the beginning

Firstly, Happy New Year! I hope your 2016 was great, which may have been difficult due to recent political, social and geographical matters, however, all and all, I hope you're leaving this year happy and for the sake of the planet, lets only hope 2017 is better. Although in the grand scheme of things, 2016 definitely was not the human races finest hour; due to the likes of Brexit and President-Elect Trump being genuine political decisions which will go down in history rather than popular memes which are forgotten about almost immediately, in my own little world, it wasn't too bad. I finally left high school, went to my first ever prom, passed my GCSE's and got into college, which I'd say is a pretty memorable year.

So, I acknowledge the fact that I am, definitely, one of the many thousands who thought, "starting a blog will be a good hobby for 2017", which is true, however, the ideology of writing a continuous, weekly blog has lingered in my mind for what feels like too long, and the timing was all but a coincidence, yet convenient to say the least. I'd love to say I was prepared to give an adequate synopsis of my future blog posts, however, the randomised topics I have written down in various notebooks, seem to have no correlation other than my interests, experiences, and lifestyle, so I truly hope that's intriguing enough.

Have you ever wondered why we celebrate New Year? To commemorate the successes of the past year? To furthermore, celebrate the future and what is to come, our future successes and achievements? It's always been odd to me, yet it's possibly one of the happiest days for the majority. Knowing every 365 days, every person walking this Earth can start again. Everyone has this odd conception that just because we've entered January, we can now all become fitness maniacs with the perfect skin routine, the greatest diet and the most positive mindset known to man, which is common, for I was exactly planning all of this for today momentarily before I started typing. Today is honestly no different to another, and the likelihood of us sticking to our resolutions, no matter how motivated or inspired you are by that model on Instagram or that personal trainer on Facebook, is pretty low - unless you're one of the 8%  that do in fact keep up with the 'New Year, New Me' aspirations, which I must say, I'm pretty envious of. 

Don't feel bad if your plan to drink spinach smoothies every morning doesn't last longer than two days, because, in reality, resolutions are commercialised goals we aim towards because everyone else does. Today when you're reading this, don't think about all the things you're going to do this year better than the last, but appreciate the past year in full depth, and take in the idea that another year is made to progressively improve yourself, in a reasonable time frame, as there is no rush to grow older, because that's exactly what another year does for us, if thought about in the most simplistic way. 

I hope you all have the best year in 2017 and achieve all you deserve and what you have worked for. Just to finish, here are some photos I have taken in the past week to show you what I've been up to.

Thank you for reading,

J. I. Smith x