Hey everyone! A belated Happy New Year to you all! I spent mine watching the New Year's fireworks on TV with my girlfriend all from the comfort of our own home... all while sipping on a lovely cuppa of course! So yeah, a nice chill one for us. Hope your New Year's was good too!
I just wanted to touch base, say Hi, and perhaps outline a few thoughts, goals and ideas I've had for this upcoming year! From booking vacations to assigning a day off each week, from getting outside more to actually getting back to my hobby of gardening, it's all stuff I want to do this year! Above all though, and I know this is wishful thinking, I'm hoping for 2024 to be the year of "Calm down" for the world. We've had it rough this decade so far collectively, from suffering through COVID to various wars ongoing around the world, we've all been affected in one way or another by all of it, be it family or friends being drafted for their country's armed forces or the cost of living being insane as a result of the pandemic and the wars.
Anywho, let's get into a few thoughts/goals! I thought I'd itemise these so they're a bit easier to read!
Force myself to NOT upload a video one day per week
This is as simple as it suggests. It's literally gotten to the point where I have to force myself to NOT focus on YouTube 100% of the time. For example, this week on the 3rd (a Wednesday), I didn't upload a video. My initial thinking in terms of a day to not upload vids is Wednesdays because that's when my viewership typically is at its lowest anyway. If anything, it'll give working folks (or anyone who can't spend too much time watching YouTube videos!) a chance to catch up.
Always be a day ahead with video making to ensure consistency
The idea with this is I record, edit and upload videos a day in advance. That way, I can guarantee that videos will always go out at the same time every day, which typically will be 3pm (GMT) - So with this item combined with the above, my idea is I upload 6 times a week (3 Terraria, 3 Minecraft) and not upload on Wednesdays... and the vids would always go out at 3pm (GMT)
Book vacations/holidays so I've got something to look forward to
This one hit me pretty hard last year. I was wondering for the longest time why I felt like I was running on fumes during the last few months of 2023 and now I know... my last holiday was mid-May of 2023... so quite a fair while ago! This year, my plan is to spread my holidays out a bit more across the year so I've always got something to look forward to. Currently, there's holidays booked for the final working week of April going into May, a holiday in early July and another in mid-September. So unlike last year where I had 3 holidays in the space of 6 weeks (something I'll *NEVER* do again as it was incredibly stressful with pre-recording!), I really am spreading the holidays out this year!
Get outside more
Sounds like a fairly simple one. If it's a nice morning, I'll go for a little walk around my nearby green, perhaps I take a coffee cup full of tea with me so I can still enjoy a morning cuppa... and yes, I know what I just said there... tea in a coffee cup, FIGHT ME coffee buffs! Mankind was meant to be outside (in my opinion anyway) so I want to ensure I'm getting out more. This combined with the below item should help quite nicely with getting outside more!
Get back to gardening as a hobby
Last year, I did very minimal gardening, pretty much only weeding and mowing the lawn when it was getting unruly... that's it. Not this year, I intend on moving my shed to a different location, making a quaint little seating area that catches more sunlight for more hours, growing more tomatoes, potatoes, green beans (just to name a few!), plant some more lovely flowers, all sorts honestly. I love being outdoors, I really do!
Budget better so we (my girlfriend and me) can treat ourselves a bit more
The idea here, more than anything, is my girlfriend and me want to try going to more places for dinner so we agreed that we should try one new place every month this year. Needless to say, we'd need some dosh to be able to do that so yeah, budgeting better through each month should allow that to happen! Last year, we didn't get to go out overly much on account of not being able to so hopefully this year, we can do a better job of reserving a little bit aside to do exactly that.
So there we go, just a few ideas. Perhaps you get a few ideas from the above to have as your personal goals too! I hope your 2024 is full of joy, productivity and me-time. Thanks so much as always for all your support throughout my career on YouTube, I really appreciate it a tonne! Cheers for reading!