Goals for July

After half a year, it's time to ask myself: how I am progressing with my personal goals? 

Something Old
I finally restarted my piano this year. After finally having access to one, I realised how absorbing and fulfilling it is to play music that I loved. [I especially love the music of Les Miserables!] I rediscovered my writing skills and am finding that as long as I make the time for it, blogging is not really that difficult for me. 

Art and creativity is also something that recurs again and again, whether it's drawing, doodling or larger pieces. I keep going back to my markers and I am loving my watercolours. 

Photography was also pursued in many formats, film, digital and iPhone, and again, recurred again and again. I am loving taking photos with Pusheen >D and I keep wanting to put a camera in my bag.

These made me realize that although I have a wide variety of interests [gym, journalling, violin, piano, french, japanese, reading etc, etc] there are some that I kept going back to again and again. I guess you can call them my core interests and these are the ones that will define me for life. 

Something New
Yet, I am ever curious to keep trying other stuff. So I will continue trying new stuff, new craft, new instruments (!), new languages and just trying to make the best of it however I can with my highly limited time and lifespan. These include:

- Learning French, Spanish, Italian, Indonesian, Cantonese (argh!!!) 
- Playing the violin (I really, really ought to practise more)
- Crafting (bookbinding, journalling, sewing and others) 
- Writing, blogging

And reading, reading, reading......

I do want to improve in what I do, rather than remain stagnant, so I thought of giving myself skill upgrades. This is when I either do additional research into a topic of interest or 'upping' the level of something I am currently doing. So for the rest of 2016, these are...

My Skill Upgrades
- Playing a grade 8 piece on the piano
- Learning how to do watercolours properly (started already, with a book from the library)
- Reading up on the various photography masters and doing film photo projects based on them (I started reading Henri Cartier-Bresson but no photo project yet!) 
- Blogging at least once a week 
- Doing some art at least once a month (to produce some really proper work!) 

And to keep learning fresh,

My New Learning
- Continue to learn French grammar
- Practise the violin (I know, this comes up again and again......)
- Continue journalling and learning from other journalling gurus I follow online
- Writing, writing, writing. Writing book reviews. Writing diary entries. Writing better blog posts and reviews. Writing short stories. Writing a book. (Even if it doesn't get sold.)

Ok, so I know the limits of myself and my own time. I definitely won't be able to finish all these goals at once which is why I've been setting myself monthly ones. I have to pick and choose and try to balance my choices out. 

So my personal goals for this month of July:
- Read up on my next photography master: Daido Moriyama
- Practise watercolours and do at least 2 pieces in my watercolour sketchbook (Otherwise, I buy for what??) 
- Practise the violin (This is now crucial as my violin teacher will be away for a month! Help!!!) 
- Start planning to write my book. Read and research first with the book I got. (Crossing fingers for this) 

Ambitious enough? (sweat) But even if I don't meet all of them, and you know I don't always, er, at least I would hope the journey getting there makes it worth it. I might not reach the level of proficiency I would wish for but I would have gotten higher than where I was at first. 

Crossing my fingers and wish me luck!