Goals for 2024

I feel like the end of 2023 rushed up on me before I was ready, and here we are, two days into the new year!

I looked back to my goals post for 2023, and was surprised to see that I didn't post it until February last year.  I didn't remember taking that long to get around to writing about my goals.

When I wrote that post, I still had a freelance client I was working for.  That ended a month or two later when the platform didn't pay me.  I had to fight to get paid, which I did eventually, but they retaliated by kicking me off the platform.  I tried another platform, but I didn't care for it.  I had already been contemplating what I wanted to do with my freelance career, though, so it wasn't a difficult decision to let my freelancing lapse for now.

Currently I'm writing materials on a volunteer basis for the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys, where I'm also on the board, and for now that's my only professional writing work.  Eventually I might take up freelancing again but for now I'm pursuing other things.

As for those other things, I didn't accomplish what I wanted in 2023, but I'm hoping to have better luck in 2024.  I wanted to finish my first novel of Ruby Ransome and start the self-publishing process, but I took a break from working on the novel around the holidays and never got back to it again until NaNoWriMo 2023 rolled around.  I'm hoping to accomplish those things this year, though.  I took a break from writing for the holidays and to get my house projects done, similarly to last year, but I have hope that I'll be able to get back to work on it more easily this year.  I have more momentum this year, and hopefully all the work I've been doing on covers will keep me excited and motivated, too!

As I mentioned last year, I don't really do New Year's resolutions anymore.  I used to set a handful of resolutions at the start of every year, and then fail spectacularly at them throughout the year.  I stopped because it was so discouraging to go through the same pattern every year.

This year, though, I am going to set one writing goal.  I debated on making it to publish my novel, but I decided that's a lot of pressure, especially as I'll be new to the publishing process.  What if something goes wrong?

So instead, I'm setting this goal for 2024:

Finish Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box.

I like that goal because it's enough progress that it's more than I've been able to do so far, but not so much that it'll be too easy to fail at.  And honestly, even if publishing gets delayed for some reason, just having finished the novel will be a major achievement for me.

Last year, 2023, was definitely a significant improvement over 2022 (the year where my horse almost died), but I think I can do better this year!

Goals for 2023

This year has so far been extremely busy, so I'm a little late posting my goals for the year.  I don't typically do hard-and-fast New Year's resolutions anymore, after finding that I would fail to achieve them year after year.  This year I have a lot I want to accomplish, however, so I decided to set some general goals.

One of my goals is a carryover from last year, and that is to get our house and garage better organized.  We'd actually been making good progress last year before my horse got sick, and had done a pretty good job of reorganizing the garage, but that needs to be updated and the whole house needs to be cleaned and organized.  In January we decided to swap our bedroom and office/doll room, so we're working on organizing after that major move, and we have more to do on the main level once we finish upstairs.

I also had some ambitious plans for my fiction writing this year.  Since 2023 is a hundred years after when my vampire novel series starts, I wanted to get the first book finished and published this year.  My original plan was to finish the novel in January, revise, work on things like cover and formatting in early spring, and get it launched around late spring.  Unfortunately the organizing project ended up taking over my writing time, and I haven't worked on the novel in a little over a month.  I'm hoping in the next week or two, the biggest part of the organizing project will be behind us, and I can start writing every evening again.

At the same time, I want to take some time this year to think about what I want to do with my content writing career.  I really only have one client left that I write for regularly, a marketing company that I produce content for.  It's not bad pay but I need to decide if I want to continue with it just as kind of a "side gig" to everything else I'm doing, if I want to ramp it up and find other clients again, if I want to refocus my copywriting career on a different area, or if I want to let it go in favor of focusing more on self-publishing my own projects.

Just as 2020 was instrumental in allowing me to shift my focus away from nannying thanks to everything shutting down for covid, 2022 may prove to be instrumental for giving me an opportunity to reassess my career's focus and direction following Panama's illness.  I won't mind that.  I feel like my career has been meandering the last few years, and I'd like to find a way to refocus it a little.

Whatever 2023 has in store for me, it's off to a great start so far!  I hope it will prove to be a productive year when all is said and done.

Goals for 2016

Way back around New Year's, I wasn't planning on making any New Year's resolutions.  I haven't had much luck keeping my resolutions in previous years, and I decided it was too demoralizing to make resolutions you don't keep.

My non-resolution didn't last long, though.  I caught myself saying I wanted to ride my horses more in 2016, and then I saw the Goodreads reading challenge for 2016... and those who know me know I can't turn down a reading challenge!

And now with the changes in my nanny job and my living situation, I've been thinking about the coming year in a totally different way.  I'm thinking it's time to make some resolutions after all.

