My 2019 New Year’s Resolutions, Travel Plans and Life Goals
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely festive break and overindulged on all the turkey and mince pies? I’ll be disappointed if you didn’t! 😉 As we welcome January (I am SO glad to see the back of 2018) I’m kick-starting my year with some traditional new year’s resolutions. Ok ok, I know they’re overrated and we’re all sick of the ‘new year, new me’ Facebook statuses, but I actually LOVE this time of year and always relish taking time to make plans for a new year, and a new start. If you read my 2018 end of year round up you’ll know that I pretty much aced my resolutions from last year, if I must say so myself, and I’m now ready to take on a new challenge and to make some new life/travel plans. So without further ado, here are my goals and resolutions for this year, and what I want to gain from 2019…
Go Veggie for the whole of January
This is gonna be a HUGE challenge for me and something which I’m not sure I’m going to be able to but I want to push myself and I’m going to give it a real good go!! I’ve been thinking about trying to be vegetarian for a little while now, and a few friends at work have convinced me that it would be great for my health, so I thought January would be a good a time as any to trial it for a month and give it a go! It’s been four days already so far and I’m not missing meat at all. I’ve been quite creative with my cooking (well, my mum has also helped cos I get home from work late!) and I’m enjoying trying new foods and flavours. I haven’t eaten out yet this month but I have a few meals planned over the coming weeks so I’ll see if I can resist allll the burgers and steaks that will try to tempt me… but so far, so good!
Read 2-3 books a month
I was good at this last year despite not making it a resolution, so I thought I would try it again this year and give myself a goal of reading 2-3 books a month. I absolutely LOVE to read and it’s the only time of the day I allow myself to indulge and just sit in bed and turn the pages. I love escaping the real world for a bit in order to immerse myself in a story, and last year I managed to read 15 books so thought I’d try to beat that this year. I’ve already read The Light Between Oceans so far and I have The Tattooist of Auschwitz next on my list, plus plenty of others downloaded and ready to go in my Kindle, so I’m fairly set for the next few months and can’t wait to read more throughout the year.
Visit 7 countries
Last year I set myself a goal of visiting at least 5 countries and I actually managed to visit NINE! I went inter-railing and then on a multi-stop cruise so it was fairly easy for me to visit lots of countries in just a couple of trips, but I might find this year a little harder as I think I’ll be travelling a little differently. So far my confirmed trips are a week in Spain in May visiting Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, a few nights in Scotland visiting Fort William and Glencoe as I climb Ben Nevis (!!), and a week in Italy in June visiting Verona, Lake Garda and Trentino. I’ve got a huge trip lined up before that but I can’t say what it is yet… watch this space for more news on that though! And later on in the year I’m hoping to do a trip around the Baltics and take in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius and Helsinki all in one go, as well as do my first ever European Christmas Markets break, but we shall see what my bank account looks like after the summer! I don’t think 7 countries is unrealistic given that I already have a few trips lined up, and another inter-railing trip which means I can tick off lots in one go. Last year was the first year in two years I didn’t travel as much as I would have liked to, and yet I still ended up visiting a whopping nine countries so I am confident I can tick off at least 7 this year and am sooo excited for all my upcoming travel plans!
Take a leap of faith
So I know this is kinda vague and can apply to anything within life, but this year I really want to push myself out my comfort zone and do things that scare me. It might not be as drastic as jumping out a plane or booking a one way ticked to anywhere, but as I turn 26 I’m starting to realise that I want a couple more selfish years before I start to think about meeting someone and settling down with a house and kids. Don’t get me wrong, this is all I have ever wanted from life, but at the same time I have relished spending my 20s being selfish and putting myself first, as well as travelling to 25 countries and pushing myself to my limits. This year I already know what my leap of faith will be, even though I can’t share it with you guys yet, and I’m more than ready to ensure that 2019 becomes one of my best ever chapters. I promise to share my news with you soon, but after playing it fairly safe in 2017 and 2018, I think this will be the year that I truly ‘find myself’ and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it! I promise to share news with you as soon as I can!
Reach 10,000 social media followers
You might remember that I set myself the same challenge this time last year, but unfortunately I was unsuccessful so I am giving it another go in 2019! 10,000 followers is an ENORMOUS number, and was probably a bit ambitious last year, but I’m on over 8600 in total across all platforms now, so I don’t think it’s unrealistic to gain another few thousand over the next 12 months! I’ve kind of fallen out of love with Instagram now to be honest so I’m not going to be wasting much of my time growing my followers on there, but I definitely want to focus on Facebook and Twitter as I get a lot of engagement and traffic from these two. It’s really interesting to know where your traffic is coming from, so that you can focus your energies on growing platforms that benefit you and your blog, so this is something I am going to pay close attention to throughout 2019!
Make time to meditate
I tried doing this last year and I did enjoy it but I sometimes found I didn’t have enough time to sit down and meditate properly so I got a bit bored and just gave up. My sister is really good at this though so I’m going to try and take a leaf out of her book and make time to meditate, even if it’s only once a week. The last app I tried was Headspace but I found it a bit repetitive, so I may give Calm a go this year and see how I feel. The main reason for wanting to meditate is mainly just to give myself time to switch off before bed – I am the worst person for falling asleep with my phone in my hand or scrolling on Facebook just before I go to bed, so I am going to make a conscious effort to minimise my screen time during the evenings and I think meditation will really help me with this.
I’m trying not to set myself too many goals this year as I don’t want to overwhelm myself and set challenges that aren’t realistic, but I think these resolutions are all achievable and will all enhance my life during 2019. I think the hardest one to complete will be going Veggie for a month as I’ve eaten meat all my life, but I want to do it for health reasons and to see how I get on. 2019 will mark 5 years since Journeys with Jessica was launched, so I’m definitely going to have a celebration by the time the anniversary rolls around in May and I can’t wait to share with you all the fab new content I have planned for my blog this year. As well as the travel plans I have mentioned above, I’m also making a conscious effort to explore more of the UK this year and to take more day trips. Plus I’ve already booked tickets to loads of concerts including Westlife, Robbie Williams and the Spice Girls – I am SUCH a 90s kid!! – so will be having plenty of UK day trips too. What are your travel plans for 2019? Do you make resolutions and stick to them? I’d love to hear how you plan to spend your 2019.
Happy New Year everyone!
Love Jess x
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