On A New Year

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Hello, and welcome to 2017! 

I for one am incredibly excited to see the turnover in years and celebrated accordingly; my friends and I traveled to NYC to attend a very fun and fabulous Great Gatsby party. You better believe that I went full flapper in my outfit.

The final 10-second countdown to midnight at the party was so full of excitement and relief. I think that we can all agree that overall 2016 has been the not-so-good, very bad year. This year has been marked with international conflict, personal issues (myself included), and far too many Hollywood deaths for a girl to handle. Seriously, who will entertain me now?

While I certainly will not look back at this past year fondly, I will remember everything it taught me. It taught me to be strong in the face of incredibly difficult moments; it taught me how to lean on my friends when I need to; and it taught me how friends come and many times they go. This has certainly been a year that has forced me to grow up in a lot of ways.

I do not know what 2017 will hold for me—hopefully a full time job? But I do have just a few small things that I would like to get out of this year:

• I want to read a lot more. Much of my attention in 2016, especially the second half, was on the computer screen. I received a number of fantastic reads for Christmas that I would love to devote my free time to this year.
• Organize my thoughts and my life better. 2016 was a very forgetful year for me. I frequently found myself in a panic trying to get things done that really should have been done maybe a week earlier. I will see you daily, agenda.
• Multi-task less. Let's face it. We all claim to be great multi-taskers, but at what point can we admit that the products of this multi-tasking are not as great as if we had focused all of our attention on them. I aim to focus my time better so that I am able to do my absolute best.
• Take a breath and think before I speak. Maybe it was just the climate of this last election, but 2016 saw me spouting off at the mouth frequently without much thought or consideration.

Let's see if I can actually stick to this plan and make at least two of these hopes reality.

<3 Ashley

What are some of things you want to accomplish in 2017?