my new year's resolutions

I hate myself for this. 

Full stop, I think new year's resolutions are lame.  Every year my parents ask me if I'm making resolutions and the answer, obviously, is no.  Time is a man-made concept, and I fail to see the point in creating a bunch of goals for the next year that, statistically speaking, I won't be able to keep up with for more than a month.  What is it about the new year anyway that makes people want to set goals?  You can make goals at any time.  No one is stopping you.

On my tiktok and Instagram feeds, the content creators I follow are obsessed with vision boarding and resolution making.  "This vision boarding tip changed my life, and it will change yours too!"  "Here's how I manifested all of my new year's resolutions in 2023." "Here's why you need to write down your goals this year." They're all full of shit.  Content creators have a winning combination of luck, privilege, and ambition, that I (and a lot of other people) will never be able to replicate, no matter how hard I try.  

And yet, here I am. 

One thing I've noticed in life is that I have a pattern of thinking things that a lot of people do are lame, then looking back and realizing how said things actually would've been helpful to me, then lamenting myself for being a contrarian little bitch.  So in an effort to learn from my past and better myself or what-fucking-ever, here are my new year's resolutions [gag]:

1. Start working out regularly again

Okay yeah I fell wayyyyyy off the fucking bandwagon this year, largely due to my disability and my mom's illness.  I used to workout 5-6 days a week, walk 10, 000 steps a day, and take dance classes, but life comes at you fast.  Now I sit on my ass all day and deal with debilitating soreness from doing an accidental squat.  That's not who I am.  Need to get back to it, I need to get back to it. 

2. Develop a better sleep schedule

This one's going to be tricky because the fact that I go to bed late is largely a function of my parents having dinner late, which causes me to have dinner late, which causes me to go to bed after midnight.  In an ideal world, I would be in bed by 10 so I could wake up at 5 and workout (I need to exercise first thing or else I just won't do it at all).  So.....idk.  It's hard to go to bed early when you regularly finish dinner at 10 pm.  My options are to just eat dinner freakishly early I suppose or just skip it and have a little snack instead.  Will have to think about this. 

3. Sell my clothes

I quit one of my jobs (thank god) so I have more time to focus on things I've been wanting to do but haven't been able to do, namely selling my old clothes on poshmark and depop.  I hope to get rid of them all by the end of the year. 

4. Learn to code

I don't know how much longer I can take working on social media, so I have to get out fast.  I'm hoping that learning to code will give me a hyperacusis-friendly job that doesn't involve slaving away to a fickle algorithm every day and will maybe make me want to kill myself less.  I'm not holding my breath though. 

5. Journal daily

A big, huge, colossal regret I have is not journaling daily when I was younger, and yet!!!! I still do not journal every day.  I hope that by fixing my sleep schedule, getting out of my funk, and establishing a better morning routine will help me journal consistently.

6. Keep posting on bloghousearrest

I'm not setting any goals around followers or anything because of how annoying and inconsistent the tiktok algorithm is.  What I want is to keep posting consistently (three times a week), read more cultural theory to write better blog posts, and just see where it takes me!  My content seems to be resonating with people which is cool, so I want to know how it plays out. 

7. Art journal 

I have a huge box of art journal supplies that has sat in my room untouched for a year.  Maybe I can aim for like one page a week? 

8. Make more things and share my work 

Right now I'm primarily occupied by organizing my pinterest boards and tumbr likes.  I want to start making more of my own work again. 

9. Keep my digital life organized

Going through my likes and saves and photos regularly, deleting things, internalizing things that I think would be useful for me, etc.

10. Clean my room 

It's more of a mess than you could even fathom.  Needs a good, deep clean.  Hopefully will get that done in January.  Should also create a regular cleaning schedule while I'm at it. 

11. Scan all my photos

Got a nice plustek scanner last year and I want to really use it this year. to properly digitize all of my film photos. 

12. Make a zine

Using the photos I've scanned hopefully

13. Look into selling my work on Etsy

Yeah I know Etsy sucks but I want to look for ways I can monetize my work since I'm housebound and can't get a normal job.   

14. Start dancing again    

I miss ballet and breaking, and my body feels so stiff and ugly.  I'll never be able to dance the same way again, but I hope to get back a little of what I lost. 

15. Watch movies and tv shows

I'm so bad at watching things.  Like I still haven't seen the virgin suicides....was I even a rookie mag tumblr girl?  I have a youtube playlist of over 1,000 movies and tv shows and I've seen exactly none of them.  I feel like watching movies is considered a frivolous thing, but I actually think consuming cult classics and cultural touchstones is incredibly important.  So I want to do that. 

16. Learn blender and graphic design 

I was into graphic design in 2022, then stopped this year because of how demanding my jobs got.  This year I’m going to try to get back to it and maybe get good….or at least learn a few things along the way.  

17. Read

I bought The Power Broker 2 and a half years ago and am still barely 100 pages in.  Eep!  Time to pick that up and start reading again.  Maybe I need to form better routines so I'll have time to read on the regular. 

Okay, that’s all I have for now I think.  Will try to make sporadic updates about how this list goes in the new year.