2016 Goals and Five Friday Favourites

Happy New Years everyone! I can't believe it's 2016 already, I swear it was 2011 just yesterday! Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and those who were lucky enough to have the week off (like me) enjoyed it. I spent the week relaxing, hitting the sales and spending time with friends and family.
I'm not a fan of the word resolutions as to me they always seem to be broken so instead I make long term goals, that are manageable and I can work towards:

• Get my license back - less than a month until I can officially get behind the wheel of my car and start driving again! Of course I will have to do two tests before I can be back on the roads so I am praying that I will pass the practical test easily (the computer test isn't stressing me out as its all general knowledge of the roads and I am practice it online) and my anxiety won't hold me back.
• Work - if this seems vague its because I have no idea where work will take me. As much as I want to keep my job I want to be open to the fact that it may not be the job for me and that's ok. I do want to work wherever God wants to me work and as long as I am earning an income and in the right place by God's standards I will be happy.
•  Understand my anxiety better - 2015 has been a real eye opener for me in terms of my anxiety and how it controls me so I want to better understand my anxiety in 2016 and maybe decrease my dose of the medication I am on. Changing my diet has helped so I want to stick with that and I also want to work some form of fun exercise into my everyday life (maybe yoga?). I like walking but its one of those things I have to really find time to do so I am thinking if I find a weekly class and walk on another day that should help get the blood pumping.
• Document my life more - this blog is the only consistent documenting I do which is great but I want to have something in hard copy and something that's just for my eyes only. I have an endless supply of notebooks so its not like I have nothing to document in its just that I need to get in the habit of doing it frequently!
• Manage my money better - I am a shopaholic and while I do manage to save half my pay check (well its half including car repayments which once those are finished that money will go into my savings account) each fortnight yet its not growing very quickly as I keep having to dig into it to cover psych appointments, new laptops (see below) and car rego, maintenance and insurance (just because I can't drive doesn't mean those expenses stop. My car was in desperate need of  a new exhaust system so we figured that while I can't drive it would be good to get that done.). I just want to get my spending under control and try to save as much as I can while I am young. At this stage I am considering maybe seeing a financial planner or advisor but that won't be for a while (happy for recommendations if anyone has any) at least until I am settled back into work.

I have no idea if I will achieve any of the above or not but they are all good goals to work towards.

These Friday Favourites are things that have been loving while I have had the week off

• HP Pavilion X360- I managed to break my laptop on Christmas eve (it fell on the slate floor!) so I decided to buy myself a new laptop for Christmas (thankfully I have a decent amount of savings). After much research I decided to just stick with a HP as I loved my old laptop and it worked well for me. The only major difference is that this laptop's screen can fold around and become a tablet. For the price it is well worth it and for a limited time you can $100 cashback.

• Recovery Road - The first 3 episodes have just been released and I am hooked! This show covers the affects of alcoholism in young people and how addiction is extremely real and needs to be spoken about. It focuses on Maddy a teenager who is in denial of being an alcoholic and how she slowly comes to terms with it.
  
• Saving Hope Season 4 episodes 9 and 10 - I love this TV show (in my eyes Australia needs to show more Canadian TV on free to air as I am over telling people about this amazing tv show and having to direct them to watching it online) and these episodes were amazing and extremely well done. When a bomb explodes during a charity fun run all the doctors must band together through thick and thin to survive this disaster making split second decisions while coming to terms with it and all those who have been impacted by it. In a world where terrorism is unfortunately becoming a more frequent reality these episodes cover all sides of it and takes you into the crisis and how a single decision can affect so much. Even if you have never watched Saving Hope before I beg you to watch these episodes as they are real eye openers and you will be glad that you did.
  
                                                                   
• The Afters - some people do drunk shopping I do tired shopping! So on Monday night I found myself on iTunes and accidently downloading all their albums as I decided that I needed some more Christian music and I loved their song 'What We're Here For' (at least my logic for once made sense. Once I ordered some extremely small buttons as they were cute, I have no idea what to do with them and they are sitting in my craft box). Thankfully their music is great and catchy, if you are after some new music for the new year its well worth checking them out.

What We're Here For has the habit of taking me back to the long weekend in September/October when my church competed in the sports competition, I have no idea why, I didn't play it during the actual weekend but it was one of the songs I listened to driving down and driving home but it brings me back to that weekend everytime.

• My Daily Thoughts Journal - I bought this yesterday to help with my goal of documenting more, its nice size and I like the prompts it has. There is no way I will be doing it daily (hopefully weekly!) but it will hopefully help me achieve the goal of documenting my life more.