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Resolutions

It is very rare for me to actually remember what my new years resolutions are. I set them and instantly forget them, blithely continuing through January as if they had never even crossed my mind. I don't expect this year to be any different; therefore, instead of resolutions, I am more thinking of my generic, pre-conceived notions of future success. As in, things I'm already working on and hope to continue doing next year.

• Japanese: Next year I'll hopefully finish the Quartet II textbook. I'm also planning on taking the N5 (and maybe N4) JLPT tests. I'm expecting to absolutely breeze through N5, but I'm frankly scared of the test so I want to take the easiest one first and get my bearings.
• Finances: I'm out of debt now, yay! So next year I hope to just keep accruing that good shit. My aim is actually to worry less about money; I have a tendency to obsess about staying on budget, fail slightly, and then completely give up once I go over the budget threshhold. Which is obviously not a useful way to act - there is actually a difference between ten and a hundred dollars over budget... So next year I'm going to try and relax a bit. Unfortunately my wages didn't move with inflation this year, meaning I've effectively taken a pay deducation, but I was already well above the NZ living wage so I'm okay with that.
• Personal growth: This year I watched ~127 movies and read ~80 books. Next year I aim to watched 100 movies again, and I'm upping my yearly book aim to 60. Getting off social media has been great for this, but so has the fact that I haven't nearly been drawing as much recently. In 2023 I drew an OC over 100 times (yes, I counted) and this year I doubt I'll have done more than 50 artworks. Not terrible numbers, but personally disappointing. My art has felt rather stagnant and I'd quite like to attend a class or something like that. Maybe even get into traditional art more! I really love working with oil pastels so I think that could be quite fun.
• Neocities: This website is still in the process of being built, but the skeleton is fully in place. From here on the only changes are additional pages, blog posts, and occasional quality of life improvements. I'm hoping to add more shrines, create more buttons and stamps, and create a directory that I can fill with my personal essays, poems and fanfiction. It is freeing leaving social media, but it also means there's nowhere to put the stuff I make. I still have social media brain so I want to see the funny number (website viewers) go up...