Weekly Blog January 15th, 2023: My Themes For 2023

Hello Internet!

I hope you all are doing well and staying healthy! Happy New Year! I know that it’s mid-January now but I have been on a break since before Christmas so I haven’t gotten a chance to wish you all a Happy New Year. Hopefully you haven’t given up on your New Year Resolutions yet, but if you have, it’s not too late to jump back into them. Don’t just give up for 11 months. It’s still early. Actually that’s what I’m going to be talking about in today’s Weekly Blog. I want to talk about my resolutions/themes for the year. But before I dive too deep into that, I want to quickly thank you all for 2022. The year 2022 was a year of high-highs and low-lows for me. Many of those lows surrounded this website. I really struggled last year to put out good content at a consistent rate. I got burnt out and never fully recovered. But despite all of that people like you showed and read the stuff I published whenever I actually managed to write and publish something. I didn’t outdo my viewership of 2021, but I was expecting to. I can’t expect record viewership when I’m not posting consistently. What I did get though, blew me out of the water. Despite my burnout and inconsistent publishing, I still got a ton of love and support from readers new and old and it really cheered me up when I was busy beating myself up over not writing. So thank you so much for making my 2022 better than I could have imagined. I’m going to work hard this year to have a more consistent (and more realistic) schedule and I hope you all continue to join me on that ride.

Speaking of writing in the new year, I think it’s time that we transition to the subject of this week’s Weekly Blog: My Themes For 2023. If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “Theme” versus New Year Resolution, I highly recommend you check out this wonderful video from the YouTube Channel CPG Grey. He explains the idea of themes much better than I will, but the long story, short a Theme is a vague, general navigation for your life instead of a hardset goal. If you have a resolution to lose weight, you might instead want to choose a theme of health or exercise or something like that. Instead of setting an end goal in mind, you instead choose a general way you want to live your life that focuses on making the “right” choice in small moments. It’s a mindset where positive change is good no matter how small and ditches an all or nothing attitude. This idea really resonates with me and has led me to think about what I want my yearly theme to be instead of jotting down New Year Resolutions.

So what are my themes for the year? Well let me remind you that for 2022, my themes were Health and Reading. I had a couple because I just can’t choose one. The year before that in 2021, it was Progres and Positivity. Again, I liked pairing them up. But enough stalling. What are my themes for 2022? Well it’s Health and Reading again. And Writing too. I’m choosing three. Now I don’t want you all to feel like you were cheated out of something. Not that I expect you all to be upset by the personal themes I’m setting for myself, but let me explain why I decided to double dip on Health and Reading. Last year I mentioned that I wanted to focus on my health. Both my physical health and my mental health. I wanted to eat healthier, exercise more, avoid  burnout (whoops!) and enjoy my hobbies more. I wanted to do a lot, but after a year like 2021, I really needed to build some good habits. I also wanted to read more. I had barely read anything in 2021 and wanted to change that. There were too many good books on my bookshelf that I hadn’t gotten to read and I wanted to switch that around. So those were my two themes of the year. And how did they go? They went pretty good.. for the first six months. I managed to read one book a month for the first six months. But when the summer hit, my motivation to read dropped off a cliff, burnout increased, and I lost focus of my themes. I still managed to work out now and then, but I would say that I was definitely doing a lot better in the beginning of the year. 

That’s why this year I want a second shot at it. I want to refocus myself and work on both bettering my health and focusing on reading. Plus there’s no rule against doubling up on your theme or your resolutions. Just because you failed or didn’t do as good as you did last year, doesn’t mean you can’t try again. I’ve honestly been setting myself up for success the last few weeks and I’m really hoping that I can go the distance. Honestly I might just reevaluate my progress mid-year and see if I can make some adjustments. That’s actually something that CPG Grey touches on in his video. Years are long. Really long. And we can’t wait around forever to make our themes happen. That’s why he suggests seasons as a way to divide up the theme. So maybe I will reevaluate my theme after three months and then try to motivate myself if need be. I’m really trying to put in as much effort as possible. Because at least if I fail or just don’t’ achieve as much as I want, I can be content that I really gave it my all. Health and Reading. I really think I can do it this year.

Lastly I want to tag on Year Of Writing to my themes of Health and Reading. I know it’s a lot but after 2022, I want to really refocus on writing. Some of my oldest readers know this, but for those you don’t know, I started this Blog because of a New Year Resolution. I simply wanted to “Write More” which I didn’t know at the time, basically became The Year of Writing. Write More was my theme for the year. So I started this Blog and I began to write. And I don’t want to forget that. Writing for this blog shouldn’t be stressful. It should be fun! I should have fun writing about Dragons and Knights and Aliens and Ghosts and everything else. I should enjoy writing these blogs so I can talk to all of you about what is going on with my life. I should have fun writing Poems and snippets of stories. I stressed myself out so much that I lost how much fun I was supposed to be having. So I just want to get back to basics. I just want to write more and enjoy doing it.

All of that said, I know I’m not going to be perfect. I’m going to spend too much time on my phone instead of reading a book. I’m going to eat that sweet that I’d be better off passing on. I’m going to make excuses to skip the gym. I’m going to get stressed out about writing and end up delaying a piece or just not writing anything at all. It happens. I’m human. We can’t be perfect. But as I keep that all in mind, I do think that I can impact my life positively by focusing on these three things. Even last year where I basically coasted for six months, I saw some positive change in different aspects of my life. I ended up reading six novels and several comics which was a huge boost from 2021. I worked out more and focused on my mental health more. I succeeded on a small scale. But this year I want to take that and run with it. More healthy choices! More books read! And more things written! All while having more fun doing it! 

Thank you so much for reading that Weekly Blog all about my themes for the year! I hope you enjoyed reading about my progress last year and my plan for this year. Like I said, I’m very excited to put my effort into making 2023 as good as it can be and I’m already working hard to make my themes my reality. How about you? Do you have any resolutions or themes for the new year? Did this Weekly Blog inspire you? Let me know in the comments down below. I’d love to hear about your goals. Also remember that it’s only mid-January. There’s still a lot of year ahead of us so if you don’t currently have a goal or theme, it’s definitely not too late to choose one or change it. Themes are fluid so they can change as you need them to be. If you really liked this Weekly Blog, feel free to give it a Like. Also if you are new here or don’t follow me here on WordPress, why don’t you change that. I’m trying to build a positive and creative space on the internet and Following me helps me grow that community. It’s not officially part of my yearly theme or goal or anything, but I am nearing 900 Followers and I’d love to hit that milestone this year. Maybe even 1,000 Followers too, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. If you liked what you read and want to see more of it, Following is the best way to make sure that the stuff I publish shows up in your reader feed. I really do appreciate all the love and support I get from my readers. It really means the world to me!

Thank you again for the support and I hope you have a wonderful week!

-Allen_The_Writer

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