2020 – Goals and plans for the New Year

I’ve written a couple of reflective posts over the last couple of weeks. This one offering my personal thoughts and reflections of 2019 and this, a review of my blogging year. And now, on New Year’s Eve 2019 I turn to 2020 and my goals and plans for the coming year.

Last year at this time I bought myself a planner and used it reasonably well for the first 6 months or so. Really though I only planned a month at a time and kept rolling goals and plans forward. I was always going to lose weight, always going to earn money, to redesign my blog and write loads. But at the end of the year I am the same weight, earned only a small amount of money and my blog is exactly the same. So, my first goal is to use my new planner properly and to set longer term goals as well as short term ones. I’ve begun that process, which is how I am able to articulate them here in this post.

Goal number 2

I want to be fitter and healthier. This does involve losing weight, but is more about being fit for surgery. Which is likely to take place towards autumn 2020. I’ve been exploring changes to my diet and have been intermittent fasting for about 6 weeks (some weeks more seriously than others). This involves fasting for around 16 hours and eating during an 8 hour window. I’ve made no other real changes but have lost a few pounds. This year I am going to try to work out what foods are good for me and which are not. I’ve been swimming most weeks for 7 months or so and I want to step up the exercise regime now. This all brings me to goal number 3.

Goal number 3

A new blog. I’d been toying with the idea of starting something new about health and wellbeing. Something to help me along in meeting the challenge of getting ready for surgery. Marie messaged me to say she had been thinking of doing something similar, but wondered if I might want to do it. Great minds hey? So I got myself a new domain – because I want it to standalone from this and attract people who might not be interested in the stuff I write here. But also I wanted to give myself more accountability.

The past few weeks have been busy, so it is a bit less ready than I wanted. January will be about creating content, raising profile and getting people to visit and contribute. The purpose of Food and Fitness for Health is to promote a healthier lifestyle without becoming obsessed with thinness. I’m never going to be thin, but I do want to be healthy and I want others to share in that process. The blog will be about food – healthy food doesn’t need to be dull and boring. We all have to eat and can’t survive on salad and vegetables alone. We need chocolate, the occasional pizza, burgers. Because life isn’t just about physical wellbeing but emotional health too.

I’ve discovered exercise is good for me physically but also helps my mental health. It clears my mind of worries and confusion and allows me to function better.

I want people to share their stories about food, fitness and health. I want it to be a sex positive and body positive place, but it won’t be a sex blog as such. I hope that if you are reading this you will want to join me over there and contribute. More details on that to come.

Goal number 4

The time has come to take this blog to the next level, both in terms of content and style. In April it will be 8 years old and in February I will have been self hosting for 3 years. Early in the New Year I plan to start playing around with a new blog style and trying to make it as welcoming and fabulous as I can. Maybe creating a gallery of my photos, separating out types of posts etc.

In terms of content I want to focus on being able to pitch ideas for other sites and make some money. To do that I need to write content for the blog that is the same quality as it would need to be to pitch and sell. That I think is where the planning comes in. I’m writing this post to publish this afternoon and while I have thoughts about how it should end up it is being spontaneously written. That is how most posts are written and that will continue. But also I want to produce more research based and thoughtful writing both for MPB and Food and Fitness for Health. That takes time, but also provides an opportunity to schedule posts and to decide not to put them here but to pitch them elsewhere.

This brings me to Goal number 5 – Fiction

I want to write fiction, but need to be in the right head space and I think I am pretty much there. I am going to write a new fiction piece on MPB every month. I toyed with the idea of joining the Smut Marathon again but really don’t think I need to pressure. So, I’ll concentrate on writing here, though I may use some of the Smut Marathon posts. Instead of joining in I’ll commit to reading, commenting and voting on the entries. As well as reading more fiction written by my fellow sex bloggers since that helps with my own writing too.

Well, I think that’s enough to be going on with. So here’s to a successful blogging year in 2020 for me and for all of you lovely people who visit and who comment. Happy New Year!

Photo by Denise Karis on Unsplash