Things have been really quiet around here for the past two weeks. Holidays are busy, and I found myself spending time with family, baking cookies, and watching Christmas movies instead of writing blog posts.

I planned for my first blog post of 2020 to be about New Years resolutions. They have a bad reputation, but honestly… I love them. There’s something exciting and wonderful about setting goals, and January 1st is as good of a day as any to dream big.

Here are a few of the things I’ll be working on in 2020:

Read 30 non-Bible books

Exclusively buy sustainable or secondhand clothes/shoes

Recycle regularly

Practice French everyday

Read 30 non-Bible books. Last year, I read 31 books, including books of the Bible. This year, I wanted to challenge myself to read more non-Bible books, mostly because I’ll be reading the entire Bible during the month of January, and 66 books in one month doesn’t seem fair, haha.

Exclusively buy sustainable or secondhand clothes/shoes. I’ve been inching around this goal for awhile, so adding it to my list of resolutions felt like the right thing to do. Basically, I’ll only buy clothing from sustainable brands or secondhand stores/sites for the next year.

Recycle regularly. Something I intended to do better in 2019, but definitely didn’t succeed at. There’s not a great recycling program where I live, so I have to be very intentional

Practice French everyday. I studied a lot of French in college, but have seriously neglected it since graduating. I’ll be using Duolingo and making space for French media in my day, but if you have other ways of brushing up on a language, let me know! I’m all about diversifying

Now, like I said, resolutions are touchy. Some resolutions are best kept private—they’re yours, after all! — but other times, it’s beneficial to share your goals with people in order to establish accountability. Some of my resolutions this year are big, and I want everyone to know about them! But there are also some others that I’ll keep close to my heart.

The “New Year, New Me” pressure might make you feel like you need a grand, insta-worthy goal, plan, mantra, or phrase for 2020, but you don’t. Let 2020 be the year that you worry less about what other people think of you, and care more about who you are becoming.

With love,

Emma