Hello everyone! Today, I wanted to sit down and have our first coffee chat of 2021!

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I’ve started enjoying a bag of Columbia ground coffee recently, so I’m brewing myself a cup of that today! A simple start to this new year I suppose!

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If we were having coffee I’d tell you, how excited I am to be working in my new bullet journal! There are several reasons for this. One, I think I really had fun experimenting in my 2020 bujo but towards the end I felt annoyed that I was keeping up pages or spreads that I wasn’t really using just for the sake of keeping the months consistent. I did change some stuff through the year, but I just really needed the fresh start of my new bujo. Two, this one is much more minimalistic I think, or at least it’s supposed to be! So I don’t feel the pressure to make it crazy or anything. Three, it’s super fun to share my bujo on my YouTube channel periodically, so I’m so excited to be able to keep sharing it quarterly with everyone. I hope you guys have enjoyed those videos and will continue to do so if you do!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, that it finally feels like winter here in Northern Illinois. We’ve had snow already but it melted quickly, and now we finally had the first bit that has really stuck and it seems like it will for awhile. It was a big enough storm that I had a warning on my phone for nearly a full day. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to go out into the storm for any reason and could stay home. I hate driving in snow so honestly I would stay home just to avoid it even without a pandemic. I had a coworker once who would quote her grandma about snow, and I’m going to borrow it from her. She’d always say “if it’s snowing, I ain’t going!” and honestly, MOOD.

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, that the end of last month was also the end of camp cuddles holidays edition! My puppy niece went home with my sister at the end of last month. I miss the little dog so much. She was always down for a cuddle session, and she was like a little shadow keeping me company. We also greatly enjoyed our daily walks and play time. I am totally looking forward to her next visit already (date to be determined LOL).

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, Christmas was so nice and low-key this year. Typically it is anyway but it’s different when it has to be, I think. It was still nice though although I found it difficult to find gifts for everyone. I wanted to keep gifts small but practical and useful. In the end, I think my family did enjoy the gifts I got them, but it’s pretty clear we don’t really know what we all want as I don’t think anyone really got what they wanted. Not to say we are ungrateful, not at all! We all did like our gifts in the end but I don’t think it’s stuff we would have bought for ourselves anyway so maybe next Christmas I’ll suggest we do “wish lists” or something? That could work!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, I’m planning to do the Yoga with Adriene (I might have spelled her name wrong) 30 day yoga challenge again! Last year I did complete the challenge but I didn’t do it in 30 days. I think it was over the course of 3 months since I started in January, stopped when I travelled to Houston and later Mexico, did it sporadically once I was home in February and into March, then completed the challenge in March when lockdown began. This time I’m hoping to complete each day’s video on that day to do it in 30 days, or at least in less time than 3 months if I do end up skipping a day here or there!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, goal setting for 2021 was weird this year. I’ll explain more in my next post as I’ll share some of my goals then but it felt like it was mostly a roll-over of the uncompleted 2020 goals that were affected by the lockdown and pandemic in a way. For example, one of my goals was to “get out more” which obviously didn’t happen! While it looks like the pandemic may be under control at some point this year in the US, maybe around summertime, it’s still up in the air ultimately since the US government has been terrible at keeping the outbreaks under control. So I didn’t want to set myself up to fail if the lockdown does keep going but also didn’t want to be super pessimistic about it either. It was hard to set the goals but I think I reached a good balance of attainable and reach goals in the end!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, I recently discovered a new reading tracker website called “Story Graph”. I saw a TikTok about how Goodreads is actually owned by Amazon, so ad money on that site goes to that big corporation that hasn’t supported Goodreads in any meaningful way. Plus, lost of people are moving away from Amazon, which I am trying to do too as I never really was into the company anyway. Story Graph is, according to the TikTok video I saw, women-owned and much better in terms of providing good recommendations based on what you enjoy as well as providing cool stats. All of those things pushed me to export my Goodreads data and upload it to Story Graph. I couldn’t find an app on the Google store for it so I’m not sure if they have one at all, but I’m excited to try it out in 2021! I made my username “StarringPamela” on there too if you want to look for me, since I think they have a similar friends feature as Goodreads. Oh! They also allow partial stars for ratings, I think the smallest you can do is 0.25, so that’s exciting!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, that I’ve decided to sell my car! My sister needed a car back in November because she wanted to avoid public transportation when virus numbers were rising rapidly. So I let her borrow my car as I wasn’t really using it. She’s ended up liking my car so much she said she wanted to buy it! So now I don’t have a car anymore which seems crazy but also phew, I don’t have to pay for it anymore in terms of insurance or anything when I’m barely using it! Eventually I’ll get a new car, probably after I get a new job (I want a virtual job so I won’t need one right away I hope). I do remember I joked about getting a Cybertruck back when it was announced so many it’s time to bring back that joke!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, that my goal of live with intention seems to be doing well in the continued lockdown. I sort of did a bit of a break from everything for the holidays, namely job hunting, because its’ such a bad time to job hunt in general. I didn’t even hear back on most jobs I applied to in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, much less the few leading up to Christmas. But now I’m totally rested and ready to begin the search again!

If we were having coffee I’d tell you, that positivity is a forerunner this year again! My “resolution” of sorts is to remain positive in the continued lockdown and try to keep that attitude going through the year! It is tough when I’m on social media at times and see people still living really cool lives through work or something, but everything happens for a reason and I’m sure that everything will fall into place eventually for me, as well as for everyone else!

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Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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