Happy New Year, Gorgeous! How did you find the festive break? It was a strange one for James and I, who found ourselves suddenly thrown into Tier 4 with no time to prepare! However, we still managed to create some festive joy through music, virtual escape games, long walks at golden hour and our own take on Christmas dinner. How did you celebrate yours?

I always set aside a couple of weeks off over the festive season to switch off and relax, which provides me with some much-needed headspace to reset and refocus for the coming months. This makes January a great time for setting some New Year Intentions – both business and personal – that I can hold myself accountable to, throughout the year. Obviously, last year was… dare I say it… unprecedented… and 2021 is starting at a much slower pace with national lockdown affecting many of us around the world! But I do find working towards a goal or target really helps me in the early months of the year, so I figured I’d share my list of New Year Intentions, both business and personal, today and how I’m going to achieve them in small manageable chunks. I’m sure you’ll keep me to account on them, and hope that it might inspire you too!

A new website

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working behind the scenes on a brand new website that showcases my skills as a branding specialist, covering everything from personal branding, logo design, brand consultancy and mentoring services. For those of you that didn’t know, illustration and design were what I studied for my degree all those moons ago, and it’s really exciting to be re-connecting with that part of my life. Getting the new brand to a place where it’s ready to launch has been a labour of love and, at times, difficult to concentrate on whilst battling the curveballs of Covid-19, but doing it page by page and writing down an epic to-do list for it has really helped. I’m so close to finishing that to-do list and hitting the launch button, so keep your eyes peeled for that announcement! If you’re not already on my mailing list, sign up in the sidebar of this blog to be the first to hear all about it!

Cut down my screen time

I’m sure many of us are guilty of looking at social media too much, but with doom-scrolling now a recognised activity, I took time over the festive break to set up Screen Time and Down Time limits on my phone to reduce the time I spend per day in my inbox as well as on social media apps and news websites. I’m only a week or so in and it’s definitely taking some willpower, but I’ve noticed it’s already making drastic positive changes to my mental health. Plus, I’ve got an abundance of extra time to spend reading books, going for walks and listening to a podcast instead!

Better work/life balance

A seemingly never-ending goal with ever-changing boundaries, am I right? I’m going to remind myself of this boundary more often and enforce set work time and non-work time. To start with, I’ve set my phone to stop sending me any work notifications of any kind on a Sunday, as well as agreeing with my Queen of Socials (Sali) that we have a ‘no work talk’ day.

Learn Calligraphy

One of my personal New Year Intentions for 2021 is to learn calligraphy! Especially now that I’ve cut down my screen time, I’m setting aside half an hour a day to get my lettering on, having invested in a calligraphy book from Lucy Edmonds of Quill London. It’s been super therapeutic to spend some time each day focusing on it and I’m already noticing improvements in a matter of days! You can find regular updates of my endeavours in my Instagram stories.

Expand Patreon With A New Tier

I can’t believe I set up my Patreon just under a year ago! It was a New year Intention of mine last year to set one up (tick!), but this year I want to expand on it with some new offerings, in particular a tier for photographers, where you can learn about lighting, posing, retouching and business tips, as well as the opportunity to pick my brain on all things related. If you’re interested, keep an eye out on my Patreon for its arrival (and maybe consider supporting me via one of the other tiers in the meantime!)

What are your New Year Intentions?

Let me know in the comments below!