New Year’s Day: Thoughts, Projects, and Resolutions.

Hello, my dearest friends! I hope that today is treating you well. Can you believe that it’s NYE? Although changes are, by the time I click publish on this post, it will have been 2020 for quite some time. This NYE feels a little extra monumental because it’s the beginning of a brand new decade.

It will be my second NYE with Bobby and I am so tickled to be able to spend it with him. It’s so tempting to daydream our lives away and I surely am guilty of doing this, daydreaming of spending new years in a future house with our future children, but it’s important to enjoy this one, this one right here. Enjoy our first one as husband and a wife.

The next day…

Hello again, friends! How was your night? I hope that it was fun, safe, and that you were able to spend it with some of your favorite people. Bobby and I had a great night with our friends, eating lots of goodies and watching the movie Us. Bobby and I had seen it before, but our friends hadn’t, so it was fun seeing their reactions to it. I’ve been wanting to compile a list of the movies that I saw in theaters this year, because I found myself at the theater quite a bit. So many blog ideas, so little time…

This morning I made Bobby and me the yummiest little breakfast. I even went hog wild and bought some orange juice to go along with it. I’ve been making us breakfast bagels a lot lately, but when we last went to the store, all they had was cinnamon raisin bagels, so we decided to give English muffins a go. They were very delicious, although I think bagels are still my favorite.

I toasted the English muffins, put generous amounts of cream cheese on both sides, added a couple of chunks of cheese, placed an egg on top, and added some sausage that I had halved. They were very delicious. Paired with a big cup of coffee AND orange juice, it was the perfect first meal of 2020.

Today I also decided to take my typewriter out of hiding. I had left it behind at my mom’s and had sort of forgotten about it until I noticed it in my old closet. I brought it home, promptly put it in my closet at my apartment and just as quickly forgot about it. I decided today, the first day of 2020, would be a good day to bring it back out. I found myself getting increasingly more and more frustrated with it, as I couldn’t get the ribbon working as it should. I googled it, I watched Youtube videos, but in the end, I was best able to get it up and running when I just went about doing it myself. I’ve had this typewriter since I was a tween, picking it up at a rummage sale, but I had only ever changed the ribbon once. I remembered how to do it, oh so vaguely, but mostly I remember being frustrated by the whole thing. What a joyous thing, my friends, I was able to get it going today. By the end of it, I certainly had writer’s hands, my fingertips stained completely with ink.

After that I wanted to try my hand at taking some self-portraits. I used to take lots of photos of myself, mostly selfies, but nowadays I find it harder and harder to take a good picture. There are many photos of myself that will not see the light of day. And that’s okay. Photos are fun to take, but I end up feeling unbearably self-conscious when I decide to take one of myself. I worry little about the photo itself and the story it tells, rather I end up worrying, “Do I look pretty?” “Too serious?” “Am I terribly vapid for caring at all?”

This round of self-portraits I tried to think a little bit differently. Let these photos be what they are, moments in time, me at age 22, January 1st, 2020.

I don’t have to take a picture of every pimple, every under eye circle, or every makeup mishap. Nor do I have to document my daily outfit, good hair day or every makeup look. There’s nothing wrong with documenting our lives, but we shouldn’t feel as if we have to document EVERYTHING. I like having photos to look back on, but so many photos that I’ve taken have been completely forgotten, and frankly, once found, they simply were put into the trash.

Sorry, as always, for the tangents that I go on. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to be intentional with the photos that I choose to keep, but I want to keep my perfectionism at bay. It’s a big resolution of mine for this year.

Speaking of resolutions, here are mine for the year.

Read more. I mentioned this in my last post, but I really want to begin reading more. Reading keeps me creatively hungry, which is something that is very important to me.

Write more. I struggle with perfectionism so much that I’d almost rather write nothing than write something bad. This is not a good way to be. This is not how I want to be. I want to write like I did when I was a child. All imagination and passion.

Spend less time on my phone. This will probably be a resolution for the rest of my life, but I really do want to put my phone down more. I spend my weekends on my phone and then I wonder where all my time went.

Try new creative outlets. Once again, I find my perfectionism to be quite paralyzing when trying new things. The thought of being bad at something makes me not want to try it at all. This year I want to jump into learning new things without overthinking it.

Spend more time outside. I love spending time amongst the trees, but I have the hardest time getting myself to go outside sometimes. I know I’ll have a great time, I know I’ll feel happier, but I still don’t do it. My goal for this year is to grab my hiking boots and wander the woods more often.

That’s all I have for you today, my dearest friends. I hope that you enjoy these blog posts that are more so just ramblings and the things I get up to on a daily basis.

XOXO,

Mattie Mae