New goals, resolutions, what you want to achieve. It can seem pointless, given the need to constantly remind oneself of what should be achieved by the end of the next year. In fact, in the myriad of New Year’s resolution videos and tweets that I’ve seen, that seems to be the first thing that people mention. They’re just a fad, why bother? Does anyone even stick to them? Are they worth it? But I think they are. The goals we put down in words are there to look back on as a marker of where we are in the year and where we want to go and I hope to look back at this post at the end of the year and feel like I’ve given the year my best shot. We’re talking big goals, small goals, just goals.

• my first resolution has to be to stop using my phone as much as I do. I put this as a goal last year and it worked ! For the first half of the year. The second half was a downward spiral of ‘relaxing’ via scrolling aimlessly through Instagram. Not a fun vibe. Bad for fomo. All round 2/10 decision but I hope to change that in 2019! I also have a bad habit in the school holidays of turning the internet off, then bringing my phone in my room and using my 3G for about half an hour in the dark before I go to sleep, again not a great decision.
• stop thinking about ‘what could’ve been’. It only makes living in the present bittersweet. This is probably the hardest resolution. But one I want to hopefully look back on and have conquered (if you can conquer such a thing).
• get three A’s in my A levels. I’m just going to work hard, do ma thang and enjoy life in between revision. I need three A’s to get into university (will report back when I find out which one) and although I’d love those A*s I’m putting my mental health first. I genuinely love education (most of the time) and my hard work will take me to whatever grade I get.
• travel. I have a heck of a long summer this year and that may be daunting. I’m not daunted, but I wanna go places. Summer aside, I’m going to Berlin next month (!!) with college and I can’t wait for a mini break from the ensuing revision.

• meeting some blogging pals. For the longest time, I keep saying that this will happen but 2019 is the year that I do. Oxford interviews brought together myself and Erin and it was so so nice; I hope to be make 2019 the year I’m more social online. I also want to make it more of a habit of commenting on blog posts, it’s a little thing but the comments I get on my posts make me smile so much and I want to keep up the habit of writing on others as well.
• Learn to take better photos. I love photography and I don’t know enough about my camera. This year will be the year I learn (after June 17th then Eleanor Claudie . com is coming back with a bang).
• Any sustainable goals? Given that I would kind of class myself as an ‘ethical fashion’ blogger I have definitely been slacking on some good ethical content lately, purely because I want that content to be as informed as possible and most of my time is currently spent learning about how families in France have changed over time. But given that this year is full of changes, the biggest being going to university in September there is one sustainable goal that I definitely want to be mindful of. Plastic consumption is definitely something that I’m going to pay more attention to as I buy food for myself in the latter part of the year. I want to make sure I am fully trying to reduce my shopping to the least amount of plastic as possible, something I am not fully aware of as I do not do the weekly food shop at home (although I know as a household we have tried to reduce our consumption and there are already little things that I am doing). Not having a concrete sustainable goal right now is okay though because I know that it will change and adapt throughout the year. When I do go to university, however, I may write some more sustainable goals with updates etc.

But what about goals for my blog? Since this whole year is so up in the air I’m not setting any. I want to upload when and if it is feasible because there is no way that I can upload a post a week with good quality photos, it would just be a pressure opposed to an enjoyment. Also no fitness resolutions??? I had the resolution last year to do more fitness: yoga, running etc. and I definitely achieved that. It is now a kind of habit so I just want to keep that up this year. Goals change as we as people change, we can’t expect each year to be the same, 2019 is going to be about setting goals and sticking to them. I’m incredibly excited to see where this year goes, wherever that may be.

Do you set new years resolutions? If so, which one is the one you want to achieve the most?

lots of love, eleanor xx