2018 Reflections And New Years Resolutions

Welcome to 2019!  It feels so crazy to be writing 2019.  Does anyone else take quite some time getting use to a new year?  I'm pretty sure I will be writing 2018 for a little while still.  Anyway, for the last couple of years here on my blog I have done a post which reflects on things that have happened that in the previous year and some "New Years Resolutions".  I'm really not one for New Years Resolutions usually (I believe that if you are going to make a change then you really should wait for a new year to do it).  But I do like them for my blog.  They kinda set me up with some goals that I want to achieve for the coming year.  Now if you are new to these types of blog post of mine - these are quite wordy posts with minimal pictures.  If these aren't your type of posts then feel free to skip over this post.  I will be back to my usual swatch and review posts (among other things) later this week.

2018

What a year it was.  I had my very first collaboration polish released (Royal by piCture pOlish), I completed yet another 31 Day Nail Art Challenge and continued working with some of my favourite brands!  I also stopped doing a lot of nail art challenges, which I think was a little bit disappointing.  I was doing so well with them in 2017 and at the beginning of 2018.  I guess you could say that 2018 was quite up and down for me blog/nail wise.  I went from being highly motivated, too having not much time and then not being as motivated and honestly considered giving up blogging/nails.  Never fear, I'm not quitting just yet.  But I will get into that a little more in a sec.  Let's talk about the goals I set last year and how I went with them.

Last year I set out four goals.  I am happy to report that I did reasonably well achieving these.  My first goal was to complete swatching all of the polishes and stamping plates that I purchased in 2017 which I managed to tick off quite early in the year.  Woohoo! 

My second goal was to swatch everything that I purchased in 2018.  This was a goal that I went back and forth on but I can say that this goal gets a big tick as well.  I do have a few things that I have been sent to swatch that I haven't used yet - most of these things are being released this month so I'm not going to count those as things from 2018.   I also may or may not have purchased a few things on Boxing Day but at the time of writing this post I haven't received them so I don't think they count either.

Monthly favourites are something that I started doing a couple of years back and I continued doing them every month again in 2018.  One of the main reasons I started doing these was to help me narrow down my favourites at the end of each year.  I realized at the end of 2017 my monthly favourites were too big and it didn't really help me as much as I would have liked at the end of the year.  With that said, my third goal last year was to make smaller (more cut throat) monthly favourites.  I feel like I started doing this at the start of the year but then stopped being as cut throat as the year went on.  Oops.  That may need to be something I work on this year.

My final goal for 2018 was to start swatching some more of my untrieds from previous years.  This would mean anything that I purchased in 2015 and earlier.  I didn't even touch of this goal at all.  Well maybe I pulled out a stamping plate or something, but for the most part my untrieds still remain untried.

I guess I need to address the whole social media thing don't I?  To begin with, I continued to post on social media, but as the year went on and my level of interest fluctuated social media kinda got pushed to the side.  Honestly, I found that my Facebook page wasn't really reaching the people that followed it (unless I pay money), my Pinterest followers started to go down and Instagram took the biggest hit of them all.  Like with 2017, my followers have disappeared (usually the more I post the more followers that go), I am now under 50,000 followers.  Likes were also even harder to get and according to my Instagram insights basically no one sees my posts.  I questioned in my last years reflections/resolutions post if I should continue on with Instagram and this year I honestly don't think I will be posting much.  It nearly seems like a pointless task.

Last year I included my 'best nine' manis from Instagram and I thought I would include my best nine from 2018 as well.  I love that pretty much all of the nail art manis made it into my favourite nail art for the year.  I especially love that my collaboration shade with piCture pOlish also made it into the best nine.  Royal was definitely a highlight for me.  Thank you to everyone who picked it up so far and have shared your swatches and nail art.  It has been so awesome to see them all.

2019
I had originally thought about skipping over doing some goals for this year, mainly because I still haven't really decided what my blogging future is, but then it seemed wrong to not set some goals.  For the most part I still love doing my nails (and I definitely don't see myself having naked nails ever), I am not sure I will be doing my nails as often as I have in previous years.  With that being said, I am not going to be setting myself any sort of blogging schedule.

My goals for 2019 are going to be similar to last years.  Hopefully I can tick them all off at the end of the year.

* Swatch everything that I purchase in 2019.

* Make monthly favourites post smaller - I definitely need to be more cut throat throughout the year.

* Start swatching some of my untrieds from previous years (both polishes and stamping plates).

* More nail art!  This may just be part of playing with some more stamping plates, doing some nail

   art just for me or participating in some more nail art challenges (such as the Digit-al Dozen). 

I think that is all of my ramblings for now.  Thank you for reading this post.  Let me know if there is anything in particular you may want to see on my blog this year.