2017 (and the beginning of 2018) without a doubt was one of the worst years of my life so far. Although I had a lot of good things come along throughout the year, it was also a year full of events that were not as positive, ranging from not being able to lose any weight, to quitting my call center job, to having the most stressful semester of college so far, to family health scares, to the breakup with my boyfriend of three years.

The end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 was a time where I paused and really looked at what I wanted in life and how I was going to change in order to accomplish all of my goals. I already have an amazing support system that includes my family and my friends, but I knew that in the end, it was up to me to be able to take control and make the most of everything.

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1. I will lose weight.

This has been something that I have been struggling with since I started college. All of the stresses that college brought began to take a huge toll on my weight, with little success to get back to my pre-college shape. I have gotten to the point where I am no longer happy with the way I look and nothing in my closet fits anymore, which has lowered my self-esteem greatly as time passes. I can no longer allow myself to let my journey to a healthier me become harder as I allow myself to gain more weight.

2. I will read more books.

As a child, you would always see me with a book. I would finish one book series and move on to the next one. I would always love visiting the library, whether it be the school library or the public library, which was conveniently less than a five-minute drive from my house.

Although I admit to judging a book by its cover many a time; for some reason, the covers I would choose would almost always turn out to be great reads. As high school and college rolled along, I suddenly stopped reading books for fun due to the heavy classwork that I had to do and still am doing. But this year, I am committed to reading at least one book for fun each month. It's time to bring my childhood love of reading back into my life.

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3. I will take more polaroids.

Last Christmas, I bought myself one of the hottest items on a young adult's wishlist, a Polaroid camera, in order to take pictures of my winter vacation to Mexico. I took a few there and then some more as the year rolled along, but I realized that I didn't take as many as I would have liked to. While we do have the convenience of modern digital cameras from the comfort of our cell phones, nothing really compares to have a physical photo that is able to fit in the palm of our hands. I want to be able to fill my Polaroid photo album this year full of positive memories with my loved ones and places I see.

4. I will stop procrastinating.

We all have bad habits. It's a part of human nature. But I truly feel that I have taken my procrastination to the next level. I've been telling myself since middle school that I need to stop procrastinating for goodness' sake. Now fast forward to my junior year in college and not much has changed. It almost seems that I have taught myself to procrastinate so well that it's a part of me, even though it's a very stressful task. I want to dedicate to using my planner more and to stick to my daily goals while using my time wisely. In turn, I will evolve into my larger goals in life without the huge obstacle of my dreaded procrastination.

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5. I will use my phone less.

Like most of today's population, I have a habit of looking at my phone whenever I have a moment of free time. It has correlated with my procrastination habit and the two together create hours of wasted time that I could use instead to study, read or work on an article. A friend told me not long ago that she only opens her social media on the weekends to avoid distractions from her schoolwork and job.

I thought this was a great idea, and I decided to do something similar. I am currently on a social media break, in which I have successfully restrained myself from opening my Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, with (Odyssey purposes being the only exception) for the past month and a half, and I plan to do so for a few more months. After my break is over, I plan on opening them only on the weekends.

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6. I will think more positively.

Last year I allowed a lot of negativity enter into my thoughts as a result of the negative events that happened during the year. Because of this, it brought a negative aura upon me and affected me and those around me, especially towards the end of the year. I lost my sense of self-confidence, and it's something that I'm not very proud of. No matter how hard it is to lose weight and boost my GPA, if I don't start trying, it'll never become a reality. I need to start putting on my confidence hat and just go because I can, and I will.

7. I will be a better Christian.

I never really considered myself very religious, even though my entire family was raised Catholic due to our culture and tradition (we hardly went to church though). But in recent years I felt as if something spiritual was missing deep inside me. I wanted to know the Bible more and follow Jesus on a personal level by living by His example. We occasionally visited the church that my uncle and aunt went, a nondenominational one.

I loved going there because it filled the spiritual emptiness that I was occasionally feeling. The only problem was that it was about 45 minutes from our house, depending on traffic, so we only visit every few months or when we would visit my uncle and aunt's house. This year, I want to join a Christian group on campus where I can hear the Word of God and serve Him on a more frequent basis and study my Bible more, as well as possibly joining a church near my house.

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