I haven’t written my goals for the year here yet – a combination of trying to decide where the line is between pushing myself and setting myself up to fail by setting goals that are too strict or too ambitious plus using the majority of my energy up with working and fighting off winter germs.

I’ve also been struggling about how much I want to share of my “real” life here. This is both in terms of how vulnerable to make myself when discussing issues like my physical and mental health, but also how much I want to make certain facts public about myself.

On the flip side of that, I don’t want to present too much of a sanitised view of my life. I focus on the positives quite a bit here and a lot of what I share is only about certain topics. I guess I don’t want to give the impression that I am wafting my life away in a polka dot haze of instagram filters, whimsy and laughter. I can be twee as fuck but I also live in a pretty messy house, I can be quite lazy and slobby at times and I go through periods where it’s all I can do to scrape myself out of bed in the morning.

Anyway, on with my goals. My caveat to all of this is that I plan to buy a house this year, so a lot of my goals will be written with the knowledge that I will have that going on in the background.

Studying & learning
 I want to carry on with my Japanese study and reach level 10 on Wanikani, as well as complete the Japanese for Busy people textbook and workbook. I’m currently about half way through level 3 which is the last free level. I’ve found it a bit hard to pitch a reasonable goal here as I have no idea how steep the learning curve will be once I start on the paid for levels.
 I would like to attend at least one evening or day class where I learn a new creative or practical skill.
 On top of this, I would like to take some drum lessons as I’ve really enjoyed drumming as part of the Wasp drummers in the last few months

Travel 
 I would like to go on one short break either in Europe or the UK with my Mum
 I would also like to go away somewhere with Joe for a few nights
 I would like to visit at least 3 cities or towns in the UK that I haven’t been before

Creating
 I would like to complete the colourful crochet blanket that I have been working on. The majority of te squares are made for this, I just need to join them together and then crochet a border on them.
 I would like to finish the o-w-l-s jumper which I recently re-started after leaving my previous version half finished for ages and being unable to work out where I was at on the pattern.
 I would also like to try more general creative “stuff” by keeping a sketchbook of sketches, doodles and collages

Other
 I’ve set myself the Goodreads goal of reading 70 books this year. For context, last year I read 98 (and my goal was 52)
 This isn’t very quantifiable – but I want to cut down on the amount of time I spend on social media, particularly facebook as I find it both a time suck and something that doesn’t really aid my mood a lot of the time
 Finally, I would like to work more towards having a space to live where I feel at home rather than just somewhere that all my stuff happens to be