Each year, once the dust of the last year has settled. I like to set myself some goals, sometimes I even remember to put them down in a post such as this one. Whilst these goals may not be that interesting to other people, I find that committing them in this way makes me more accountable and makes me more likely to work towards achieving my goals.

So without further ado:

1 Reach 200lbs

Next year, I’m getting married and right now I’m pretty overweight. Regular readers of my blog (do I have any of those? Hi Mum!) will know that my weight is something I have been battling with for many years and at one point, I even started a YouTube challenge where I did a juice fast for a while.

2016 was a pretty landmark year for my health, I discovered that I loved the outdoors and more importantly, I discovered that my life didn’t end or even change much at all once I gave up fizzy drinks. In the past I’ve managed to cut down on my sugar intake by limiting myself to only having it at the weekends but I’ve never managed to give up an entire section of sugary treats and anyone who knows me, knows that fizzy drinks were like crack to me. I’ve now not had a single fizzy drink since October last year (actually, that’s a lie, I drank a mouthful of coke about 2 weeks ago to see if I thought it would taste different – it did, far too sweet for me now!).

My body has started to respond to this and my weight is slowly coming down, at this moment I am around 245lbs (last August I was 256lbs!). I’m hoping that my new, healthier lifestyle will mean that I don’t have to worry about yo-yoing (something that happens to me on a pretty much annual basis) but, just to make sure that I stay on a downward trajectory. I’m going to start doing some more exercise, I’ll be joining my local archery club when they re-open in a few months, I’m going to start hiking more regularly (which I love doing anyway so that shouldn’t be too hard and I am looking for a parkour class that is convenient for me to get to. If I can convince my fiancée to come with me, I also plan to start an MMA class soon).

2 Save £15k

The year hasn’t gotten to a great start for this one, I’m not going to lie. Thanks to an unplanned move and a hefty tax bill, my finances are pretty low at the moment, however thanks to YNAB and a bit of will-power, I am pretty sure I can bounce back by the start of March. Once this happens I plan to open an investment portfolio and work out some ways to add extra income streams to my balance sheet. I already have some cash savings (Thanks Dad!) but I’m not including that in my goal as that would be cheating.

3 Buy a house

Realistically, this ain’t gonna happen this year. There is no way we’re going to get a deposit together, plus as I mentioned earlier, we’ve just moved so we’ve got a 1 year rental contract anyway. However it’s still definitely a goal and you never know, perhaps I’ll get a fantastic book deal, perhaps I’ll find some buried treasure or maybe one of my income stream ideas pays of big time.

Maybe we’ll just carry on obsessively looking at RightMove and sighing for a bit longer.

4 Get married

Four years ago I hit the jackpot when one of my incredibly attractive, intelligent and lovely friends told me she had feelings for me, last week, I asked her to marry me, so now we’ve got a wedding to arrange!

Again, this isn’t gonna happen this year as we’ve got a lot to plan and a lot to save up for, however we still need to do the planning and the saving so this is a valid goal.

5 Publish a book

I’m currently writing two books, one is a novel that I’ve been working on for years (very slowly) and one is a political non-fiction book which I’ve actually finished and am now working on re-drafting.

Pretty soon I suspect it will be at a state where I can start trying to get it published. As I’ve never done this before, I have no idea how successful I’ll be and from what I’ve heard, this process is more frustrating and time-consuming than actually writing the damn book, so wish me luck!

At the end of the year, I’ll make another post to review these goals and we’ll see how I’ve done!