Hello 2016 – It Is Nice To Meet You

Why hello 2016. 

As surprised as I am at how fast 2015 flew by, I look back on all of the memories and realize how much we crammed into one year. This week we wrapped up a lot of 2015 and one of the most exciting things to me was that I get to start my new Erin Condren Planner. Yes, I’m a complete nerd. Something about the fresh blank pages just screamed opportunities to me. 

What is Up for 2016?

I’m not a huge fan of setting goals these days. To me goals mean that it “must get done” and suddenly my attitude tends to change. I do have a few things I would like to accomplish in 2016 and a slight plan on how it is going to happen. 

As always I look forward to my evenings at home relaxing. There is lots of college basketball coming up in the next few months, lots of fires in the fireplace to be had and way too many cars to be played with. This summer there will be two full weeks of Olympics to watch. The countdown is on.

In the last year I’ve really discovered that my “me time” is at 5am. That one little hour first thing in the morning sets my day off on the right foot. It has made such a difference in my attitude when the day starts. I might still have a stressful morning, but at least I had a little bit of time to myself before everything went to hell. 5am is top of my list of things for 2016 to continue. 

Hobbies

Knitting – I am slowly getting back into knitting a little bit more each day. I have a few Christmas projects to finish up still and I hope to do so in January for both of them. There is also a pair of socks that I’ve been working on for probably close to a year that should get finished. Most of all, I really need to darn the 15 pair of socks that are in a closet somewhere. Maybe 2016 will be the year for that!

Reading – In 2015 I decided to try and read more. In the end I finished 83.5 books and I am shocked that I did to be honest. Looking forward to 2016, I would like to continue reading as much as I am now. I have so many books saved on my kindle that I want to read and for the next few months I’m looking forward to reading my way through those. Maybe I’ll hit 85 this year?

Photography – One thing I didn’t do enough of in 2015 was take pictures. My camera sat out, but never where I was around to grab it when I needed it. With the amount of phone photos I took this year I’ve found that I missed having the photos from my regular camera as well. There is no way a 365 project would happen, but I look forward to taking a lot more this year. 

Fitness & Healthy Eating

2014 was a huge year for me. I ran my first half marathon, dropped 40 pounds and really changed my entire lifestyle. 2015 did not go quite as easily and I hit a lot more ups and downs than I had the previous year. None of them are excuses but looking back I definitely fell off the wagon where it came to being consistent with everything. 

My husband, some friends and I are kicking off a DietBet January 2nd in hopes of being able to start 2016 off right. I’m looking forward to getting more consistent with running, eating right most of the time and getting back into the habits of meal prepping and planning each week. Those few factors make such a difference in feeling better. 

For The Blog

When 2015 kicked off, the blog wasn’t even in the back of my mind. I was keeping track of my running through the blog, but I wasn’t blogging for the love of it every day. When I started getting back into blogging as often as I have been, I realized how much I missed it. I used to blog as part of my job and keeping a personal blog. After changing jobs, getting married and having a baby everything blog related sort of fell apart. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow the blog as much as possible as I look forward to 2016.

Community – In the last few months I have discovered a wonderful community of fellow bloggers on Facebook. In the few months I’ve been part of their group I ave learned SO much. I look forward to continuing to network with them and watch their blogs grow as I attempt to grow mine. 

Post Often – I aim for posting 5 days a week. Some weeks I hit all 7 days, some weeks I hit 4 days. Not everything I post is personal and not everything I post is informational. I love having the mix of post types on here and I want to continue to do that this year. There are days where it just won’t happen. I’m trying to maintain the mindset of “if it doesn’t happen today, it doesn’t happen” and move onto the next day. 

Get It Organized – I’ve been quietly working on a project for this blog over the last few months. Posts dating back to 1999 have been appearing in my WordPress backend. I’m hoping soon to have everything organized but I’ve brought all of my blogs, diaries and online journals into one place. It has been fun to read but it also has been interesting to read. So many things happened in the past that I’ve forgotten about. 

Growth – While a lot of bloggers out there are showing charts, stats, etc. I don’t think my numbers are all that interesting yet. When I first started posting earlier this year, I was seeing maybe 5 visitors a day to my blog when I looked at my analytics. Now I’m seeing between 50 and 90 a day and I look forward to seeing that number grow even more as we move into 2016. 

In way too many words, I guess I’m saying I look forward to 2016 and everything that it offers. For now, my planner is a clean slate. Very quickly it will be full of scribbles. I can’t wait. 

What do you look forward to most in 2016?