The January Dating Detox & Other New Year’s Resolutions

Ok, so it’s officially the final day of Christmas (though I don’t know about you, it feels like it ended weeks ago already!  Ironic, when the decorations go up in shops in September!)

And so it’s time to stop looking back at 2013, and start looking forward to the year ahead.

That, stereotypically, involves New Year’s Resolutions.

Recently, the blog site 30ish me asked me to share my Dating Resolutions for the year with them.

I also recently mentioned on Twitter how I had been considering a ‘Dating Detox’ in January.  Serial dating is exhausting.  And fun as it has been, regular readers will know that at times I’ve complained about feeling like I was losing myself in it all.  I stopped regularly going to the gym, my flat was constantly messy, and I was sleeping an average of four hours a night.

So my original plan for January was to freeze all dating behaviour.  Spend the month concentrating on ME.  I would remove Tinder from my phone, and delete my POF account.  Spend my evenings back at hot yoga, catching up with friends, and going to bed more than five hours before my shift at work began.  Enjoy the single part of being single.

My original plan for January had been to forget boys altogether.

Slight change of plan there!  (As you’ll have seen from The Eighth Date of Christmas, and subsequent post – The Sweet Taste of Failure!)

I don’t know what’s going to happen with Mr SC, but for now, I’ve removed Tinder from my phone, and as of half an hour ago, I no longer have a Plenty of Fish profile.  As I explained yesterday, Mr SC is on lockdown at Sandhurst, the army officer academy.  So for now, dates, and contact with him, are likely to be few and far between.  But I like him enough to not want to date anyone else at the moment 🙂

Which means January is likely to still be something of a Dating Detox for me.

A month where I can concentrate of ME.  And being ME.

Because that was the reason I first suggested doing a dating detox.  Fun as dating can be, it’s important to keep hold of yourself in amongst all the madness.  If you don’t allow yourself time to be yourself, and enjoy the stuff you’d normally enjoy, you start to lose yourself.  And as I explained in Finding the Ideal You, the first step to finding your ideal partner, is finding your ideal self.  How can you expect to understand what person best complements you, if you don’t properly understand what the best version of you is like?

So this month, I will be concentrating on me.  Forcing myself back into the gym more than once or twice a week (for my own sanity!), catching up with friends I’ve lost touch with in the last couple of months, and aiming to get to bed before midnight every once in a while (yes, that part of the plan won’t be starting today!)

As for other New Year’s Resolutions, away from dating … because believe it or not, there is life outside of dating?

I have a few random, personal, things I want to achieve this year.  But above all, if meeting Mr SC has taught me anything this week, it’s how important having goals is for me.  And how attractive I find drive.  Not just in other people, but in myself.  In the post Finding the Ideal You, I talked about identifying the ‘best form’ of myself.  And my best form is me at my most driven – when I have a list of goals, and am on course to achieving them.

One of the most difficult parts of becoming an adult is stepping away from the pre-ordained conveyor belt of middle-class life.  School ->Uni ->Grad Scheme ->City Job

When you become a true adult, the only person responsible for setting you goals, is yourself.  Not your parents, or your teachers, or society.

So, as an adult, what goals do I want to set myself this year?

This year, I’m going to actually save up some money.  Because I am DREADFUL at saving, and I need the flexibility to be able to make changes in my life if and when I want to … and if that includes moving, or changing my job, I’m going to need savings.

This year, I’m going to move forward with my writing.  I don’t know where those developments will lead.  I want to get a book published, and would love to get a book deal this year, but having been part of the writing circus before, I know these things take time.  So my concrete writing goal for this year is simply definite progress.

This year, I’m going to travel.  I’ve been saying for ages now how I want to go back to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and visit India for the first time.  Depending where work takes me, I may be able to visit all those countries, but in case I’m still restricted by a more realistic 5 weeks of holiday this year, I’m going to aim to visit at least one of that list of countries this year, and hopefully at least two.

Finally, inspired again by Mr SC (yes, yes, I know I’m blatantly Cheshire Cat smitten!  I promise I’m trying to control my excitement and act sane!) who has recently done an IronMan, and also ran an UltraMarathon last year, I’m going to set myself a fitness challenge.  I doubt I’ll be ready for an IronMan just yet, however this year, I want to take on a Challenge I’ve talked about for years.  This year … at some point, preferably when the weather on this island is a bit more forgiving … I’m going to cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

I hope all your New Year’s Resolutions are going well guys.  Here’s to achieving all our personal challenges, and to all the fun and games that 2014 has to offer!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx