A New Year of Blogging...

This time last year, I made a few New Years Resolutions for the first time ever. One of which was to post weekly on my blog; a goal that I managed to stick to for most of the year. However, after 6 months or so, my ideas became rushed and generic as A Levels became more intense and my creativity was nulled by the stress and exhaustion. The Creative Writing side of my University course has helped somewhat to revive my creative flow. I knew that this year my main goal for my blog was to firstly pull more passion into my writing and, secondly, to expand my audience. For my New Year post, I want to share with you how I plan to achieve that. 

 Firstly, one thing I have missed since leaving college is the free periods I would have stuck in Stratford that led me to a coffee shop or cafe to just sit. I would read, write or study. Whatever needed doing. The thing about living at University is that when I am provided with hours like that, it's all too tempting to just go back to my flat and waste the rest of my day. I don't know what it is about home but, for me, it just isn't the place for productivity. So, in the New Year, I have made it my goal to take myself out every week for a coffee and a walk and to just sit and write blog posts and read. It wont ever be a time for doing my University work, it will be my creative time and it will be a priority. 

 I have purchased a few things to help with this plan and to maintain a level of creativity in my every day life. 

 Journaling is always something I have wanted to do. I love the look of journals and I love documenting my life; however, journaling in itself seems quite overwhelming to me. I find it hard to know where to start and I always seem to just get bored writing down everything that happened each and every day. 

 I recently was browsing in PaperChase with a friend when we stumbled upon their journal collections. My student budget at the time urged me not to buy any but two had caught my eye that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since. 

 The first is a black Dream Journal with a gold snake feature on the front. I have had a lot of vivid and strange dreams lately which would make good creative pieces given time to think about them. I love this Journal because it has two sections; one is very structured with themes and titles, the other is more flexible. I love the idea of documenting dreams so that you can remember them later. Your brain is at it's most active when you're sleeping which, as a writer, makes it so important that you can somehow gain something from that lost time.

 The second is called an AM/PM Journal. It's a sort of bullet journal that sets you tasks each morning and evening. It invites you to reflect on your day and your mindset and I thought that filling this in on days when I have Creative Writing modules would really help enhance my thought processes ready for the sessions. 

 Both of these journals are beautiful and will come in so handy over the next year in taking my blog somewhere new.

 I want to share a lot more creative pieces here as well as making my blog more focussed on books. I am thinking of rebranding my layout also. It has been three years since I started this blog and it's remained at the same level. I'm ready for it to grow a little now and really do something with it. 

For any of you who have been here since the beginning, thank you. I hope you will still enjoy where I take things. 

 Chloe.