Top Ten Tuesday // Hopes and goals for 2021

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s theme is:

January 12: Resolutions/Hopes for 2021

I’ve got a post about my reading and blogging goals for 2021 organised, so for today’s post, I’m going to be sharing non-bookish hopes and goals for the year.

I’m using the word ‘hopes’ pretty loosely because, with the pandemic still spreading and the vaccine expected to take a while to roll out, I don’t know if some of these things will be possible. But I’m hopeful they might be.

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Travel

Bold of me to start this list with the thing I’ll be least likely to do this year. But I’m hopeful that I might be able to travel at some point this year. Even if it’s just within the UK, it would be so nice to go to a city for a weekend or see friends.

I miss visiting cities in Europe and planning trips to other parts of the world, but I definitely won’t be going anywhere (UK or otherwise) until it’s completely safe. It’s not worth the risk to myself or those around me.

Credit: Wiki Commons

Language practice

In the last few months, I’ve got back into learning German and Japanese and I’d like to continue my language practice in 2021. I have family in Germany, so I’d really like to be able to speak to them in German, and I would love to visit Japan again in the future and be able to speak more Japanese while I’m there.

Boosting other people’s content

This is something that I’ve made into a habit in the last few months and I’m really enjoying sharing other people’s content so that (hopefully) more people will get to see it.

Whether it’s retweeting blog posts or booktube videos on Twitter, or sharing people’s Instagram posts in my stories, I definitely want keep this up in 2021.

Get back into creative writing

Writing is something I’ve been neglecting for a while. Yes, I write blog posts every few days, but writing stories or fiction? We don’t know her. She doesn’t go here.

Credit: Pixabay

But that’s something I want to change this year. Even if it’s just writing a page-long short story or some dialogue, I’d like to strengthen my creative writing muscles by actually working on my writing in 2021.

Instagram and Youtube

I’ve been posting more consistently on Instagram for a couple of months now, and would like to keep that up in 2021. I also want to post frequently on my booktube channel. Between work, blogging, exercising, and other hobbies, this is sometimes difficult, as I can’t always make the time, but I’d like to post maybe once a week (ish?) and see how that goes.

TV shows

There are a few TV shows that I’ve been meaning to watch for ages (and keep telling friends that I’ll watch them) so I’m going to try and actually do it in 2021.

A few are:

• The Untamed
• Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo
• 3 Will Be Free
• Noragami (I’m half way through this and just need to finish it)

Keep up my skincare routine

I’ve recently got into skincare (in a BIG way) and I now have a full 7-step routine that I’m really enjoying doing on a daily basis. So I want to make sure I keep up this routine, try some new products where possible, and keep using face masks (because they feel leave my skin feeling so soft).

Expand my running distance

I’m going to get booed off the stage for this, but I actually really like exercise??? *hides*

OK but seriously, I enjoy sports a lot, but because of the various stages of lockdown over the last 9 months, I haven’t been able to go to some of the in-person training classes that I uses to. So I’ve been running more instead.

I run every day or every two days with my music on and I love it. But I’d like to expand the distance I run from 5-10k to 10k+. I wouldn’t be running over 10k every day, but I’d like to do it often enough that, when I’m able to sign up for running events again, I might consider???? A half marathon??? Or at least more 10k races.

Video call my friends more

I love chatting to friends on the phone, but I often don’t make enough time to do it. If I’m busy making dinner after work on drafting some blog posts at the weekend, I tend to message them for a catch up instead of calling. Which is absolutely fine. But I also love spontaneous video calls, so I’m going to try to make more time to call friends this year.

Enjoy the moment more

At times, I have quite a forward-looking mindset. I often find myself thinking ‘what time am I going to have dinner later’, ‘what am I doing to do tomorrow’, ‘what are my plans for next week’. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Looking forward to things is great and planning ahead is good organisation.

But I’d like to enjoy the moment a little more too. If I’m having fun or doing something I love, I want to remind myself to just exist in that moment for a short while, enjoy it, and not immediately look ahead to what’s next.

_{OK I’ve gone too soft and squishy now so I’m going to carpe the diem out of here.}

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What are some of your non-bookish goals and hopes for this year?