Three-quarter-of-year reflection – update on my New Year’s resolutions

It is October. I can’t believe we’re already in autumn. How are you? How was your summer?

In July I reflected the first half of my year (read about it here) and promised to do another reflection three months later so here we are. I am almost shocked at how quickly time has gone by.

To prevent memories from ending up in a blur I started to note a few keywords for each month. What happened, how I felt. Not more than one page to keep it simple. It is interesting to see what happens and is important each month and helps reflecting.

But not only do I want to generally reflect the last three months. This blog post is about reflecting in consideration of my New Year’s resolutions *gasp*. Are they still valid? Why / why not? What happened since the last reflection in July?

We all know New Year’s resolutions usually don’t last very long so this is pretty exciting 🙂

So what again were my resolutions and how am I doing?

Resolution 1) Creating two blog posts a month

Well, in May I decided to reduce this to one blog post a month to keep things more doable: Creating content consistently besides creating art. A carefully made decision I’m still happy about. It works really well! A nice example that resolutions can be changed without losing focus

Resolution 2) Creating one piece of art each quarter

I was behind in July and am even more behind today. The piece “Travelling alone” is still in the making. So out of three planned pieces none is finished … Uh, it is frustrating and embarrassing to commit that but it is what it is. This piece takes a lot of time. Slowly, slowly an end is in sight and I can’t wait. Meanwhile I hope / plan to finish it this year at least, oh boy. Well, I learnt my lesson and the next pieces will be more simple so that you, folks, get to see some more art than this year.

Resolution 3) Decluttering

What has been a clear so-so feels now more stable. While writing this blog post I came across that I defined some specific goals and actions in July on how I wanted to approach this resolution for my private life. To be honest I totally forgot about them 🙂

Re-reading them I noticed that I’m already following four out of those five approaches which I’m really proud of. 

Life happens

As already mentioned in the middle-of-year reflection an unexpected change happened in late spring which led to a great shift in my usual daily routine. It has become my new routine by now but still requires a great share of my time and mental capacities. To not lose focus on my resolutions I built them into my new daily routines even if they might not get as much time as originally planned. Well, that is ok. It has to work for me and time for rest should not be cut off. Things have to be balanced.

The conclusion?

Pretty much the same as in July: Though not fully accomplished I’m on track! Even more than in July. It feels like my resolutions are now an integral part of my daily life. And still there is room for improvement. 

A quarterly reflection seems to be helpful to keep the focus. And I tend to think that it is probably very normal to get off track while life happens so a regular reflection is a nice way to refresh things.

So I will definitely stick to quarterly reflections. Not sure if I’m going to share them all here but you will absolutely get to read a middle-of-year update! Tell me if you are interested in quarterly updates on my New Year’s resolutions!

Also I am interested if you still stick to your resolutions if you had any! 

Tell me about it in the comments below  or write me an e-mail at hello@annikaruhwedel.com !   

Biggest cheers to you,

Annika