Hello 2026...

Hi. I hope you are well and having a good day.

It's time for my annual January post, and I can't believe we are at the start of another year again! Knowing that we are now in 2026 is absolutely crazy to me. I feel like there is always a pressure at the start of any year to be your best self, to sort out your life, get rid of bad habits and work towards a productive year ahead, which I find really overwhelming in the month of January. Realistically, these things can be worked on all year and not just in January.. Which is why my first week of January has been relatively chilled out, as I don't want to feel that pressure!

This time last year, I can remember feeling really low and not in the best mindset. I was very nervous for the year ahead.. Mainly because I knew that my life was going through more changes in the new year of 2025! I was nervous and overwhelmed by so many things... The year ahead, my long-term future plans, starting a new job, moving into my house and living by myself for the first time. I was working towards the end of my house renovations this time last year and I still felt very uncertain about pretty much everything in my life which was changing for me, and starting a new chapter of my life solely by myself. At this point now, I wish I could go back to that version of me from a year ago and tell her that things will be ok and things will work out!

Throughout 2025, I have got to a point of feeling comfortable and happy living by myself and being in my own company. Which is good considering that for the majority of time, I am by myself and in my own company! And that is perfectly okay. Before I lived by myself, I always felt like I was and somewhat needed to be surrounded by people in some way, whether it be family, friends or a partner in order to be happy and being alone just felt uncomfortable. From living alone, I know I can happily be in my own company and, and I truly enjoy being by myself. There are always positives and negatives to every different living experience, and I think the main negative with living alone is definitely feeling isolated from too many consecutive days of being alone, which I have found when being ill. Luckily I have got into a really good routine with working from the office, working from home, having social interactions with family, my boyfriend and friends, as well as making sure I have enough different things to look forward to throughout each month.

As it is the start of a new year, I do want to set myself some goals for this year.. Not major goals, but smaller goals which will be more achievable throughout this new year! I have really got back into reading again, so I would love to challenge myself to read 30 books this year. This is a huge challenge for me as I am not the biggest reader, but I really want to keep up the reading progress which I have made this year. If you want to follow along with my reading journey, click here to see my Goodreads account, which I started last year in order to track my reading progress! I am also in the middle of making a physical book journal for my own reference, and am really enjoying writing about the books I have read!

I also want to get into the habit of cooking different homemade meals this year. I am pretty good at times with cooking homemade meals, however I do get a bit repetitive when it comes to food. If I cook a good homemade meal, I will happily cook it repeatedly, however this doesn't help with trying new foods and meals! This year, I want to experiment more with cooking and actually try more new things whilst cooking. I want to get into the habit of meal planning and making good and healthy foods this year!

Another goal is to finish my island design on Animal Crossing. I got back into Animal Crossing last year when I got a TV at my house, and I had to restart my island... Therefore I really want to get back to the same stage or better on my new island this year! Funkytown is currently and gradually being rebuilt and I am really enjoying playing Animal Crossing, and designing my island! This is a smaller goal for this year, however with the new Animal Crossing update coming out this month, I have been playing more consistently and I am looking forward to playing the update!

As for my blog, I do want to maintain blogging for another year. After blogging relatively consistently over the past 12 years, this blog has definitely become a substantial record for the story of my life, as well as a great documentation of things that I am interested in. I am going to try and keep to drafting and publishing at least one blog post a month throughout this year. 

Over the past few months, I have felt very disconnected from being online and being on social media in general. There has been a gradual social media transition over the past few years, with social media becoming less about personal connection, and more about the commercialisation. There are constant sponsored ads, perfectly filtered photos and the increasing use of AI online makes social media feel very unauthentic and artificial, and I don't enjoy being on social medias as much as I used to. I also think I am feeling disconnected from social media partly because I have changed a lot over the past few years.. I look at my Facebook and my Instagram occasionally, and I do feel very disconnected from the person I once was on there! I tried to get back into posting on my personal account last year, however I feel like I am forcing myself to post for the sake of appearing online and living my best life. And for what purpose? I am not really fussed about sharing my life online with people I once used to know. So long as my family and friends still know about me as a person and what's going on in my life, that's all that truly matters to me. In respect to social media, I am enjoying living a more private life now, and I am happier not posting on social media for now. The only reason why I still remain on social media is to keep somewhat connected to my friends, which was the main reason why I joined social media in the first place!

However I think blogging is different compared to social media. I love blogging as this is my space, with my own thoughts and it is actually real life compared to the majority of social media. There are no sponsored ads, no perfectly filtered highlights, no AI generated posts here.. This blog truly does contain the good, the bad and the ugly, it represents real life! Less people are aware of my blog, I enjoy creating blog posts and being online in a different way!

I am aware that I have changed so much over the past few years. Every aspect of my life has changed over the past three years, to the point where I am not really the same person as I was a few years ago. Which is all part of growing up, being in your twenties is a real time of constant change and growth! There are also times I am aware that there may be thoughts and opinions posted from my previous blog posts of 10+ years ago, which I may not resonate with any more. This is why the idea of starting a new blog has been playing on my mind more recently as well.. There is something appealing about starting a new blogging chapter! Then again, this blog has been an incredible record of my life story for 10+ years and I think it would be a shame to let it completely go. Maybe when I turn thirty, I will start a new blog but for now, I am ready for yet another year of blogging!

So yeah, it's all good...

Amy