new year new me???

wowz it's 2017 already. it feels like just yesterday when i posted my 2016 bucket list (of which i merely completed two things), and now i'm here to write another list of things i will do in 2017 – if only to just leave and never accomplish them.

2016 was full of hectic ups and downs. my hair turned grey over exams, i graduated, left my home of 10 years, and experienced painful homesickness for the first time in my life. i learnt how to become more comfortable with being alone. i began to skip classes. i became more independent. i cried more than i've ever cried, but i've also laughed more than i can remember. i can't say 2016 was a good year, because i am a pessimistic person and nothing is ever really good enough, but it's changed me into someone i'm happier with.

but i want to grow more, to be the best person i can be. i want to be less guarded, less judgemental, less angry – more appreciative, more dedicated, more productive.

in 2017, i will...

...read 15 books.

upgrading from last year's resolution to read 10 books (which i only barely accomplished, reading 12 texts), i vow to myself that i will read 15 novels. will i succeed? we shall see in 12 months' time.

(i am a pathetic excuse for an english student.)

...journal.

ever since uni life started and i became inundated with work and inexplicable mood swings, i've neglected the one thing i used to really love doing: journalling. for some reason, it gradually turned into a sort of chore rather than a cathartic experience, and as a result, i just stopped. but seeing stephany's instagram post yesterday made me realise how much i miss the process of looking back at pages i wrote months ago, reliving joyful / painful memories and scoffing at my (or other people's) ignorance. so in this new year, i'll try and fill up the remaining pages of my moleskine.

...take more photographs.

i have five cameras sitting in a suitcase under my bed and i really need to use them more.

...get out more.

i have the privilege of spending my uni days in london, the "flower of cities all", yet i'm positive that i've spent 85% of my first semester cooped up in my room watching youtube videos and k-dramas. this is a city with so many markets that i can't even keep track of them all; a city with so many theatre productions and museum exhibitions happening every day. in this new year i will try and brave the shitty, depressing weather and explore the city more than i have the past three months. there are cafés to be discovered, vintage stores to be browsed, bookstores to be drooled over. oh, and i need to stop skipping seminars.

over and out,