Ramble: 14th Birthday!

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Hi there!  So, you may or may not know this little bit about me, but it's my fourteenth birthday today, which is super duper exciting for me.  Every year on my birthday, I feel like I've gained so much knowledge and have learned so much and I enter the next year of my life feeling really confident and all that jazz.  This year is (or was?) no different.  

I've gone through quite a bit and learned a lot about people in general this year, but I'm always trying to get better and am always setting goals for myself.  Today, I decided to share some of these goals and scattered thoughts with all of you!  That was just a warning for those of you who aren't a fan of these posts.  If you're going to stick around, thank you and I hope that you'll enjoy this post!

Friendships and Other Relationships

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Last year, I've just gone through so much with my friends.  We've fought, laughed, danced, and cried together and I'm so grateful to have them in my life.  I've had the most amazing year with them and I've learned a lot about friendships and what they're all about.  What is means to be a good friend, a bad one, etc.  I've gone to a ton of different schools over the years, so I've never had really close friendships with anyone because I knew I'd be leaving in a year or two, which is a really bad way of thinking, but that was my twisted philosophy.

This upcoming school year, we're all going to different schools, which is actually really depressing me because I was dreaming a hopeless dream that we would all be together next year.  My goal in this area of my life is to make an effort to keep in touch with them.  I realise that this might sound kind of weird, like if I was close enough with my friends, I would still talk to them, but we live pretty far away from each other and I just want to remind myself to not get too caught up in my life at my new school and start over "so much" that I would forget to make time for the amazing people who've always been there for me.

I've always had a pretty good, strong, and healthy relationship with my family.  They know everything that's going on academically and the major things in my life, but I've never been one to talk about the more personal things in my life, like boys and feelings and stuff like that.  This year, I want to try to share a bit more and make an effort to make them a bigger part of my life.

School Life

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I'm someone who really likes being involved in school activities and extracurricular activities and I don't want to slack on that when I get to high school.  The one big thing that I'm worried about is being intimidated by the new environment that I spend my free time reading or doing homework.  This year, I want to push myself to do things that I would be scared to do and just be really involved in the life of the school.

Academically, I want to stop procrastinating as much as I did last year.  Maybe procrastinating was the wrong word to use, but I started my assignments at a later date and wasn't exactly rushing to finish them in time, but I definitely didn't give myself enough time to finish the assignments "comfortably."  I really hope that made sense...  It wasn't very bad procrastination, but it was procrastination nonetheless.

I also want to stop multitasking so much.  I usually have a tab with YouTube open at all times when I'm doing my homework and it takes me so much longer to finish what I have to do, which is pretty bad.  Get rid of that terrible habit would allow me to get things done so much more efficiently.

Miscellaneous

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This section is for the things that don't really fit in the two other sections.  Yeah... 

The biggest thing that happened to me in my personal life and the one thing that has really impacted my life was the start of my blog.  I'm so happy with how it's going so far and I hope to continue blogging through my high school years.  But saying that I hope to do something won't actually get it done, so I evidently had to make some goals.

One of the most important things for me is posting consistently because I really dislike inconsistent people and people who slack off (even though I do that sometimes), so I wouldn't want my readers to get annoyed at me for not posting consistently.  At the same time, I want to put up quality content on my blog.  I feel like if I put something out there in the blogosphere and someone out there reads it, I want for the few minutes it took them to read what I wrote to be worth it.  I don't want them to leave my site feeling like it was a complete waste of time reading what I had to say.

I also want to leave more thoughtful comments on other blogs.  Even when I really like a blog post, a lot of the times, I scroll down to the comments section and I don't really know what to say.  I always try my best (key word here guys, try) to leave a  thoughtful comment, but it seems to come of (to me) as slightly artificial.  I guess that it's kind of an odd goal, wanting to be better at leaving comments, but I know how happy it makes me feel when I read really thoughtful comments on my blog and I just want to return that feeling.

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I usually go through phases when it comes to my health, working out, and eating healthy and all that.  There have been times when I go two weeks straight doing half an hour of exercise every single day and eating healthy, but then after those two weeks, I would just be eating junk all the time.  This year, I want to eat healthier and work out at least three times a week.  Instead of binging on unhealthy crackers when I get home from school, I could grab some fruit instead.  And instead of staying glued in front of my laptop all day, I could stop for half an hour and get some exercise.  I'll probably include how I'm doing in my Sunday Funday posts when I get back from my vacation.

One last thing that I want to work on this upcoming year is staying confident.  Just a few months ago, I've started to feel confident in my own skin and I want to stay that way.  Definitely easier said than done, especially with my freshman year coming up. 

Do you make goals for the upcoming year when your birthday rolls around?  What goals do you or would you make?  Please leave me a comment and share your thoughts!

Thank you for reading!

- J

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