HAPPY NEW YEAR, Y'ALL!!!!
I’m so unbelievably thankful for making it through 2020, because lemme tell you something…. That was a hell-hole. I know that the new calendar year doesn’t suddenly erase all of the trauma and hardship that everyone faced in the past year or so, but I am personally thanking God a bit extra that my family remained somewhat okay during this pandemonium.
Since it’s customary to talk about New Year’s Resolutions and better goals/expectations in comparison to the previous year, I want to talk about some of the changes that have been going on in my life. Starting with this blog, I want to keep it going, of course! I know that I haven’t been posting for the last month or so, but I took that time off to plan for… well, a lot of things. I need to figure out what direction I wanted to take the blog into, for starters, but outside of my posts, I wanted to make sure that I figured out a few things related to my personal goals. I know that I want to continue school and get a master’s degree (maybe even a Ph.D. if I have it in me), but I still don’t know what I’m passionate about yet. Or, maybe I do know, but I haven’t been paying attention because my focus has been all over the place during 2020. While my current major switch (Professional Writing) is the one I’m sticking with since I want to graduate in four years, I have no clue what I want to continue my education in. Part of me wants to pursue Nutrition, while another wants to return to my old pursuit of Educational Psychology. Or, maybe I want to flip the script completely and go for Chemistry, or Computer Science, or Esthetics School. I’m still interested in so much, and right now the most I can do is just continue to explore what I’m passionate about. I’m not too worried about it, but it’s a little frustrating because I want to stay “on track” by my own personal standards. I don’t want to stay out of school for more than a couple of years, and I’d hate to put off something that I am really set on doing.
I also wanted to plan more for Quarantine Queen and what to do next. I’ve been looking into all sorts of things; how to advertise/network/market properly, what I should do about a domain name, how to improve my writing, and what I should write about. I’ve started to read more of people’s own blog posts and study how they operate. I want to make sure that while I still don’t know my specific niche, I do want to put out posts that are equally entertaining for me and you. I will admit, part of my break was due to the fact that I simply couldn’t come up with more ideas, too. I mean, I have ideas, but I don’t want to just generate random posts because I need to hit a deadline. I want to make things that I’m engaged with. Because of that, I think I might space out the frequency of posts a little bit. It might only be about 2-3 times a month instead of trying to churn out a post every Friday/Saturday like clockwork.
In terms of my “resolutions,’’ I decided to start those a little bit early. I don’t really like the idea of resolutions; the more that I’ve seen people list them, the more it feels like people are waiting for themselves to suddenly be motivated to make some kind of significant progress in their lives. I can start changing for the better whenever I feel like it, and I don’t want to be bound by a new calendar date or any other kind of event. My expectations for this year are to be less stressed and more disciplined. A good example of this is through schoolwork. Usually, I always start out a semester really strong, but then my discipline wears off and I start to read less, have half-done notes, and put off doing my homework until it’s approaching the “too late” benchmark. This, on top of my other priorities (work, fun, mental health, personal life) gets overwhelming real quick, and I start to underperform or not perform at all in some of these areas. That causes stress, which causes me to work even less efficiently, and so on. By the time I finally break that cycle, I am an anxious, unhealthy mess with dry hair and no social life. I want to work on being more disciplined by paying more attention to my responsibilities and being a bit more selfish with my time (which I can write about later). In addition to this, knowing that I sometimes struggle with anxiety, I want to make sure that I don’t have too much on my plate so that I can relax or afford to take a mental health day when I need to. Simultaneously, though, I want to do this without making work or school the most important priority in my life. I can write about that, too, because I’m sick of this concept of “grinding 24/7” in order to only be moderately comfortable.
Either way, I plan for this year to be fun. I know you’ve already seen the updated picture on the home page (and on this thumbnail) so y’all know that there are more good things in store. I’m eager to get started, and I’m hoping that you’re just as eager to see it on screen.