Review & Resolutions for 2012

Another year is almost over, time to do my year in review and resolutions. It’s New Years Eve, I know I will be spending most of it with my family, plus a few hours of singing up a storm with my favourite blogging gals this evening 🙂 I hope you all have exciting plans too!

REVIEWS
#1 – Last year I mentioned wanting to take my Book of Fables series to the next level and branch into videos. Well mission accomplish! (did I really just type that?). I think entering the world of Youtube has taken my Book of Fables series to a whole new level. It’s given me a new platform to express my ideas in a much more immersive way. It’s a plunge I was initially very apprehensive to take, but one I have zero regrets taking, and now only the sky is the limit!

#2 – Not really blog related, but I’ve definitely grown a lot more at work. I don’t talk a ton about work here because honestly who would be interested? Right! I’ve been given so many new opportunities and have been very blessed and need to make the most of it whilst I can.

#3 – Collaborations, I didn’t get to collaborate as much as I originally wanted, but I did do a short piece with The Age, MX Magazine, two fantastic shoots with Neil Creek and of course working tons more with Surfaced Studio when it comes to videos. I find working with other creative individuals help motivate me, so you can see why I’m really looking forward to a weekend shoot/s I have coming up in a few weeks with Neil Creek 🙂

#4 – I won my first cosplay award! Okay, small cheese for most people, but I never enter cosplay competitions because of sheer stage fright. However, with Asham’s encouragement, I bite the bullet, went on stage and won 😀 So glad I was able to at least win one award during my cosplay career!

RESOLUTIONS

#1 – Organisation! With the help of my friends and family, I’m starting to have a much better idea where I want to take my blogging and youtube “career”. But I really need to improve my organisational skills in order to balance my online and offline life. I’m going to need organisational skills like a fox!

#2 – Don’t let the negativity get to me. I’m human, we all are. One of the problems with growing the site and channel is being more exposed and hence encountering much more negativity than I’m used to. Sometimes I ask myself, “Why go through all this effort only to attract these types of comments?” And I answer, Why? Because I love it. And that’s what I need to keep my focus on. I -love- blogging and creating videos, it feeds me. And every time I remember why I started this journey, I feel more determined than ever to keep going. Often the only way to work is with blinkers on 😉

#3 – Shift into lifestyle blogging, which is really an umbrella term to blog about whatever the hell I want! Hehe. No seriously, I still want the blog to be heavily focused on beauty, but I’d like to include more personal posts about my other hobbies. I’ve tried fruitlessly to start up blogs for my other interests, but because I’m so gung-ho on maintaining this blog, everything else seems to fall to the wayside. So I’m looking to include a post here and there about gaming, maybe a day in the life etc. The blog is just an extension of who I am, and whilst beauty is a massive part of that (oh dear, how shallow do I sound?) I will try and throw in a few other interests of mine. Better to have one active blog, then three semi-active / dead blogs right?

#4 – Photography, I have quite a bit of fancy camera equipment, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not terribly skilled at using much of it. So this year I want to take it upon myself to really focus on improving my photography, maybe do random posts of -just- photography. Who knows, but I think a cool goal would be to have my photographs appear randomly on pinterest more often 😉 (speaking of which, I really need to add photos to mine!!)

#5 – Write and read more. I was recently given an ipad 2 and kindle for my birthday / xmas and so I no longer have any excuses not to read. There are a ton of new books that have been released over the last year or two and I’d love to get into the habit of reading more, especially before bed time (as opposed to watching youtube videos 😛 ). And writing, I’ve always been a sucker for stationary, it’s about time I start putting it to good use and do more blog / book of fables planning 🙂 I recently discovered whilst writing my xmas cards that I really do need to write more! (damn weak fingers)

#6 – Go strong, or go home. I want to take everything I do now, and bump it up to another level of intensity. I want to write better blog entries, take better photos, create better videos and just go go go. Work hard, Play hard!

Finally, I want to thank each and everyone of you for all the incredible support this year, I would not be as motivated nor have gotten as far as I am now without each of you. You guys are truly my friends, I value all your thoughts and opinions and really appreciate the time you take out of your day to read / watch my content 🙂 I promise to keep working hard at producing content you’ll find interesting!

See you all in 2012 😉