more (especially with the dogs!). I have managed to maintain my weight loss from last year, but there’s still a way to go to my original goal.
• To not abandon ceriselle.org so much! – I’m so sorry, little website. I feel so bad that I’ve abandoned you for the new shiny site over there.
• To organise my finances better – The original version of this resolution said to use my Xero account more to classify my outgoings, but they just sent me a message saying the personal feature is shutting down the year, annoyingly! Any recommendations of some thing similar for a personal user that will bring in all transactions automatically?

If you see me not doing any of these, do poke me!