Happy New Year! Topic: Resolutions

I spent Christmas and New Years by myself in my New York City apartment. I made friends with my roommate’s light-up flamingo. I’ve named him Sal.

Happy New Year! It’s my first blog post of 2021! Yay!

Today I want to talk about New Year’s resolutions. Personally, I really like making resolutions and I do try to achieve them throughout the year. So long as you make your resolutions fairly reasonable, it’s possible to achieve them. Full Disclaimer: I’ve never once achieved ALL my New Years resolutions for a year (but I also don’t think that’s the point).

As I see it, the purpose of New Year’s Resolutions is to give you an overall something to strive for during the year.

The only image I have on set of my February 2020 job as an extra on “The Politician” (Netflix).

For 2020, my resolutions were fairly reasonable at the start. I had wanted to read more, write more music, reach my goal weight, finish my book, and become a “full time” actress even if I still needed a day job. This was reasonable at the start because in January 2020, I was taking the L-line to get into Manhattan and, with delays that sometimes could last up to an hour, I’d just sit there and read. Also at that time, I had a minimum wage job that was fairly flexible, so I was able to fit a workout and a songwriting session into my schedule almost every day. I was also almost done with my book and going through the rigorous Atlantic Evening Conservatory.

Then…Covid happened.

Now I don’t want to blame Covid for everything, but I went back home to Seattle for four months, hit a depression, and ate a lot. So, come July when I came back to New York, I was starting at a disadvantage and had to work to get myself back to the same place I was at in January, both mentally and physically.

Sal and I sharing a pint of ice cream on my birthday.

Thankfully, I do think I pulled through. Even though I didn’t necessarily read *more* than last year, my passion for reading was re-ignited so I count that as an achievement. I finished my book, so that’s an achievement, I started recording a single that will be coming out in early 2021 (and I’m so excited for it!) so that’s another thing to cross off. The only resolutions that I wouldn’t count as achieved would be the weight one and the full-time actress one. That’s ok. Those were directly impacted by Covid so I won’t be lingering on it.

Now, for 2021 Resolutions.

This year, I’m trying a new way to do resolutions. I’ve chosen four “visions” for myself, and underneath them listed action items that I can do to reach those visions. They are subjective so, at the end of the year, I can take a reasonable look at what I’ve done in the year and accurately judge it. The idea is that, even if I don’t actually achieve the thing, if I did my absolute best, then that’s all I could do and that’s not a failure.

So, what are my 2021 visions? I won’t be revealing them till next year ;)

Happy New Year!

xx Selma