Annual Review 2024

Happy New Year! 🎉

2024 was a much quieter year than 2023, I didn’t make any Big Moves in my life, other than proposing of course! I didn’t move house or change jobs, but as I settled into the first full year of my role it did get a lot more intense, and at times stressful, than my old one was (in a good way I think, it has provided the challenge I wanted!).

2024 also marked the first full year of living with my partner, now fiancée. It’s now been 18 months of living together, and it’s been great (clearly, I did propose!) but I think the change in routine and lifestyle (along with those brought by the new job) is still something I’m grappling with when it comes to exercise, diet and self-care and that continues to be reflected in my aspirations for 2025!

If I was to pick a mantra for the new year (and my entire life) it would be: MAKE IT EASY!

Get fitter and stronger

I don’t want to get bogged down in my failures from 2024, but suffice it to say I did not meet any of my health and fitness goals, not even to consistently get out of bed by 7 am on work days! If I actually did get out of bed then most of the time I’d still not exercise, and just end up on the sofa downstairs watching TV while I drank tea!

I have a plan to motivate myself coming into the new year and I want to write a post detailing that at a later date, but in short I want to work on building simple routines for strength and moderate cardio exercise into my week. I also want to get more organised and on top of healthy diet options to keep me away from the biscuits!

Feel good about myself

I don’t feel good in my body and that’s being reflected in my mood and the way I present myself. I honestly think I’ve not quite finished processing the changes 2020 brought to my lifestyle, particularly with the switch to working from home. My routines completely changed, and I stopped having to get up and make myself presentable to leave the house on a daily basis. I used to have a put-together outfit and hair done every day of the week, but now I’ll be in soft elasticated trousers with an oversized jumper most of the time, and my hair will just be barely combed and shoved up with a claw clip (though going out with the ponytail is itself breakthrough!). I think that seeing myself dressed like a slob 90% of the time has taken a toll, especially with gaining weight and losing strength and fitness. I just feel like a blob.

A lot of my old clothes don’t fit me because I’ve gone up a dress size, and looking at them in my wardrobe while I struggle with adjusting to being in a different body doesn’t feel helpful. I am older now and my body has changed along with my life, so I need to let the clothes of Past Alice go so I can build a wardrobe of clothes that I feel comfortable in now. I want to focus on selling or donating all the clothes and shoes that do not fit me, don’t suit me or that I just don’t have any occasion to wear any more.

Once I’ve cleared the space I can work on finding clothes that are comfortable and that I feel stylish and good about myself in.

I want to improve my skincare (moisturise more consistently!) and be better about my hair too. It’s long again for the first time in a decade so I have a lot more options to mix things up! I would love to learn how to do a French (or Dutch) plait as I think that could be an easy way to tidy up my hair without having to straighten it all the time!

Improve our home

This also extends to my environment as well, I’ve gotten into lazy habits with keeping my office tidy and my dressing table/wardrobe space in the bedroom.

We did make some excellent progress with redecorating the house in 2024! We got our beautiful new fitted wardrobes and redecorated the bedroom. I love our bedroom now! We planned, and bought, everything for the new bathroom as well which unfortunately kept getting delayed by events outside our control but should be happening in February now… hopefully.

I did a huge amount of work in the garden and now it looks so much better! That was very satisfying! I’m excited to continue planting up and refining things in 2025 (including cutting down the bloody holly trees I’m sick of!).

For 2025, we have plenty of things on the list: fixing the lights the mice chewed through(!), getting a new sofa and potentially redecorating the living room.

A new car?

We also are looking to get a new car, my fiance would like something that is more comfortable for long journeys than my basic 10-year-old Fiesta. He really misses automatic drive and cruise control (I’ve never had it, so I don’t know what I’m missing)! It would be nice to have this before the long drive up to Scotland to get married! We’ve been enjoying having mini breaks in the UK, and would both love to go back to Wales, so it seems more important to have a comfortable car to travel in now we can afford it.

I’ve also gotten more anxious about driving since we started living together and I have to do less of it myself, which has also started to make me feel anxious about being ‘useless’ because my partner does so much for me! I have never enjoyed driving and always would let somebody else do it if they offered, but it’s one of those things I have to keep doing! I have a little hope that a nicer, newer car might encourage me to get back behind the wheel myself more because when I briefly had a spanking new Peugeot 208 as a hire car a couple of years ago that was fun to drive… once I worked out how to get it into reverse.

If I could make driving more enjoyable and less stressful for myself, that would remove one of my mental barriers when it comes to planning social activities.

Keep battling my social anxiety!

I feel like I didn’t see my friends in person as much in 2024 as I should have. Particularly in the last 3-4 months as the weather changed and my mood dipped I’ve been very anti-social in general. We did have some family, and my partner’s friends, over to our house but never any of my friends.

I think because of my lowered self-esteem my anxiety has been more sensitive, especially when it comes to my long-time group of friends. I do struggle with how different our lives are now, and I am not always good at knowing how to deal with that and can get caught up in my head about it. Sometimes the issues with making myself heard in a group (as I wrote about after the Christmas party this year) are part of it too.

This year though, with the wedding, we have some things planned that I’m hoping will be a nice little reset. A weekend away without children or partners should be quality time in May, and then a special post-wedding grown-up evening out as we have not done in far too long.

Speaking of the wedding my goal there is just to enjoy it! Relax and enjoy the special time with my partner and our family.

I would also love to find a new social group to join, but that’s proving difficult to find. I also will keep trying to get to know the people I work with better, that’s a slow process because around work we don’t get much free chitchat time! We will have a new starter in the team so, despite my anxiety over how that is going to impact the team dynamics, I want to try to make an effort there to make them feel as welcome as I did when I was the newbie last year.

Keep on blogging

Every year I keep this blog (all 2!) I love it more. I really feel like it has clicked in the past year and I get it, I get why I am doing this and what I want it to be.

I have massively grown in the number of views compared to last year, and I went from 4 to 34 WordPress subscribers (I love you all, thank you!). I try not to think about that stuff though, it starts to freak me out!

I’ve had such a great time since I found Top Ten Tuesday, and before that I did WeBlogPoMo, I would like to do more blogger community challenges in 2025. They’re a good motivator and a really amazing way to discover new blogs to follow!

I was planning to kick off by trying Bloganuary but it seems like WordPress isn’t running it this year (no announcements to be found). Their prompts are usually intensely cringe so that might not be the worst thing, I could always just try to post whatever I want as much as possible this month!

If anyone has a list of blogging challenges I’d love it if you’d share below, I’m trying to get a list together!

If you want to read my review of my reading activity in 2024 you can do so in this post!