Happy 1st July! Can you believe it's already the middle of the year? That means it's 100% acceptable to start counting down to Christmas people!

If I'm honest, it means I have also completely forgotten my New Year's resolutions for 2015. Did I even make any? Did you make any? Was this the year that I did the old my New Year's resolution is not to make any resolutions?

It is, of course, entirely possible that I was too busy to even remember to make resolutions this year. I would have been revising manically for my stats exam whilst trying to write essays and prepare to do my research project - phew! On top of that, New Year's Eve turned into a crazy little party chez moi which had been planned as a "quiet dinner with a few close friends" and turned into a four course extravaganza in which the fourth course was an entire bottle of port for some people and in which we managed to end up talking about clitoral piercings at the dinner table WITH MY PARENTS.

Needless to say, I was probably stressed beyond the point of even considering what my life goals for the year were (beyond finding sophisticated new friends that won't start discussing what metal does for your sex life with my mum).

And anyway, there's never a better time than the present to start reassessing and reorganising!

1. Keep on blogging

Source
Obviously this is probably top of most of your lists. I'm currently manically writing about 30 posts ahead of time so that the blog will still be regularly updated when I head to the middle of nowhere in Canada in a few weeks. During my final year of uni I completely let it slide and my readership really plummeted. I'm not a whizz with Twitter and I hardly know what I'm doing with Instagram but I'd at least like to keep this site updated and to comment back to all the lovely ones who leave me a little note under these posts - thank you!

2. Go travelling


This is a complete cheat resolution. Our month-long trip to the USA and Canada is all booked and afterwards I've got a week in France to look forward to with my family. Seeing as I haven't been anywhere except Italy for the last four years (I know, life is tough) I'm so excited about changing things up a bit.

3. Be more charitable

I'm a complete hypocrite. Whenever I'm walking around Milan and I see all these mega-rich people walking around with about twenty designer carrier bags positively drooping from their arms, I get on my high horse and begin thinking how it's such a shame that people will spend thousands in a day just to treat themselves to a fancy bag or pair of shoes when that amount could make a huge amount of change in others' lives. Time for me to wake up and realise that my life too is rather charmed compared to those of others - and to start practicing what I preach (in my head).
(Although last time I tried to do a good deed by giving away sandwiches to homeless people they all turned me down and I had to throw the sandwiches away in the end. Sad times).

4. Read more
Source
I love reading. I absolutely bloody adore it. I cannot pass a bookshop by without going in and practically sniffing the pages of all the books and thumbing through the recommended titles. I have a particular weakness for the Waterstones in Canterbury - that one manages to sell me at least three books per visit without the sales assistants even breathing a word. But I want to make sure that I dedicate quality time to reading - and stop going back to the same old chick lit in between Game of Thrones novels. The other day I spent at least 15 minutes patiently typing out titles and author names into my phone at a bookshop because the quality of the choices on their recommended shelf was just too bloody good. Now I need to get through that list! (And this one!)

5. Write more
Source
I don't know why I don't write more. Ok, I do know - it's because I never think it's good enough and I'm scared of my own criticism. I know that whatever I write one day will seem crap on another day. But I need to stick at it and I need to save the drafts because usually, whenever I read what I wrote the year before, I think it's ace (even if it is only an opening paragraph of the same tired story - I never get past it!) I came 2nd in the university's creative writing competition earlier this year which was such a confidence boost and I really hope I can stick it out and finish some more works and build up a little portfolio.

6. Control my weight
Source
Eek, a controversial one. Over the past few years, my weight has crept up by about 5kg. It might have something to do with the frequent trips to Italy, or that I started uni at that time or that I'm just getting a bit older and can't eat what I like all the time (sob). I'm still a healthy weight but if I let myself gain a kilo a year, that's not going to end well in 30 years! I'm a bit conflicted with this one because I know that weight and body image is so closely tied in to a media ideal that is unrealistic and utterly oppressive (I did my dissertation on this!) but at the same time, I want to look... a bit different. So I'm going to train with a focus on being strong and eat with a focus on giving my body the fuel it needs and see what happens.

Well I think that's enough for now! Are you still sticking to your resolutions?