Click HERE for the Audio Edition!
*sigh*
I confess that 2016 overall has not been the best of years. Lots of amazing famous people have died. Lots of insanity with the presidential election. Lots of time wasted on Pinterest, Youtube, and other online distractions. Lots of crazy all over the bloody planet. To top it off, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped I would and had a few set-backs. Almost none of my 2015 goals were achieved:
- All’s Fair isn’t finished.
- Didn’t write any more short stories.
- Totally failed at NaNoWriMo this time around.
- Haven’t added any other creative activities to my routine.
- Regained almost all of the weight that I lost.
- Not sure if depression is nibbling at the edges of my psyche again, or if it’s just normal stress and winter doldrums.
So… yeah. *sigh* Okay, now I need to focus on what I did accomplish.
SUCCESSES IN 2016:
1) Even though it isn’t done, All’s Fair is closer to completion than any of my other work to date. It still needs at least one more revision cycle before it’s done, but thanks to my wonderful beta readers, it should be finished soon. (Provided I actually keep up with the editing…)
2) I also did compile a list of agents and publishing companies that I can start to explore. (Of course, I was supposed to start exploring them far earlier in the year, but let’s not go there.)
3) Submitted to the Writer’s Digest “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, but didn’t get picked. For those of you who don’t know, the “Dear Lucky Agent” contest is where you submit the first 250 words (a.k.a. the first page of a manuscript) to be reviewed by an agent! And if they like it then they review the first 10 pages of your manuscript. So that was the contest; that was the goal. Didn’t get picked, but that’s okay.
4) Finally worked up the nerve to go to my local comic book store and start a pull-list! Getting comic books is a weird hybrid between ordering a regular book and subscribing to a magazine, and due to my ridiculous anxiety about trying new things or asking people for help, I’d put off doing this for quite some time. Thanks to the magic of Marvel and Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Doctor Strange, I am fully invested in exploring the Strange universe, so here we are! (Went and saw the movie four times. Yes, I am insane. No, I do not care.)
5) Disney did not fail me. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is an excellent cinematic edition to the Star Wars film canon, and I can now be genuinely excited for May 2017. ^_^
GOALS FOR 2017:
1) Pretty much everything from 2015. *headdesk* I need to set up some kind of schedule and stick to it so I can work on editing, writing, short stories, Cat’s Cradle, and Audio Editions on a regular basis. I feel like I haven’t been taking writing as seriously as I should, and that needs to change.
2) Get the hell off social media. Facebook and Pinterest are eating my soul and it’s kind of horrible. Especially with the election, I spent way too much time scrolling and less time actually writing. So I need to block Facebook when I’m working, or go back to pen and paper. Something. This madness must end.
3) Reintegrate exercise. I totally fell off the wagon due to my own laziness. The anti-depressants suppressed my appetite, so I had little motivation to actually improve my eating habits. That obviously needs to change since I regained in three months what it took me ten months to lose. (Far too much time in the last few weeks has been spent sleeping and eating.) But at least now I know that losing the weight is possible and that makes a huge difference.
4) Go back to school. No, no, not in the formal sense. That wound is still too raw. (And I can’t afford it financially.) I feel like I need to pick up some other skill, something that I can work on from home that has the potential to earn me a living, or at very least enrich my knowledge. As much as I enjoy being a librarian, my current position is highly social and therefore highly draining. And frankly, I’ve been living from paycheck to paycheck for 10 years and I’m a little tired of it. So I’m going to explore some avenues in web design and programming via services like Coursera and see where that takes me.
5) Be patient. With myself. With others. With the world. Just… breathe deep, seek peace.
Thank you all so much for sticking with me, for reading my work, for listening to my Audio Editions, and for just being awesome people. Good luck. See you in 2017.
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 
If it makes you feel better, I was supposed to explore master’s degree programs last year (kind of like you were supposed to explore agents and publishers) and I never got around to it.
Weirdly, however, I feel like I’m succeeding (partially) at the “get the hell off social media” goal, but without really meaning to. More and more, I’m unwilling (or feel unable) to contribute the time for creating or consuming meaningful content.
I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing.
But anyway, I like your closing “be patient” quote. That resonates with me right now as well. 🙂
*hug* Oi, school. *shudders*
I’m… still not doing so well with the social media aspect. It’s still eating into my time, and it’s a real shame that it gets so overwhelming that meaningful content can’t be generated. I’m also not sure if it’s good or bad. On the one hand, it’s good not to let your life get eaten up by it, but at the same time, that means there is a lot of meaningful content that simply isn’t being shared because of the time it takes to do so. But maybe even that’s good too because it can act as a sieve where only the biggest most important ones actually make it through. We get so inundated with stuff that it’s hard to pick out what it really important. I suppose we’ll just have to find out!
Thank you. I feel like patience is something everyone really needs right now. Good luck in your own endeavors this year!