I made no resolutions for the new year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me – Anaïs Nin

On 2 January 2013, I told myself that from that moment on, there will be no more new year resolutions for me. I’ll no longer be making bold statements about the things I want to do but ended up not doing. So I made it about hope. It was about what I hoped to do in 2013. And you know what? It worked. Most of it anyway.

Reflecting on 2013 and what I said I’d like to achieve in 2013, let’s see how I did, eh? 🙂

1. Consume less dairy
Did this and kicked dairy in the nuts! I switched my regular milk to soy milk and rice milk (sometimes even almond milk). My coffees taste better and I no longer feel bloated after my coffees. This has also significantly reduced motion sickness on trains after I’ve consumed coffee. I also have soy/rice/almond milk with my morning cereal, oats and/or muesli and they taste great. It’s difficult for me to go back to regular milk now.

2. Eat less sugar
I think I did pretty well in this department too. I didn’t quit sugar completely (don’t believe it’s healthy to skip sugar altogether) but I’m a lot more conscious about the amount of sugar I consume now. I still need a teaspoon of raw sugar in my coffees so in 2014, I hope to wean it off coffee. Oh hang on, I just had coffee with sugar just now. See? Resolutions, my Aunt Fanny. Next coffee, I promise. 😛

3. Not exercise any less
Oh I hit the ball out of the park with this one! If you know me well, you’ll know that I’m a terribly lazy bugger who hates exercising and even walking is a chore for me. In mid 2013, I decided to invest in a FitBit One. Many people called it a glorified pedometer and to tell you the truth, I was initially quite hesitant to get one. In the end, I bit the bullet and bought one. I figured that since it’s such an expensive device (to put things in perspective, my dad relies on his DAISO pedometer and it works just fine), I’d better get a lot of use out of it. And I did. I wear it daily now and feels weird if I don’t have it strapped to my bra strap. I try to hit 10,000 steps daily. On days I nearly do, I make myself literally walk that extra mile just to push the numbers over 10,000.

When I adopted Janey, I started walking even more. It may not be a lot but for someone like me who’s not a fan of exercising, it’s an improvement. My best walk so far was one particular day in Rome where I walked over 30,000 steps.

4. Bake more
Err, I taught Tim to bake and he baked lots of banana bread this year. Does that count? 😛

5. Weed out the negative and focus on the positive
I’m lousy at confrontations so I haven’t told many people off 😛 . A good start was to cull Facebook “friends” (went from 320 to 135), unfollowed negative people on Twitter, put on my big girl pants and decided once and for all to not let people walk all over me like a doormat. It feels pretty damn good.

6. Start a family
Still no baby. But we have a dog. It’s a good start.

What I look forward to in 2014

1. Call my family more often
One of the suckiest thing about living in Australia is that my parents and brother aren’t here. I’m very close to my family and it stinks that I’m 7 hours and 3 time zones away from them. I just don’t feel that I call them enough. Sometimes, I only speak to them once a week and that’s just not right.

2. Do a fun run
Instead of just saying I want to be fitter, exercise more and lose weight, I decided to try something new this year that will force me to get my patootie off the couch. I haven’t been bitten by Tim’s running bug but I would like to push myself this year to be able to do at least one 5km fun run. After seeing how much fun Norlin had at the Color Run, I’m hoping to participate in one this year. Will start with a Couch to 5K program first because I really need that help first. 😛

3. Attend an international blogging conference
I’ve been wanting to do this for a couple of years now. My aim is BlogHer. I know that some (or even a lot) of the content may not be relevant to me but to be a part of it would be an amazing experience. It could be a long shot but hey, you never know. Fingers crossed. However, if it isn’t possible for me to travel to the US for the conference, then at the very least I’d like to attend the Problogger Event this year. I attended the one in 2012 but missed the 2013 one, which I heard was even better.

4. Launch a new blog design
I’ve been working on this for the past couple of months and hopefully I’ll be able to show you what it is very soon. Beautyholics Anonymous has been rocking the same frock for 3 years now. It’s time for a change, don’t you think?

5. Grow my blog design projects
I don’t know if you know this but I’ve actually been dabbling with web design and tech support for years ever since I started blogging. I was pretty nervous when I finally decided to charge for my services because I didn’t think people would want to pay for something they can probably Google solutions for. I’m so glad that when I announced my services on the blog in 2013, it was very well received. It was only a couple of days after the announcement that I got my first client and it’s been doing pretty well since. This year, I hope to grow the number of blog design projects to at least double of what I had in 2013.

6. Meet with blog readers
I had the pleasure of meeting up with several blog readers (most of whom aren’t bloggers) in 2013 and it was a lot of fun. Each meet up was like a blind date because you never really know what to expect. I’ve never met them before yet they already know what I look like. They turned out to be successful blind dates so this year, I hope to meet up with more of you. If time permits, I’d love to do personal meet-ups (where I just catch up with one reader at a time). Is this something you’d be interested in? I don’t want to sound like I’m too big for my breeches or something here. 😛 Do let me know.

I like to set myself attainable goals and these look pretty all right to me (just need to start saving for #2 in, like, last year!). Start the year with hope and then keep the momentum going. That’s what my motto for 2014 is. I’ve got more specific goals for the blog but I’ll share that in a Bloggie Wednesdays post soon. 🙂

What’s the one thing you’re looking forward to in 2014?