Goodbye 2017, Hello 2018!

Here we are again, another new year but its no new me (I don't care for that sh*t) NOPE,  its the same me. I still have no idea where all the time went. I vividly remember being at this same state of mind and seeing the same situations at work as last year. I remember feeling a little bit more empowered though and this beginning of the year I feel a little bit more reserved, a little bit less of myself.

2017 could only be summed up by two words: BUSY and EXHAUSTED. I was consistently busy at work, I often described my day as busy, my work schedule? BUSY. Everything was just busy, busy, busy. My mental state? EXHAUSTED. Physically? EXHAUSTED. I was overrun and overworked. I spent more time at my job than enjoying some time away. I was in a never ending cycle of eat, sleep, work, repeat. I felt like I never had any free time. And when I did have free time it was filled with errands and chores. Things that I didn't quite enjoy but things that I just had to get done otherwise it would pile up on my TO DO list. I very seldom got to travel, there wasn't any time to explore new places. Even my husband was busy with his job. It was definitely a year of work.

Last year had a lot of downs but it definitely had a lot of ups. I found myself being able to focus on improving my skills through experience at work. I got to learn new areas, meet new people, and even train new associates a bit more that I've had in awhile. On the days when I would finish errands early, I got enjoy a little down time, catching up on reading some favorite books. And when my husband got his new schedule at work, I found a lot more days where I was able to spend evenings with him, cooking our favorite dishes, watching our favorite shows, and having more movies nights in 😊😊😊 Those little moments always outweighed any bad days I came across.

At the end of the year in 2017, (even though I had a strong sense of it in my mind the past months) I made the ultimate decision that I needed a few changes in my life. Like the people I let into my life, my lifestyle, my career, my well being....pretty much a lot of things in my Life that I would like to see improve. So slowly, I began to implement some changes. I began to declutter and donate more. I began to save and spend less. I began to cook more instead of eating out. Small steps but a big impact that helped me change habits or improve upon them.

With a lot of that being said, 2017 was alright.
                    I've let that year go
and its time to bring on the greatness in 2018!!!

Clean.

So here it is, 2:16pm on a Tuesday late afternoon.
I'm sitting here at home on my day off.

And just like every other day off I plan my day accordingly...I make plans and I break the plans. Instead of waking up early and following through with errands...I sleep in and end up waking up naturally. Wishing I woke up at a decent hour in the morning. I do some mundane errands around the apartment, Like washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and clearing the expired foods in the cabinets. Never mind that its the holidays and I really should be on task for any last minute stocking stuffers, gifts, and prepping Christmas cards to be sent out. But the past months has been filled with work. Working a lot and working odds hours that has made the rest of this year exhausting. I never feel rested for a new day and I never feel I've accomplished much because of that exhaustion and not feeling up to doing the things that I want to do.

I haven't been sleeping well at all. I have all these ideas and goals that haven't been put to light, just sitting at the back of my brain, playing over and over in my mind as I try to sleep at night. A few months back I decided to get a journal to document why I can't sleep. And I know for a fact that only I am to blame because I allow myself to give up when I'm too tired or when something feels to complicated. So then projects of mine get started but they are never finished, and so they just sit. Sit for months just like the material things that I have come to accumulate over the years. The things that I have purchased in hopes to make myself happy, only its just temporary. And so they sit. Collecting dust, never seeing the light of day again.

These past months I've been trying to change that. Trying to get back on track. I'm the type of person that has to rely on things to motivate me, whether its watching someone on YouTube clean up their space, or looking at photos on Pinterest to give myself ideas where to start. All the elusiveness probably has you wondering, where the heck am I going with this? I basically felt myself drowning in chaos. Whether its at home, in thoughts, or at work. I've come to find that I'm letting myself get to a point where I don't care. In most cases, that is a wonderful idea. In my case, I've been needing to do major clean up. Because like I've said...I've let things go but I've let things pile. I've let material things clutter up my closet, my workspace, my kitchen....But I'm in the process of getting this clean.

I want to live simple.

The older I get, the more I am realizing there are so many things I don't need, I have never needed, and that I wasted money on buying (especially since I haven't used quite a bit of things). I started reading the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I had heard wonderful things about when I was searching of ways to start cleaning or how to declutter. Though I'm not quite doing it the way the book suggests, I've recently started to clean areas of my life and starting to think in ways that I should have a long time ago.

In conclusion, I wanted to document my journey through the KonMari method of cleaning. So I hope that in my sharing this, it will help you as well if you are trying to declutter your surroundings and Life. And with that being said, my journey will be in full gear for the new year. So I hope for greater opportunities and less clutter.

xo, J.