Middle-of-year reflection – evaluating my New Year’s resolutions

Let’s face it, half of the year is through. How crazy is that? How are you doing? How did the first half of this year go for you?

I had very pleasant first six months. There was travelling, many beautiful and happy moments with the people I love and also quite some moments of personal growth (like finding out what my standard go-to emotion used to be and sometimes still is).

There are some specific moments I remember but to be honest I can’t really tell you what exactly I did for example in March. Probably this is normal but I wish I would remember better. Maybe there is a way of doing so that doesn’t require journaling for one hour per day. Will ponder on that. 

What I want to talk about today are the resolutions that I and maybe you as well set at the beginning of this year. 

Do you remember?

Phew, juicy, no?

In this blog post I share different ways of how I approached New Year’s resolutions in the past and how they worked out. Re-reading the post I recognised that I did not share what my resolutions for 2024 actually were resp. still are (are they?). 

Usually I keep my resolutions in mind thinking about them more or less regularly. This year I wanted to be more serious. So these days I went back to the letter I wrote to myself in December where I penned down my wishes, plans and yes, also resolutions. 

Time for a middle-of-year review!  

Did my resolutions last? Are they still important to me?

Eventhough I know what’s written in there I was very excited opening the letter. And surprised! Some resolutions I met more others less but overall I find myself hitting in the right direction. 

Let’s go a bit more into detail. 

Resolution 1) Creating two blog posts a month

One resolution for my online shop was to write a blog post twice a month. Out of 12 planned blog posts I finalised 8. Not too bad! But as the year progressed I found that two blog posts a month take more time to create than expected which in turn decreased my capacities for creating art – the heart of the online shop. So in May I decided to switch to one blog post a month. A conscious alteration of my resolution without changing the overall goal: creating content consistently. That feels much more doable and I’m proud of having made this deliberate decision and not beating myself up for not sticking to my resolution.

Resolution 2) Creating one piece of art each quarter

Definitely I am behind with this one. The actual piece is “Travelling alone”, a piece I started last year (gosh!) and is still in the making. It is quite frustrating but I see why it takes so long. The piece is based on a short story I wrote last summer. Turning the story into a piece of art is a process that takes much, much more time than expected. Once it is finished you will get to read about it in more detail. So out of two planned pieces I finished none. Not satisfied with that. But as I know I’m consistently working on it most of the days I’m not mad with myself (which is a lesson to learn in itself!).

Resolution 3) Decluttering

This was a resolution for my private life and it’s a clear so-so. Not the big changes I hoped for but some changes happened. It feels like a not-so tangible shift. Overall it is more tidy, some corners have been decluttered and remain on that level (whoop!). I think one of the reasons why the big changes I hoped for did not happen yet is because I didn’t set up specific strategies and actions on how to achieve them. At the time of making this resolution it felt right to phrase it only loosely. It turned out that this was not that supportive as I didn’t really know what to actually do specifically. 

While evaluating my resolution letter I defined some specific goals and actions on how I want to approach this topic. And though I would love to tackle the whole flat and declutter everything I set a few specific guidelines to keep things doable.

Life happens

Also I have to admit that life got in between with its own demands. Unexpected changes happened which require(d) a good share of my time as well as mental capacities. Or maybe it would be more suitable to say that I chose to shift focus from my resolutions towards these changes. 

Unexpected things happen and maybe they are not less important than the resolutions we chose to commit ourselves to at the beginning of this year. So it is not easy to stay on track, keep those resolutions in mind and constantly work towards them. This is why I am really glad I did this reflection while we’re half way through 2024.  

The conclusion?

• Though not fully accomplished I’m on track! The middle-of-year evaluation was a needed push of motivation and alignment before things would start to fizzle out.
• Resolutions can be altered without changing the overall goal.
• Setting up specific guidelines is helpful so it is very clear what to do and how to do it to meet the resolution.

As this was so helpful (and fun!) I’m going to do another reflection at the end of September which I’m already super excited about 🙂 

What about you? If you had New Year’s resolutions how are you doing? Do you evaluate regularly? Tell me about it in the comments below  or write me an e-mail at hello@annikaruhwedel.com !   

Biggest cheers to you,

Annika