On Guilt - An Explaination

Towards the end of 2015 I noticed a trend in my mood I really wasn't enjoying. I felt, pretty consistently, guilty.

I'm not going to go into all the reasons, but in short:

I wasn't reading as much as I wanted.
I wasn't writing as much as I wanted.
I was spending far too much time on my phone, predominantly playing Sim city, and far too little time doing things I actually value.
This blog wasn't going the way I wanted it to - posts were routinely going up late or not all all.

All this culminated in my stopping Blogmas - three posts short of a complete set - and hiding from the internet for a little while. I had always intended to take a hiatus in January, but I had intended to announce it, rather than simply vanishing.

Guilt is something we all experience from time to time, and it's usually a good motivator - to apologise or to change. What made me realise that my guilt was turning very negative was my bullet journal.

For those who don't know, a bullet journal is a kind of diary/journal, where you record things about your life as well as highlighting tasks that you want to complete. It's a great tool for accomplishing goals, but many days I wasn't writing down any goals. The days I did, I rarely completed them.

I attributed this to the fact that I now have a full time job - despite the fact that a full time job is considerabley less time consuming and stressful than a full time degree (at least for me). True, I'm sat in an office writing about fishing tackle (of all things) for 7 1/2 hours a day, but I'm damned lucky that I'm home by four most days, the job is incredibly low pressure, and is giving me valuable copy writing experience.

I know it's a huge cliche, but 2016 is bringing with it the possibility for a lot of changes. It'll be the first full years that I'll have spent outside of the structure of education, which I'm sure will come with it's own challenges in and of itself. I'm also living back at home, which after two years of independence is harder than you might think. As someone who has a good relationship with their family, it's certainly been harder than I thought it would be.

I want 2016 to be, largely, guilt free. With that in mind, I'm forcing myself to pick up better and more productive habits with long term goals, These include: standing better, not biting my nails, running regularly, and actually reading at least 50 books!

It also includes better, more consistent, more professional posts on this blog. Starting here, you can expect a lot of the old features with shiny new faces, as well as some new stuff tossed into the mix. Who knows, we might even get back to two posts a week!

I'll see you next week, but till then, stay sunny.

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