My 2020 Life Reset: Quarter 4 Update
Alright, y’all, this is it: my 2020 life reset, quarter 4 update! (ICYMI: My original 2020 life reset post, quarter 1 update, quarter 2 update, and quarter 3 update.) As you probably guessed, I’m not finishing on a high note with regards to these goals. I’m happy that I made it through 2020, but I laugh thinking about how optimistic I was in January and how much things have changed since then. I should have tabled my “life reset” after the first quarter. I did end up making a bit of a pivot halfway through 2020…
2020 Life Reset: Quarter 4 Update
1. Declutter and organize one room per month
Still haven’t been doing this, and our house is currently messier than usual due to the holidays, lol. Oops. It’s tempting for me to take a week off of work to knock out the whole house, but I know in reality that wouldn’t happen and I’d spend most of the time on the couch and/or working on blog stuff. I did sign up for The January Cure by Apartment Therapy again. Even though I may not (read: definitely won’t) get to every task, I enjoy reading them as they drop in my inbox every day and doing the tasks that don’t use a lot of time or brain power.
2. Use up products before buying new ones
This goal was my most accomplished of the year! It’s funny because growing up, I used to hoard products and NEVER used them. I’d receive a bunch of bath products as gifts and put them under the sink and then never use them. I think I was afraid of them running out? I’m not sure, exactly; I should probably ask a therapist about that. I’m now much better about using the products I have and am currently working through my large collection of random home and wellness products that sparked this goal in the first place. I also had a bad habit of opening multiple of the same type of product at the same time and not really finishing one, so I’m working on that, too. One at a time, use it up!
3. Learn how to and start investing
I’m still reading I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi; I’m in the chapter about investing, which I find highly boring so it’s slowed down my progress. But I did start investing this year! And I’m almost completely out of debt (haven’t had credit card debt in over a year; car is now paid off; student loans will be paid off before they go back into repayment and start accruing interest again). I kinda want to blog more about money things in the new year; would that be of interest? (Not that I consider myself a pro of course, just want to talk through money decisions and things as someone figuring out life!)
4. Figure out a better work/blog/life balance
This has somehow gotten worse over the past few months. I’m trying to juggle at lot at once when it comes to the blog: posting new content 3x a week, sharing consistently on Instagram, sharing new posts on Twitter and Facebook, doing Weather Wednesday in Instagram stories, making Instagram reels when I can (these take FOREVER), putting together an email newsletter every week, updating old blog content for SEO, setting up systems to help me cut down on how much time I spend on blog things… and so much more. I’m staying up later trying to get everything done. It’s not good.
You’d think with the extra time I have at home with my lack of commute would be helping in the work-blog-life balance, but it really hasn’t. I honestly couldn’t imagine trying to do all of this while also dealing with a commute! I hope to have this figured out before I’m back in the office, which sounds like could happen next spring or summer depending on the vaccine rollout.
5. Improve my mental health
Time got away from me this past quarter (read more on that below) but this is on my to-do list for 2021!
2020 Pivot: Blog Life Reset
So, overall…2020 wasn’t the best year for those particular goals. With the pandemic and more time at home/less time (and money) spent traveling, about halfway through the year, I pivoted my focus more onto blog things. I decided I wanted to start growing again; I noticed that my stats have been dropping since 2016 and it frustrated me.
Even though I didn’t exactly reset my life in the way I had envisioned I would in January 2020, I did kind of “reset” my blog life—I joined a coaching group, set real goals for my blog, tried to execute the goals with smaller tasks (still a work in progress as I’m not meeting the goals I was hoping to meet at this point, lol), learned WAY more about blog-related things (SEO, Pinterest, SEO for Pinterest, analytics, content calendars, social media, etc.—it’s endless), joined another blogging group/course, purchased a Pinterest course… It’s a lot! I’m trying to catch up with everything!
The best part of all these blogging groups is getting to chat with other bloggers! I have few blog friends and no one I talk to IRL about blog things, so it’s so nice to bounce ideas off of other bloggers and read what other bloggers are up to and discover how they solve problems.
I’m still not growing…at least, not as much as I’d like, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about 2021! I so appreciate YOU for reading—I know I say that a lot, but it truly means everything. I hope I can bring even more valuable content to CCCH next year and beyond! 🤗