In the VERY beginning of this year, I posted an article about 18 things that I want to do in 2018. It’s the beginning of April, and that marks us about a quarter of the way through the year. Yeah, we got 9 ish more months of 2018, and it has flown by so fast.

With that being said, I want to give an update on this list. I find that in order to be successful, we need checkpoints and we need to hold ourselves accountable if we want to achieve something. In fact, it’s a thing that very successful people with ambitious goals do and I learned this in college.

Well, I have a goal to achieve these 18 things and I am checking in with you guys. Now, onto this list.

Now 2 of these things on this list are things I am SUPPOSED to be consistently doing throughout the year. As for those two things, yeah I failed on both of them. I haven’t documented every day of the year, I forgot quite a few days. College gets busy.

As for eating vegetables every day, yeah no I didn’t do that either. I have been eating better, but I have gone days without eating vegetables. College gets unhealthy.

My excuses aside, especially since they are totally illegitimate excuses, I have achieved QUITE a few things on this list. In fact, I have done 5 of those things. I am calling this a success so far, I still have technically 11 other things om this list.

These 5 things are pretty big things too. A couple of which are things that were actually on my original bucket list for life, that’s exciting.

The first thing I’ve done off this list was buy a lotto-ticket! The Powerball was really high one in the beginning of January, and my mom wanted a chance to win MILLIONS! She gave me money and told me to buy a lotto ticket, and we lost! However, it was cool to buy a lotto ticket and it felt very adult-ish of me.

The second thing I’ve done off this list this year was traveling off the East Coast. In fact, that trip was a life-changing trip and I wrote an article about it. I went to Texas one person and came back to the East Coast a new woman.

The third thing I’ve done off this list was cook 3 meals. My winter break is really long, and I had to eat at home and not order in every day. By doing that, I forced myself to cook some rather basic meals.

I learned how to cook Pasta, Eggs, and Pancakes. Not going to lie, I make a mean pancake, and yes it was from out of the box. However, I still made a tasty pancake and all of you would love them #trustme. As for the rest of the stuff, it was good and the eggs were edible, so that was a success.

Learning how to cook was felt like I was actually adulting. Doing laundry is one thing (I still DREAD doing it), but cooking is another because that takes a lot of time to like practice and get good at. Also, it feeds you and we all need food and healthy wallets.

The fourth thing I did was finish my book! Yeah, I wrote a book and I finished it. It’s a legit book with like 263 pages, and I am not going to be publishing it anytime soon! That part actually takes a lot of time and effort that is centered with deadlines and stuff, and I don’t have the energy to put into that process right now.

The final thing I have done so far is I volunteered at a Soup Kitchen. I went with a club on campus to a soup kitchen in Wilmington, and it was an eye-opening experience. The people we served, relied on this food and it hurt to see the poverty that is happening in the town over from my college. It makes me want to do more for this community.

Giving back is something that I have done a lot this semester, and I am not going to stop giving back. Each time, I do service it gets more humbling and I get more curious about the communities I am helping. It makes me want to make a bigger change on this planet.

We all are ripples on this planet, but we can make waves of change by giving back. We can change the world and be more than just a little ripple that nobody cares about. How? Doing service and giving back when possible.

Now, I have 11 more things to do. I got 9 ish months, and I will achieve these things. Just watch me.

2018 is my year, and I am killing it right now and I will continue to kill it.