I’ve been wanting to start a vision board for a while and a recent long weekend was a perfect opportunity to finally get it done.

I haven’t set this up for a specific year but these are just some things that I want to work towards achieving. I do feel like this year has been a bit of a kick start for some of my future plans so I feel like having this board in my face will help with the process.

I made the board out of an old multi photo frame and used various crafting stuff I already had to paint the backboard black, stick up some pictures & quotes I printed and added stickers to embellishment the board a bit more – it actually surprised me how much crafting stuff I had lying around the house from years ago.

Surprising and scary!

I currently have 3 different distinct goals that I am working towards:

Travel: it has been a long time dream of mine to visit Malta. Recently someone asked me why Malta as it isn’t one of those places people regularly have on their travel bucket lists. The reason that I want to visit Malta is because my dad had been stationed there during WW2 when he was in the New Zealand Navy. He had some old black & white photos from various places he had been stationed but for some reason Malta was the one place that always stood out to me. Even though I have wanted to travel there for many years, I finally feel ready for this pilgrimage.

My current plan is to visit Malta for my 50th in 2022. This goal is also on my 50 Things Before 50 list so it will be a nice ending to achieving as much as I can on the list before I get to the age of 50. I am actually really excited about planning this one as there could be an few extra things I may be doing as part of this trip – I most certainly will spend my 50th in Malta – along with my sister who has once again invited herself on a trip of mine (to be fair, I have done this to her too haha), and I definitely want to include London in these plans as well.

Bedroom: this is really a precursor to having my own place. I currently rent & have been in the same place for 17 years. My original plan had been to wait till I was able to access my superannuation & then buy a wee unit. I woke up a couple weeks ago and realised I didn’t want to live here anymore and decided to work towards owning my own place.

My current plan is to pay off my NZ student loan this year and then work towards having a deposit within the next 5 years. When I moved to Aussie I kind of forgot all about my student loan but a few years back, the NZ government start chasing outstanding loans. Unfortunately not paying it for many years meant that the interest was astronomical so what was a reasonably small loan was turned into an amount I could have actually used as a house deposit! It has taken me a number of years to get out of this debt and I have a plan to have it completely paid off by the end of this year – which will be amazing! Then I will take that money and put it towards a house deposit – it will still take me a bit of time to get a house deposit together and I should have been doing this all along but I am making a start now so watch this space I guess.

Home Office: I’ve already been working on a space in my living room that I’m using as a kind of home office but I really want to set it up to be really helpful for productivity and inspiration.

My current plan is to start sourcing particular items to help towards my dream office. I already have a globe – which I recently got after years of wanting one, but would like to get some shelves and a proper desk & chair instead of using my dining table & chairs. I kind of struggle with being creative sometimes (hence why I didn’t write in this blog for 6 months!) but I do find if I am inspired by my surrounds then I will be more inclined to actually sit down and get what I need to done. It becomes a fine line between a chore and a hobby sometimes so any inspiration I can get makes things less chore-like.

My overall goal is simple “Make It Happen”

Instead of just talking about my goals I need to actually start talking steps towards achieving these goals.

I do realise that talking about saving for a home deposit, creating a new office space and future travel plans in the same post is a bit counteractive but at the end of the day if buying a home is delayed another year then the only person put out is me. I figure that it is my money and my plans we are talking about here and there is no one else to factor in so the timeline is what works best for me to achieve what I want to achieve.

So there you have it – I actually created something and I am pretty happy with the results.

Anyone else out there have a vision board they use to achieve their goals?