New leaves

All manner of things are changing in my life this summer.  I'm moving this month, and as part of that, I will be depending on my freelance income even more than I have been the past year.  Necessity is the mother of more than just invention -- it has made me work harder this past year, and I suspect it'll take me to new levels of productivity in the next year.

As part of my life changes, I've made some resolutions -- a little bit like New Year's resolutions, except hopefully more lasting.

New Year's resolutions

Every year, I blog about my New Year's resolutions, and most years it seems like I fail miserably.  I've tried making them more specific and checking in every week or so, but then I feel like they consume my life, and still don't turn out as well as I'd like.

Granted, this past year has been very busy and has involved a lot of changes in my life, so I probably have good reason for not having achieved my goals this year.  However, with this past year in mind, I want to do something a little different in 2015.

My first missed day of my writing challenge

Yesterday -- my second day, technically, of the 250 words writing challenge -- I had to skip work on my ebook.  After a long day I was almost completely bowled over with an allergy attack, so I took a Benadryl and watched Big Bang Theory (my newest favorite TV show that I'm marathoning) until I fell asleep.  I can't really be too mad at myself, since 1) Tuesday was so productive and 2) I didn't watch anything or take any down time for virtually the entire month of November.  So I was due for a bit of a break.

Writing challenges for the rest of the year

After failing to reach 50K during NaNoWriMo this year, I decided I need a year-round motivator for me to keep writing every day, or at least nearly every day.  So when Debbie Ridpath Ohi -- who does my favorite web comic, Will Write for Chocolate, and who also used to do the daily NaNo comics -- posted her writing challenge, I was glad for the reminder.

I've seen her post her challenge before: Basically, you choose whether you're going to shoot for 250, 500, or 1,000 words a day.  Finally I think I'm going to do it!  I need something to keep me motivated and keep me working so that I can build year-round habits and continually make progress on my own projects.

Finding balance: Writing projects of my own

You may have wondered what I meant when I referenced my own writing projects that I need to make time for.  I actually have quite a few of my own projects, most of which have the potential to generate a small but steady income stream, so a healthy balance between freelancing and my own projects is definitely desirable.

Non-NaNoWriMo goals in April

The other day I blogged about Camp NaNoWriMo, and how my novel goals fared in April.  One of the reasons why I'm not too disappointed in how Camp went is because I also managed to keep up on the rest of my goals for 2014 fairly well throughout the month.  There were a few hiccups, to be sure, especially as I had some personal things going on in April, but all in all I didn't do too badly.

If you remember, my goals for 2014 were to:

1. Finish my NaNo '13 novel,
2. finish revising my first Ruby Ransome novel,
3. work on my website and blogs,
4. blog every day, and 
5. read a classic every month.

Tax returns recovery and revised goals

Two days later, and I'm finally feeling like I've recovered from staying up all night Monday night to do our taxes!  Even though I wasn't that tired on Tuesday, I was exhausted yesterday, so I guess it just took a day for the lack of sleep to catch up to me.  This morning I slept later than intended, so I skipped my riding lesson, but I know I needed it because I have felt very rested this morning.

I've also been making stellar progress with getting organized and meeting my goals for the year, so much so that I've been thinking of revising one of them.

Goals for 2014: Checking in

I ran a little late this year with setting goals -- and implementing them.  I set goals for 2014 at the end of January (even though it had been on my mind for weeks already at that time), but I didn't start even thinking about how to start working on my goals until a month later, at the end of February.

Just over another month has passed, and I am happy to say that although my progress isn't stellar by any means, it's nothing to sneeze at, either.

Better late than never!

I blogged at the end of January about my goals for 2014, one of which was to blog daily.  I meant to start on that the following Monday, the first weekday in February (as I am contemplating making it a weekday-only rule), but here it is almost a month later and I still haven't!  And unfortunately, I haven't done anything else on my list, either, including working on my novels (which should also be a daily occurrence).

Goals for 2014

In 2013, I made goals at the beginning of the year and tracked them on a weekly basis for most of the year (up until NaNoWriMo started in November).  The last few months, however, have been much less productive, and I've lost sight of my focus.  I partially blame NaNoWriMo, especially the last day, in which I wrote ten thousand words and burned myself out.  Lately, though, I've been feeling like I'm finally ready to get back to work again, so here at last are my goals for the year -- albeit a month late!

Year in review: Successes and failures in 2013

This post is extremely belated, which in itself demonstrates how unfocused I've been since NaNoWriMo ended.  Better late than never, though, right?

At the beginning of the year, I set a handful of goals and tracked them on this blog -- on a weekly basis -- throughout most of the year.  Thanks to that, I have a pretty clear picture on what goals for the year I succeeded at, and what I failed to accomplish.  As a refresher, here were my goals for 2013.  Most were writing related, but not all:

1. Finish and revise my two Ruby Ransome novels
2. Overhaul my website and blogs
3. Get to a couple other writing projects I've had on my to-do list
4. Read 7 classics (5 rolled over from a failed reading list of 2012)
5. Ride each of my two horses 3 times a week

Practicing accountability

My last post was on my goals for the year -- things I plan on doing in 2013 anyway, though of course some of these (such as overhauling my website) have been on my to-do list for a long time, so just being on my to-do list already doesn't mean that it's any more likely to get done than any other New Year's resolution.

I'm going to implement a two-pronged strategy to keep myself accountable this year.  The first thing I'm going to do is to try out an app that seems like it might actually help with those daily tasks -- the kinds of comprehensive resolutions that they say tend not to be successful, like "eat better" (or "work on my novel," as the case may be).  The app lets you set reminders, plus you can check off every day that you meet your goal.  You can also go into each goal and look at the calendar to see what your track record is like for that particular task.  The app is called Achieve It or just Achieve, and is available on the iPhone (I don't know about any other devices, such as the iPad or Android).

The other thing I'm planning on doing is posting weekly about my progress on my different goals.  I'm not sure yet whether I'll post on Fridays about that week, or post on Mondays about the previous week.  Part of me thinks that posting on Mondays will help me refocus for the coming week.  If this app works out, I can use its tracking capabilities to help me review my progress for the previous week; I'm also starting an Excel spreadsheet to track my daily word count on my novels and similar projects.

I've felt very out of control of my own life in 2012 -- although I love my part-time nanny job and I love my pets and horses, I have also felt very overwhelmed by all the demands these things place on my time.  I think the best way to take back control of my life is to get a little better organized, and be more accountable for what I say I'm going to do.  When I have a limited amount of time in which to get things done, I can't afford to waste any of it!

New Year's resolutions for 2013

Last year I came up with a list of books I wanted to read in 2012, and I am sorry to say that I did not read a single book on the list (and there were only five!).  In light of that failure, my "New Year's resolutions" this year consist of a few things that I'm planning on doing anyway.

1. Finish and revise the first two novels I've been working on.  I've been working on a series of novels that I started in 2011.  I've done some revisions on the first book, and I started the second during the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo this past year (2012).  I don't have much left on it, so I need to finish it, and then get back to finishing the revisions on the first book.  After that, I'll have to do revisions on the second book, of course.  I'm sure it seems very jumbled how I'm working on them all together like this, instead of finishing the revisions on one before moving on to the next, but I've found that since they are a series, some decisions I've made about later books have required changes to the first book.

2. Overhaul my website and blogs.  I'm also planning on reworking several of my blogs, including this one and the corresponding website.  I want to simplify this site a little and take some of the focus off of client work, since that's only a portion of what I'm doing now.  I also need to overhaul several of my other blogs, which haven't been updated in years.

3. Work on a couple writing projects of my own.  Besides my fiction, I have a couple other ideas for writing projects I've wanted to pursue for some time.

I also still plan on reading those books from last year's list, and who knows -- I might even add a few more for this year!

A week off means a week to write!

This week is my calm before the storm.  I'm actually working almost double the hours at my nanny job over the summer, so I will have less time to maintain my writing than in previous months (not that I've done such a good job of it then, either).  But I'm hoping that I'll manage, since I'm planning on doing Camp NaNoWriMo in August (I'm only loosely participating in June, as I'm using the next two months to finish some research and a first round of revisions on last year's novel before I start the second book).

But this week the family I nanny for is out of town, so I (blessedly) have the week off before the summer schedule starts.  I'm planning on doing more of both writing and riding, although Michael took the week off too, which will cut into my plans somewhat -- we have lots of stuff planned that we want to do this week, too.

In other news, my broken finger is healing well enough, although I still can't use it to type -- it's good for a few keystrokes before it starts feeling a little sensitive, so I've stuck with my nine-fingered approach, even though the doc said a couple of weeks ago that I could start typing on it in a week or two.  I don't think it'll be much longer, but I just don't feel quite ready for it yet; and in any case, I've gotten quite fast at typing without it -- almost as fast as I was with it before the accident.

My plans for this week are to finish an article that got delayed after my accident, do a little blogging and blog upkeep, and start working a little more on my novel research and revisions again.  With any luck, I'll be able to accomplish most of that without getting distracted!

New Years resolutions for 2012

I debated for a long while as to whether to set any New Years resolutions.  They don't usually turn out so well for me, and last year I don't believe I really set any, at least not any that were work-related.  But this year I think I'm going to try setting a few that are designed to be accomplished in the the next couple weeks or months, so that it's more likely that they'll be successful.

1) Establish a new daily schedule.

I was looking through my old files, and came across a couple of daily schedules I had made back when I first brought Panama to Denver.  I had blocked out time for horse stuff, and time for work stuff.  I don't remember how long I stuck to it, but it occurred to me that maybe I should do something similar to help me adjust to my new schedule and its limitations, now that I'm working a part-time nanny job.  It'll have to be a flexible schedule, to take into account things like our dog Grace's weekly physical therapy appointments, as well as less frequent appointments (vet and farrier for the horses, doctor for me, etc.), but I think it might help to see it laid out on paper how much time I have to work, and how much time I have for other things.  I also want to try to start getting out to the barn at least three times a week, twice on weekdays and once on the weekends, which a schedule should help me to do.

2) Clean my desk.

I think I usually start out the year by cleaning my desk, actually.  I'm hoping to do that, plus a bunch of filing to finish up 2011, this weekend.  My desk in particular has gotten a little out of control once again.

3) Revise my NaNo novel.

It's January now, which, if you'll remember, is when I said I was going to start work on the first round of revisions to my novel.  First I have some more research to do — I want to tie the planning of the second novel in with the revisions of the first, to make sure I keep everything straight.  Therefore revisions will have to be pushed back a few weeks, but hopefully not any longer.

4) Read a few classics.

Actually, I have a very specific list of classics I want to read in 2012.  I even created a shelf on my Nook for these books, so that I won't forget (since this is my only goal for the year that extends past the next couple of months).

What about you?  Any goals for 2012?

Struggling through it

I've definitely had a rough time coming back from holiday mode.  The last time I posted, I was struggling with my first week back.  Although I didn't accomplish everything I'd wanted to by the end of the week, I did get some of it done.  Last week went similarly — difficult to get going on Monday and Tuesday, and by the time I started feeling somewhat productive, the weekend was upon me!

This week, I actually planned a somewhat slow start.  I worked on Monday, even though many people I knew had the holiday off.  (Luckily, Michael had to work, otherwise I would have gotten virtually nothing done.  It's hard to work when he is home.)  I even completed what I had to do.  I had a powerful motivator: A book I'd been waiting for since November was coming out on ebook at midnight, and I wanted to take Tuesday off to allow me to read it.  I was even planning on staying up all night reading, but unfortunately I got tired and went to bed around 2am.

My "reading day" didn't go exactly as I'd hoped, but I'd planned one day off and one only.  So even though I'm still not finished with the book, here I am, back at work!  Even though it's Wednesday, since I didn't work yesterday it feels a bit like a Monday, so I'll make a few goals for the rest of the week.

1) To finish a project that has been hanging over my head for a while now;
2) To make post-holiday contact with a few regular clients and see about lining up some new work; and
3) To get back on track with my blogs.

Modest goals for only having three days left in the week, but important ones.  Since I lost virtually all of December to illness and holidays, I am feeling the pinch now from a lack of marketing, so drumming up some new work is high on my list of priorities!

This week's goals

I used to make New Year's resolutions every year, and post them on my blog, but in the last couple years I've been feeling a little disillusioned with that practice.  Usually I don't meet them — heck, I don't even remember them past about February (if that).

January has gotten a slow start for me this year, though.  I was sick for half of December, and the other half was filled with holiday preparations and celebrations, so on the whole it was a rather unproductive month.  And after a month of not being very productive, trying to put myself in a more productive frame of mind isn't going very well.

As a result, I've decided that even if I'm not going to make New Year's resolutions this year, I ought to at least make some goals for this week — what's left of it, that is.  Here they are:

1. To finish a couple of articles that were stalled when I got sick,
2. To reestablish contact with a few clients whom I haven't talked to since before I got sick, and
3. To finish a couple of (short) new assignments one of my biggest clients just assigned me.

Partly because I didn't work much in December, and partly because new work is always slow for me just after the holidays, I have more time on my hands than I would like right now.  My horse, naturally, already found a way to give me something to do, but I should still have time to meet these three goals.

Another goal I have in mind is to get back to work on my novel, which I haven't touched since mid-November, when it became clear that I was going to have to choose between NaNoWriMo and paying work.  Since I'm already halfway through this week, though, I'll save that particular goal for later.

If you've made New Year's resolutions on your blog, feel free to post a link in the comments.  Or, if you don't do New Year's resolutions, what short-term goals have you made recently?