New Year, New Me... Kinda.

Two of my friends who are really into blogging and writing decided that they wanted to keep each other accountable throughout 2016 so that they don't fall behind in their writing. Even though I'm not a writer by any means, they were kind enough to ask me if I wanted to join them in their endeavor. I was going to say no, because I don't write stories or books or anything. But then I remembered that I'm not the best at keeping up with my blog. So here I am.

It's 2016; I'm not the biggest fan of making New Year's resolutions, but as I've started a new semester as well as this new year, I'm finding myself wanting to make a few changes. Now, I'm not talking about the cringe-y "new year, new me" concept. I think that's dumb. I find that the reason I get stressed out with the idea of resolutions is because there's this universal pressure to keep them for longer than two weeks to prove to everyone that "I've go this", and "this really is my year!!!" Personally, I prefer to think of my resolutions a little bit differently.

What I've done this year is taken a page in my journal and called it Goals for 2016. The idea that I have behind using the term "goals" is that I don't feel pressured to do a perfect job of keeping them every day. I've started the list with a few simple ideas (nothing like "lose ten pounds" or "work out every day"), and I'm leaving it open so that I can continue to add things as the year progresses. I want to be able to look back at the end of 2016 and see if I have accomplished those goals, or even write down things that I achieved throughout the year that I didn’t initially have in mind as a goal.

One of my main goals for this year is to be more positive about everything. As I said, I don’t expect myself to do a perfect job every single day. But overall, I want to take more time to focus on God and His many blessings, and not be so focused on my family circumstances, or trivial things like how difficult my homework is, or how cold it is outside. I once heard someone say that the more time you spend with God, the less time you spend worrying. So it’s my goal to put that one into practice throughout 2016.

The first month of this year is almost over, and already I'm seeing God's goodness in my life, and I'm worrying less about trivial things. Also, I'm better managing my time when it comes to school work, which is something I dreamed of doing throughout this entire school year, but with the craziness of my life in the latter part of last year, I never ended up doing so. I had to get extensions on multiple assignments, and although I felt like I was scraping through the last couple months of 2015 by the skin of my teeth, I ended up making it out alive and passing all of my courses! God is good.

As I'm now in the last half of my second year of college, I'm starting to think about real life and realizing that there are some decisions that I need to make, and they aren't easy. They are going to affect my life in big ways, and I'm not going to like making all of these decisions. But the more time I'm spending with God, the less I'm worried about these decisions. I know that He knows far better than I do, and I'm taking comfort in that. I'm praying long and hard about the different options that I'm looking at, and taking into consideration the wise counsel of people that I trust. Most importantly, I'm learning that I need to trust God fully and not commit to making any of these decisions until I have full confidence that I'm doing the right thing.

Here's to 2016, and all of the good, bad, laughter, tears, and memories that it will bring.