Hi there!

Another month means another set of goals to work towards.

April was a very mixed bag with my mini goals – I think I’m finding work very overwhelming at the moment and between that, bank holidays coming out my ears (I find not knowing which day of the week it is very confusing) and trying to main some semblance of a social life (badly) is burning me out and I’m only just managing to keep up with everything I have to do day to day, let alone something I want to achieve over the course of a month.

But I’ve reevaluated how I make my to do lists and I’m trying to reframe my mental attitude to not fill every moment with doing something – being ‘productive’ or pushing myself too far. It’s clearly a work in progress because I went to a drive through car wash and whilst my car was being cleaned, I did my daily Duolingo lessons so I could tick that off my list, but I am working on it!

So I took this approach when setting my monthly goals – I took the time to figure out what was actually achievable and what would help to benefit me in the long run. This is what I came up with:

Pick a new Professional Goal – one of my professional goals for the year was to learn a software called AfterEffects so I could include more animations and graphics in the videos I produce at work. But since then my role has adapted and now that we have more editors on the team, I don’t actually edit videos anymore (which absolutely suits me and my strengths, I want to clarify I am not complaining about this 😂). But as my role has adapted and this goal isn’t relevant, I want to decide on something else to aim towards by the end of the year that is relevant, beneficial to my career and achievable. Rather than just picking a new goal out of thin air, I set this goal so I can dedicate the time to research the skillset around the career path my job is now taking and figuring out what can help me learn and be better at it!

Wow, that was a bit long winded.

Make one piece of content a week for a new project – I’ve been meaning to try something new for a really long time and I know now that if I don’t set myself actual deadlines than I will not do the thing, so I’m aiming to make one piece of content for a new project I’m working on a week and I’m hoping it’ll inspire me to make more content more regularly going forward.

Wedding – rings and invites – My wedding is now less than six months away and I still can’t say the word ‘husband’ without feeling like I’m playing pretend. This month’s goals are to buy our wedding bands and send our invites – the invites have been ordered we just need to finalise the guest list and write them all. There’s also a couple of extra bits like getting in touch with a make-up artist, getting in contact with my florist and planning anything that I’m going to make for the day but those are just chugging along in the background.

Plan museum/concert/new place trips – Another instance of planning to plan a goal – on my ‘bucket list’ goals for this year is to go to a museum, go to a concert and go to a new place but it’s easy to say those things, but actually doing them is another thing entirely! At the end of last month we booked our mini-moon for after the wedding (we’re going to go on a proper honeymoon when it’s not November and the weather will be nicer) and it’s a place neither of us have been before, so that’s the planning for that one ticked off! The concert, I’ve not seen that any artists I’m particularly interested in are touring, but there’s still time! And I really want to go to the Victoria and Albert museum, so just need to plan a day that my partner and I are both free to take off and go to London for the day!

And my monthly goals are: read three books, save money (done), date night and do a craft project. I’ve nearly finished my first audiobook of the month so I do feel like I’m slowly creeping out of my reading slump!

I can’t believe we’re five months into the year and I absolutely can’t believe that I’m getting married in six months – how mad is that? Time is absolutely flying at the moment!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx