I just wrote 2025 for this blog title and then was like “FUCK” lol.

Where the helly did 2025 go? Growing up I would always hear the old people (aka adults) say “Time goes faster the older you get”. And 10-year-old me would think “Uh huh, whatever you say, old lady”.

But now I’m older… WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!

They were so right. Time goes so fast. I feel like I’m being catapulted viciously towards my 30’s and I don’t want to be there yet (I still have 4 years but I’m scareddd)

Anyway, this segues nicely into the point of this blog: Getting. My. Shit. Together. 

Every year I’m going to do opening and closing pages. Opening pages will be posted in January, outlining my plans and intentions for the year. Closing pages will be posted in December and include a review of those plans and intentions and whether I hit them or not.

I’m hoping that writing it all down in a blog counts as a form of manifesting. Plus if it’s out in the open, there’s people to witness my plans and I won’t be able to deal with the embarrassment of not going through with them, ergo → helping me get my shit together.

Although… it’s pretty hard to do that when I’m not sure HOW I want my ‘shit’ to ‘get together’, yanno? 

Like..hmm, how do I explain this? 

Okay, brain splurge of thoughts incoming.

I love having my own business. It has allowed me to work whenever and wherever I wanted. I’ve travelled, spent time with family, taken days off just so I can binge a Netflix series. I’ve met great people, created some great things and learnt a HELL of a lot about myself, business, life, yadda yadda. 

It’s been fabby.

BUT, 

It’s also just been this fun little gig that I do. I’ve never really taken it overly seriously in the sense of scaling and making sure I have consistent income etc. As long as I was earning enough to cover my monthly expenses, I was good. 

Which means I’ve never really had this big vision for Atlas Eight. 

I don’t know where I want it to take me. Or have these big business goals. I don’t have the desire to teach or open courses. I don’t particularly care about hitting consistent ‘X’K months. I’m curious about passive income, but only if I can create something that genuinely stands out and helps people.

To be honest, there’s a lot I don’t know, so how about we start with the things that I DO know, and then we can go from there. 

Welcome to my list of things I DO know. 

➡️ I’M 26 AND HAVE SPENT ALL MY SAVINGS. 

I don’t regret spending all the money I had saved at all. I’ve been to some amazing places and done amazing things. It was worth every penny. 

But I’m at the age where people are asking me about ISA’s and pensions. In my head I’m just an 8-year-old adult, which means I’m still a baby and these should be far off worries. Alas, I’ve been told that’s not the case. 

Which means I’ve got to ramp up the income this year. I’ve got to work a little more (not just my typical 10 hours a week lol), and be smarter with my spending too. I’m not a huge spender outside the business essentials, but I do sometimes get swayed by a good deal.

➡️ I WILL, WITHOUT A DOUBT, GET BORED. 

I may be the Queen of Story Spinning, but I’m also the Queen of pivoting a trillion times. 

I have a crippling fear of monotony, which means I’ve pivoted, what feels like, a hundred times in my business. On the positive side, that means I’ve got skills and knowledge in a lot of areas. Butttt on the negative side, it means I haven’t really given any of my offers an actual chance before.

I have an offer. I’m good at it. People love it. I get bored. I want to do something different.

My view point is that I HAVE to enjoy what I do. That’s non-negotiable. So if I don’t enjoy it any more and want to do something else, why shouldn’t I? 

BUT this year, if offers don’t feel right, we adjust, not just do something different. If I want to learn a new skill, I will learn it and incorporate it into what I already have. If parts of business are feeling unenjoyable, then we remove rather than burn the business to the ground.

(I need to stop being so goddamn dramatic, really)

➡️ PROMOTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT FOR ME.

I’ve tried my best. I’ve given it all I had. But I’ve officially reached the end of my tether. I will NOT be posting three times a week on Instagram, showing up daily on stories, posting reels, interacting on Threads. I just wont. 

I’m fed up with trying to build and run a business in a way that clearly doesn’t work for me. I don’t care what anyone says, there has to be a way of having a successful business without the need to be posting on social media constantly. 

So instead, I’m going all in with the format I enjoy—long-form. 

I’ve always wanted to have a blog where I can ramble about my whatever’s on my mind. I’ve always wanted to have a successful email newsletter to connect with people. Now’s the time to focus on building that. 

As for Instagram, I won’t get rid of it completely. I’ll just probably post the odd static post or carousel here and there when I get random bursts of inspo, but I doubt that will be any more than a few times a year. 

➡️ I WANT TO KEEP LEARNING AND GET BETTER AT THINGS. 

Every year I say “I’m going to learn Spanish” or “I’m going to take a BSL course” or “I’m going to learn how to play chess” or “I’m going to really focus on eating better”.

But every year, I don’t. Either I can’t afford it, I forget about it or just really suck at sticking to it. But this year, I really want to make a conscious effort to do better (I’ve already signed up for a local chess class, go me!)

And this is relevant to business too. I want to get better at writing more naturally, without relying on any frameworks or AI’s thoughts on my work (like why the hell am I caring what a robot thinks anyway?)

I want to talk better, too. To clients and on calls. Less ‘umms’ in a sentence, learning it’s okay to pause and think before talking. 

Plus I honestly think there is no better flex than having an impressive vocabulary. I mean, have you heard someone whip out ‘magnanimous’ in a sentence?? I have and it was impressive as fuck. 

➡️ DEVELOPING A COPY FEEDBACK OFFER IS ON THE CARDS.

I used to have an offer where people would send in any document they liked and I would provide feedback and I’m gonna be dead honest with you..I was GREAT at it.

AND, I loved doing it soooo friggin’ much. 

If you’ve read my About Page you’ll know this, but I’m an avid perfectionist who’s often told my honesty is ‘too much’, so you can see why that offer worked so well for me, lol.

I would love to bring that back. I’m not sure how the offer would work yet. I’m going to see where my target audience and current clients would benefit the most with an offer like that, but hopefully if all goes as predicted, I’ll have something in place by the end of the year.

➡️ WORK AND LIFE NEED TO BE SEPARATED MORE.

Right now, I don’t have set work days, I just work whenever I want. 

Which sounds great in theory, but in practice it means work bleeds into everything. Weekends, evenings, time with the fam… I’ll be out living life and then WHIPLASH, I’m back home working. There’s no real separation, no days that are actually ‘off’.

And I want that to change this year. I want to spend my weekends doing what normal people do on weekends: seeing family, going out. And spend my evenings reading, doing something creative or learning.

I need to be more diligent with how and when I work during the week, and then spend the down time actually.. downing??

A list of habits I want to build.

Okay so, all this ‘getting my shit together’ stuff requires ME to have my shit together too, right? Can’t exactly build a better business if I’m a mess, lol.

So here’s a list of habits I want to build, both inside and outside of work, in order to pull this off with maximum success. 

💙 HAVING A SINGLE CONTENT DAY

I’m fed up with thinking about content so much. So to combat this, I want to dedicate just one single day a week to content. That’s it. 

On that day, I’ll write my weekly blog and weekly email and voilà, Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt—I now have content sorted for that week.

💙 READING EVERY EVENING

I go through these super weird phases where I won’t read for a couple months and then I’ll pick up a book and be like “OMG I CAN’T STOP”. 

I want more of the latter, so each evening I’m going to aim to read at least a couple chapters before bed. In fact, I want to hit a goal of 50 books this year. That’s like one a week, which I think I can do if I make sure I’m reading every evening. I’ll be a push but I gotta aim high, right?!

💙 NO SOCIAL MEDIA ON MY PHONE

It’s not just posting on social media that I hate, it’s scrolling on it too. I know it does me no favours. It’s TikTok! I just get sucked in and I can’t get out. TikTok when I wake up, TikTok while I eat my breakfast, TikTok before bed. It’s SO bad.

So I’m going to remove it all from my phone and only keep social media on my laptop. I reckon I’ll end up not really using it because doomscrolling just isn’t the same on a 13” screen, yanno?

