January 2015 Goals and December 2014 Recap

Goal time! I haven’t really decided if making New Year’s Resolutions are cliché, because let’s face it, most of us break them before the end of January anyways. Every January, I look back at my journal entry for last January to read my goals and see if I’ve met them. Most years, most of my resolutions/goals I don’t even remember making. Some goals, I kept up with there and there, and I’ve rarely ever stuck with one. So for 2015, I’ve decided to make a more general goal and throughout the year (monthly), have smaller, more manageable goals. To recap my December goals:

December goals:

• Create a blog schedule –> Created a schedule, but haven’t kept up with it. I went too big, so now I need to scale back.
• Create a blog logo/media –> Failed.
• Comment on 3 blog posts a week –> Failed, but I have been more supportive in my Tone it Up Community.
• Clean up finances –> Sort of. I know that I can’t spend anymore, except for necessities.
• Get in the habit of working out, starting with 3 times a week –> Accomplished! I have done some physical activity every day since January 1, and did pretty well in December.
• Wake up early to do Tone it Up’s (TIU) ‘booty call’ exercises, at least 2 times a week –> Failed.
• Complete the TIU Squat Challenge –> Got about 1/3 of the way through and then sort of forgot about it.
• Start eating clean, 1 meal each day, besides breakfast –> Failed again.

I made some January goals in December of 2014, assuming I’d accomplish all of my December goals, as the January goals take the December goals to the next level. I’ll keep those for later on in the year. My general goal for 2015 is to exercise regularly and eat clean.

January goals:

• Follow blog schedule
• Create a blog logo/media
• Comment on 2 blog posts a week
• Wake up early to do Tone it Up’s (TIU) ‘booty call’ [exercising first thing in the morning], at least 3 times a week
• Complete Tone it Up’s #100byVDay, Sea Shells & Sit-ups’ #tiuTumsAndGuns, Blogilates’ #30dayflatabs
• Make clean food choices
• Finish Tone It Up’s Love Your Body Series

Do you have any 2015 goals or resolutions? What are they?

Weekly Small Pleasures #2

I’m not very good at keeping up with my blog schedule…I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and probably need to scale back on some things!

• Receiving lots of snail-mail! I get such excitement when i see a handwritten letter in my mailbox 😀
• Getting to Skype with my grandparents, and then my mom on Christmas Eve.
• A 5 day weekend!
• Volunteering on Christmas Eve and making cookies for those who were working on post over the holidays.
• Making Christmas treats on Christmas Eve with my dad and sister.
• Pizza and game night with some friends at my place.
• Getting to take my sister to the airport for her two-week trip to South Africa. It definitely gave me wanderlust!!

For more info on this blog series –>Weekly Small Pleasures Blog Event.

What made you happy this week?

[Re]Hacking Creativity | Original Post

Last Thursday, the Jeremy of the Daily Post, wrote a post entitled Hacking Creativity: Simple Steps to Become More Creative. This immediately caught my eye, since the main goal of my blog is to explore my creative side. He notes that he struggled with pottery class and that he lacked ‘the creativity gene.’ I thought, “Wow, that’s me.” He goes on to say that “For longest time, we’ve assumed creativity is some kind of character trait bestowed at birth. In fact, it can actually be learned.” This crushed my hopes a bit, because I still believe that some people are innately more creative than others because for some people it just comes naturally.

Think back to when you were younger and your art project sucked and everyone else’s is awesome…but then again, that may be because I’m just grouping ‘creativity’ and ‘artistic’. My mother makes clay flower arrangements, and when I go help her at art and craft shows, people always ask if I do them. One, I don’t have the patience. Two, she likes things done a certain way, and I don’t really meet her standards. Three, I’m not good with art. (Crafts are definitely different. I can scrapbook, sew, cook, graphic design… and I help her in many other ways, selling, paperwork, taxes – things that have more of a ‘definitive’ result, so don’t think I don’t help!)Back to Jeremy – He listed four tips to help with creativity.

• Curate your surroundings – your ideas will come if you are surrounded by other people who have ideas (they don’t have to be good ideas either!).
  • Attend a WordPress meetup – I’m not going to lie, I don’t like meeting people. I’m sort of anti-social because I’m just not very good at small talk and describing myself. I attribute that to me not having any interests, but now that I’ve taken up different things, maybe that will build up my confidence and be more willing to go and meet people
  • Join an online Blogging University course – I’ve completed Blogging 101 and want to start Photography 101 when WordPress hosts it again
  • Keep inspiration nearby
  • Experiment with your environment
• Expand your bubble – this one is kind of hard for me because when I’m not interested in something, I don’t bother with it. For example, politics. I don’t really mess with them and so I kind of ignore it.
  • Read books and blogs on different topics
  • Practice free writing
  • Take a writing vacation
• Force it – Maybe I’ll force myself to expand my bubble by reading a post from different topics. We’ll see how that goes.
• Back yourself into a corner

The bottom line of this jumbled post? Right now, the best creativity ideas for me comes from using others’ inspiration. It works the best for me, right now. Probably not in the future. But hey, we all have to start somewhere.

What works for you?