A 2025 Mindset

The earth spins once more and another year rolls in. I am yet again sat in my bedroom wondering just what I am doing with my life.

I’ve evolved a lot in 2024. I’m starting to gain some confidence, something I never thought I’d manage. It helps having people around me singing my praises. You know that saying that’s like ‘say it enough and they’ll believe it’ that’s usually applied to bullying, I think it works for the positive stuff too. It’s my career mindset that has developed the most. Stepping into the editorial team on my university’s paper has been an absolute God send. I’m loving it, I really am. I’ve had so many conversations with different people in the team reflecting on if the job is what we expected of it, and it isn’t really, but it’s been such an incredible insight. I have learnt that I can manage people, that I am not useless, and I am approachable and friendly. I am capable of so much more than I originally thought, and I have met so many incredibly talented people along the way.

I never thought I’d be in a situation where I’d be so passionate about something, and so good at it that external parties would be coming to me asking to write for them. But I am and they have and I have been able to partake in so many opportunities I would never have dreamed of because of it.

2025 is going to be a year of new experiences. I’m moving out in July, just for a year while I do my final year of my degree. I did it before while I was at university the first time, but I don’t think that really counts considering I was at home more than I was in the flat. This time I’m moving in with friends and my boyfriend. It’s going to be a challenge for sure, can you imagine living with four boys? But it’ll be a fun experience, it’ll be a lot for my own personal development, though it remains to be seen whether I will end up sentenced with manslaughter or get out of the year unscathed and a semi-functioning adult.

I want to develop a new mindset this year. Try to get over my social anxiety a bit. Try to chat shit to everyone like I do to my mum and dad, because I am an absolute hoot, yet very few people get to actually experience it unless I’m drunk. I want to take things less personally, manage my FOMO, come to terms with the fact that if my friends are hanging out without me it does not mean they automatically hate me. All that means is they’re doing something they know I won’t like, so really, it’s quite nice that they are subjecting me to it. I want to try and ween my way off my phone, become less reliant on social media and do more of the other things I enjoy. Read more, write more, get back into fiction writing, learn to crochet.

Looking forward to 2025, if I can manage a fraction of the things I want to do this year, it will be a good year. A boring one maybe, as I’m saving all of my spare money for the flat when what I really want to do is to book a holiday or a thousand and one concerts and shows. I find it hard to be content with mundane life, but I need to learn to embrace it and fantasise normality or else I will be chasing an unidentifiable, unrealistic expectation for the rest of my life and I will be living unsatisfied forever.

There’s a lot I want to do with my life, but it’s awfully hard to know where to start. I’m only writing this now because I was staring at my wall deciding if I wanted to colour or cross stitch, telling myself that I don’t feel left out that my friends are playing Lethal Company in a discord chat they have banned me from. Acceptance is the key to success, isn’t it? Accepting that all of this is okay, making the most of my friends when I do get to spend time with them rather than lingering on the gut feeling when I’m not. Prioritising the discord gossip sessions with my uni friends when we’re supposed to be completing our assignments, savouring every moment I get with my boyfriend so when he’s gone, I can tell myself it’s not so bad because in 7 months he’ll be just a room away at all times.

I have to start somewhere. So, I am starting here. Telling the void what I intend to do, so I can hold myself accountable against it. Finally intending to do something about my insecurities rather than expecting everyone else to accommodate them.