💙 COOK SOMETHING NEW AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK.

I want to be one of those people that can cook really cool (actually tasty) stuff. I’m not awful, but I can definitely be better! If I cook at least one new meal a week, I’ll have 52 new meals under my belt by the end of the year—and plenty of time to perfect the successful ones lol.

So basically, here’s the IN’s for 2026.

• Earning wongaaaaa.
• Long-form content.
• Being 100% me online.
• Reading often (and tracking what I’ve read!)
• Learning how to play chess.
• Work-free evenings.
• Creative writing for the sake of it.
• Appreciating my body.
• Trying new things.
• Doing arts and crafts.
• Keeping my laptop organised.
• Dancing all the friggin’ time.
• Traveling whenever I can.
• Using my brain more.

And here’s the OUT’s for 2026. 

• Saying yes just because I need the money. 
• Posting on Instagram.
• TikTok doomscrolling.
• Relying on social media to market my business.
• My goddamn perfectionism.
• Staying in my comfort bubble.
• Generative AI.
• Doing things just because other people are.
• Being inconsistent.
• Checking my phone as soon as I wake up.

My word of the year.

You know what, in previous years, I’ve picked a word and then forgotten about it a few days after lol. 

But I’m determined to actually live by one this year and now writing all this out, I think I have the perfect one: Intentional. 

CREATING INTENTIONALLY

I want all the content I put out to be intentional. All the offers I develop to be intentional. All the freebies I make to be intentional. The work I do for clients to be intentional.

TRAVELLING INTENTIONALLY

Sometimes when I’m travelling, I’m so excited to get to places, and then get to the next place, then the next, that I forget to actually take it all in. Yes, I have tons of pictures of that place and it was fun, but did I actually experience it? Or was I just there??

RELAXING INTENTIONALLY 

No Olivia, scrolling on your phone doesn’t count as relaxing. And doing “my own business work” is still working, Olivia. Do it properly!!

Things that are on my 2026 bucket list.

💙 GO TO A CONCERT

I’ve alwayysss wanted to go to a Chase Atlantic concert. One year I got the tickets and accommodation and everything but the concert date changed to a day I couldn’t do and lost about £300 overnight 🙁 

So this year, I’m going to try again. It will either be Chase Atlantic or Bad Omens as they’re my top two bands. (Do I get bonus points for seeing them both?!)

💙 TRAVEL TO FRANCE

I have friends in France that I haven’t seen in yearsss. It’s time to pack up Cevvie (my campervan) and drive over there. I’m a teeny-tiny bit worried about driving on the other side of the road BUT, for Mandy and Ian, I’ll get over it. 

If I think Cevvie won’t make it, I’ll fly over there instead—no excuses!

💙 DO AT LEAST ONE WORLDPACKERS EXPERIENCE 

When it comes to travelling in a campervan, I’m a pro. But travelling with only the bag on my back, now that is a whole new way of travelling. This year, I’m ready to give it a go.

Oh, and it has to be to a country I’ve never been to before!

💙 BECOME A MASTER AT CHESS 

Okay, maybe becoming a master is pushing it, but I want to get good at it! 

My current skill level is zero. I know that some pieces move forward, some move diagonally and the horses move in a weird ‘L’ shape. That’s it. 

By the end of the year, I’ll be able to play an actual decent game, for sure.

💙 LEARN A LANGUAGE 

So, since…actually forever, I’ve always wanted to learn either Spanish or BSL. 

I learnt Spanish in school and was pretty darn good at it, so I’ve always wanted to pick that back up. I have no knowledge in BSL apart from the basic hello, goodbye, thank you, please and help. 

This year I’m going to learn at least one of them (bonus points again for both?!)

A letter to December 2026 self. 

Hey Future Olivia,

I hope you’ve spent this year getting your bloody arse into gear. If you haven’t, what the actual fuck you bitch?!?

Love,

Past Olivia.

Okay, let’s leave it there. I’m going to try lots of new things, figure shit out and get shit it together. 

And I hope you have the bestest year too 💙