2018. New Year, New Me and All That Bull****!

Brace yourself, it’s a bit of a long one…

2017, you have been an absolute rollercoaster ride! Whilst you hold memories that will last a lifetime, graduating LCF (thank god!) and then having a job lined up before I had even managed to hand in my dissertation, are just a few to mention. You also hold some of the worst, completely destroying my knee whilst skiing (on the 1^st day of the trip not to mention!) and also being made redundant from the job previously mentioned (it was actually a bit more complicated than just redundancy, fixed-term contracts blah blah, but I will spare you the boring grown-up detail!).

As you can imagine I am more than ready to get 2018 started. And started it sure has! I have kick-started the new year with a new job. A total step outside of the fashion, influencer world and weirdly enough into the world of finance! After the bad news I had, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and decided to take a long hard look in the mirror. The hunt then began. I am still doing my digital marketing thing, which I realised in that long hard look, had become far more important to me than working in the fashion industry.

In all honesty, this revelation came as a bit of a shock to me. If you had asked me at the age of 8 what I wanted to do, it was to work in fashion. It has always been a dream of mine. After my studies, and my fashion-centric course I still thought that this was all I could and wanted to. But the change in circumstance made me realise the thing I had loved most about my job was the actual job, and the industry in which it was in was less important.

In an ideal world, maybe I would still be working in the fashion industry but there were just too many factors working against it, the main ones being the travel time (I was commuting to London) and the cost of the travel…absolutely eye-watering!

I feel I am being the ultimate cliché, but finally, I can say going into 2018 that things are finally falling into place. After the turbulent year I had, I certainly don’t want to say 2018 is going to be my year, but in a way, it feels like it kind of is.

I feel like I need to make some form of disclaimer here. So here it goes…I am a firm believer against allowing the start of a new year to become this awful, daunting demon. I think too many of us are guilty of piling on the pressure to make a big change when a new year comes about. We then end up feeling guilty for not achieving the crazy goals we set ourselves, that were based purely on the pressures of a new year starting. Again, I feel the need to be clear, I am not saying new year’s resolutions are bad, they are a great way to get yourself motivated to change something in your life. However, if you have a resolution, make it achievable, make it realistic. Don’t set yourself up to fail, it will only get you down.

My resolution is one that may seem simple but in reality, is something I have struggled with over the last two years; it’s to get my routine back. I am a creature of habit, I LOVE a routine so as soon as it’s lost things tend to spiral. For someone who loves a routine, I find them so hard to get back into. So, I thought why not use this newjob as a kick up the bum to get my routine back. To me this means, going to bed at a decent time, spending time with my friends and family, going to the gym, not eating chocolate for all 3 meals of the days, you know normal things to keep a person sane. And many of these are things that I have been doing up until now, I just need to take time to be slightly more mindful of them.

For me, I am currently starting the year with a clean slate, not just in the typical metaphorical sense, of “new year, new me”. But in the literal sense of everything about this year is new, slightly scary and open to so many wonderful new opportunities.