2018: Self-Care, Ruts & Resolutions

2018 is freshly here which means new year new me attitudes are prevailing and resolution lists are pages long. Personally, I don’t believe in resolutions very much. I don’t believe in new year; new me, not because I’m a Grinch of sorts but because they never work out for me. I list new, unrealistic goals with no idea on how I'll achieve them then I don’ achieve them and sometimes I even regress in that area because I feel like a huge failure.

Does that sound familiar?

In the recent years, I’ve discovered that I prefer to use new years to revisit old goals and find new ways to accomplish them. Like many, I’m stubborn and set in my ways so sometimes I don’t realize that I’m in a rut and not accomplishing anything until I start reflecting. Often I do accomplish my goals but I ask myself how I can improve on what I've already done with what I now know.

One area of my life which I have been failing on, while simultaneously owning a business that specializes in this area (the irony!) is self-care. At the start of 2017, I wanted a spiritual victory in the self-care area before I actively started doing something about it. I’m 23 and my body is changing (again), I’m starting to get pimples for the first time in my life, my afro has decided that the oils I’ve been using no longer apply and I am really thinking about how I don’t want my black to crack. I’ve become very aware of the fact that I cannot take care of myself the same way I did as a teen.

So this year I am looking for a new skin routine, trying to make exfoliating a weekly habit, I’m trying to drink more water, I’m trying to find protective styles that work for me. Self-care also includes forgiving myself more often, spending more time with people I love, and most importantly NOT beating myself up for things that I did not accomplish. Basically, I’m trying to love ME better than ever before which should be interesting since I already love myself so much.

So this morning I woke up, I exfoliated my skin, shaved my legs, tended to my shedding uterus and I’m about to spend the day with a relative I haven’t seen in 3 years.

I think I'm starting the new year off right!

From mine to yours, happy new year!