Hey hey, it’s MJ, 

            Welcome to 2021, it’s finally here but it feels no different from 2020, yet. We are only a few days in so who knows what this year holds for all of us. I am hoping for happiness and prosperity for everyone, an end to the pandemic, and you know just general peace on year, treat everyone with kindness and respect kind of things that we all wish for. 

            I feel like one good thing about 2020 was the amount of time I had for personal growth, did I use all of that time wisely? No not really but I tried. I feel like last year which I still want to call this year was a mess and we all knew it, we all went through a lot and we are here, we have come out of 2020. So what are my goals for 2021? Look at me making my first list of the year.

            I feel like I put my goals in four categories; that’s pretty much my yearly system and I have found that it works for me even though my goals I feel like repeat year after year because I continually say, “I’ll do it this year” and then get most of the way through the year and realize that I have done nothing. So my categories are, personal, professional, social, and writing. I am going to keep my professional goals to myself but the other three I’ll give you the highlights. 

1. I want to walk a bunch more 5K or even longer challenges, the cumulative ones because the medals are cute and they keep me accountable to actually doing things. I know that is external motivation and I should run on internal motivation but if it gets me moving then external motivation is totally cool in my book. 
2. I want to stop snacking, cut down on sugar and carbs (but bread is my fave), and cut down on eating out. I feel like a lot of personal goals are health related, I want to be a better version of me and one of the things I can do is take care of me. 
3. I want to get back into meditation, I used to do it with a face mask on like once a week and then I kind of stopped and I need to get back into it because I need to declutter my brain and I should have done that more in 2020. 
4. I want to read 45 books. I read 40 last year and I want to read at least five more this year and if I actually read every day I probably will hit this goal. 
5. I want to Bullet Journal the whole year, I did really well last year with actually getting all of the months in and I want to do a really good job doing that this year as well because it keeps me motivated to use the journal for everything. 
6. I want to have two posts a week on the blog the whole year, I have wanted that since I started the blog and some months I am really good about it and others I am not but I am going to actively attempt it better this year. 
7. I want to be more accountable over all of my social media and by that I mean I want to post more frequently and more routinely because I have all of these social media platforms and I just use them to scroll through aimlessly, I think it’s time to change that.
8. I want to finish many of my unfinished writing projects, I finished four last year so I only have two more to go and then I have three that I started last year and I want to get at least a few of them finished. 
9. I want to look into publishing, I am sitting on like a dozen novels but my anxiety has told me for years they aren’t good enough but that is one of my dreams a real book with my name on it. 
10. I want to most of all be the truest version of myself that I can be, I want to be authentically MJ and I have gotten better at that over the years but I still have some work to do.

I know that setting goals is hard, it means that you have written down something that could affect you and that’s scary but it’s worth it because when you can say you accomplished a big goal it’s like a weight off your shoulders. So here is to 2021, a year to set our sight on our goals and do our best to reach them.

-MJ