It’s officially 2018! In fact, we are now a full week in. Christmas has come and gone, the excitement of the new year has passed, and the reality that change isn’t as easy as making resolutions starts sinking in.

One of my goals for 2018, as elaborated in the video below, is to blog more. So, seven days into the year, let’s get a blog post out there!

First, break has been great but not as productive as I would like. In four short days, I return to the grind of college classes. I’m one of those weird individuals who thoroughly enjoys school and appreciates the rigor of academia. Plus, my friends get back in town, and we join to struggle through the ups and downs of college life together. So on one hand, I’m more than ready to get back.

Unfortunately, school takes a lot of time. That’s time I could spend filming, or blogging, or crafting, or crocheting… or wasting time on my phone, sleeping, watching a movie, etc.

And that’s where you start to notice the catch, right? Over break I had grand illusions to make all sorts of progress on Crafters Autonomous and be able to put in the work up front while I had the time. But that’s the thing, right? The solution to being more productive isn’t time.

No matter how much or little time we think we have in a day, we all have the same 24 hours. When we find ourselves with a little bit of extra free time, like I did over break, we all too often don’t use it for the things we should, for the things that matter.

We use it for ourselves.

Pause and think, though. As the new year approached and you made resolutions for change, you wanted to see yourself succeed, right? The point of the resolution was never to set yourself up for failure but to instead paint a picture of the person you could be. So it’s certainly not that we don’t want to be these things; instead, we lose sight of how to become these things.

For instance, I want to improve Crafters Autonomous. So, I said “when I have time over break, I will make these changes”. When the time came, however, I didn’t make those changes.

The trick is to shift perspective. It’s not about “when I have time”; it’s about making time for the things that matter. You will always either be too busy to make the changes you want or find that when you do have time you lack motivation. *thoughts drift to all my half-finished crochet projects*

So, my challenge today is stop saying you will do this or that when you have time. Right now, take five minutes out of your day and take a tiny step towards that positive change. Put down your phone and do something that matters! In the end, you will be glad you made this little choice.

I recently saw the movie Wonder in theaters. It was so, so good! One of the many important messages of the movie was Choose Kind. Wouldn’t the world, and 2018 as a year, be better if we all made these little choices to be kind, to improve ourselves, and accomplish more each day?

For me, I’m making one little change to blog more. I’m calling today’s article a “Sunday Scoop.” Perhaps I’ll make Sunday my blogging day, not because I magically “have time” on Sundays, but because I will make time. It’s not an easy choice, but then again, most good choices aren’t easy.

But in the end, it will be worth it.

Now, get out there and keep working on those resolutions! Happy Crafting!

-Amanda