New Year, Same Burnt Out Me

Often a brand new year brings with it renewed optimism, motivation, a desire to kick bad habits and adopt better ones. People set resolutions, gym memberships soar, everyone starts aiming for self-improvement. It can be a very positive time of year in many ways and I'm often the first to jump on the bandwagon of healthier eating (this year I'm doing veganuary), but with a new year comes an awful lot of pressure; pressure to make resolutions, to get yourself in the gym, to have a blog strategy for the year ahead etc etc.

I think it's great to use the new year as an excuse to better yourself and if you've made resolutions then good for you. I'm trying not to be a negative nelly in this post, but what I do want to get across is that it's OK if you haven't made resolutions, it's OK if you haven't joined a gym, it's OK if you don't have that blog strategy. Because for me, at the moment, I feel like I put so much time and energy into being the person I already am and doing the things I already do, that aiming for anything more would result in complete and utter burnout. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. I think we place a huge amount of guilt on ourselves when we don't improve at something, which means we're trying so hard all year round and not cutting ourselves any slack. It's important to remember that we are already enough.

I haven't entered the new year with heaps of motivation because I'm tired. I guess that probably means that my resolution needs to be to wake myself up a bit and I think I need to start by doing less rather than aiming for more. I'm pretty good at preaching about the importance of 'down time', but it's not actually all that often that I have it. I might Instagram a picture of my dreamy bath, but I'm probably sat in said bath making a list in my head of all the things I need to do when I get out of it and then feeling guilty for having a bath when I could have done three of the things on my to do list instead. I spend my weekends cleaning, doing DIY or blogging and I see doing 'nothing' as a waste of time because just think of all the things I could achieve during my morning of 'nothing'.

What I need to realise is that my to do list will never be fully ticked off, there are always things to do. Everyone else has a similar amount of things to do, so why do I struggle so much to not only do them all, but also give myself some chill time as well? In reality I think the only difference is that some people can put their to do list aside, forget about it and relax. I can put my to do list aside, but I can't forget about it and relaxing? What's that? So, after starting this post saying that I'm not making any resolutions, I'm going to end it by saying that I've changed my mind. I'm making just one. My new year's resolution is to not only make time for me, but to not feel guilty about it. Self-care is pretty important and it's time I actually took it seriously.

Jumper - Fashion Union (similar) | Trousers - New Look (similar) | Boots - Missguided (here) | Bag - Fiorelli (old)

Have you made any resolutions?

Amy x