Click HERE for the Audio Edition!
Good grief.
Um… well… *sigh* Yeah, I don’t feel like I did very well this year. I didn’t really accomplish any of my 2018 goals. Mostly I’ve been sinking, treading water, sinking again… Been sleeping too much (but not well), eating too much, and generally feeling frustrated and worn down. I’m trying to keep a positive outlook, but at the moment I’m hard-pressed to remember successes or positive aspects of the year.
SUCCESSES in 2019:
1) I completed NaNoWriMo this year. Considering that I was doing some major experimenting with genre, setting, time period, and POV that I’ve never done before, the fact that I finished anything at all was a minor miracle. I still need to go back and look over what I wrote for Spells in Sepia, but I think at least some of it is salvageable.
2) I’ve kept up with The Cat’s Cradle and Second Unit Reviews. Sometimes just keeping up is all you can do. I can’t guarantee that all of my entries have been particularly deep, but hopefully they’ve been at least somewhat engaging and entertaining.
3) I took part in Story-A-Day and actually did complete a modest assortment of short stories. I’d tried this challenge of writing a story a day in May a previous year and conked out only a story or two in. This time I stuck with it and managed to complete several pretty decent short stories. I neglected to follow up with any of them, but at least the raw material is there and a few may even shape up to be good.
4) Deciding to watch Good Omens was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Yes, it distracted me from writing and a lot of other important things, but it just made me so very happy and I really needed that boost. Now when I get depressed, I look up pictures of Aziraphale and Crowley being Ineffable Husbands and it makes me smile and think that things will be okay.
5) I learned that hormones really mess with your head. I kept wondering why I was able to start a good habit, stick with it for a while, and then completely fall off the bandwagon. And it wasn’t just because I stayed up late one night and that threw off my sleep schedule or something (although that can happen.) Now I’ve got a strong suspicion that it’s tied to hormonal fluctuations. As I’ve gotten older, the week before monthlies has been a hell-week of depression and low energy levels, so I’ve got to plan accordingly. And try to put some measures in place to alleviate some of this emotional roller coaster.
GOALS in 2020:
1) Get a hobby. I feel like I really need to do something that isn’t literature-related and doesn’t involve a computer. No, I’m probably not going to become a blacksmith or a mountain climber… but just something to do for fun that doesn’t feel like my future depends on it. Maybe something with music. I do have an electronic keyboard and an ocarina, plus I’ve been hoping to buy a hang drum for years. Unfortunately, playing the ocarina is probably out since a) everyone has different sleep schedules and I don’t want to wake anyone up and b) my cats hate it. *sigh*
2) Catch up on my Audio Editions. I know, I am so far behind on those and I’m going to do my best to catch up. I need a better schedule for blogging in general so that I can write the entry, record it, edit it, and then post it all at once rather than writing the entry at the last minute and scrabbling to catch up after the fact. I’m going to try to set up some regular schedule to work through the backlog and keep up with new posts. Please bear with me!
3) Take mental health days. I’m one of those people who has difficulty taking time off, not because I don’t have the vacation time, but because I feel a deep obligation to my job. (Not love, just… obligation.) I don’t like leaving co-workers in a lurch, even if that lurch is perceived only in my head. But time continues to grow more valuable to me, so I’m going to try to work in an extra day off each month to just… breathe.
4) Decide on a project and work on it a little each day. I’ve got several WIPs sitting around in various stages of assembly: Pleasing the Sea, Spells in Sepia, Faylinn, Seahawks and Storms, Ravens and Roses… I’m not sure what to work on, but I need to pick something and work a little on it each day. Maybe not something as concrete as word count or hours spent editing… but something. Maybe I’ll just jump from project to project, depending on how I feel that day. Not efficient, perhaps, but it would at least keep the wheels grinding forward.
5) Devise (and stick with) a creative schedule. Going along with the Audio Editions and working on a regular main project, I want to make a schedule that allows me to do a little each day on various aspects of that, be it scheduling a day to work on the Audios, writing blog entries and Second Unit Reviews ahead of time and scheduling their release dates, picking a day and time out of the week to interact on writer forums or practice a specific skill… I’m still not 100% sure what those things are or what I want this schedule to look like, and I don’t want to overwhelm myself. But I need a better progress bar so I can see that yes, I am actually doing things, producing content, and moving forward.
Thank you so much to everyone for bearing with me this year. I appreciate all of your likes, comments, favs, shares, etc. and hope you’ll continue to do so in the future. May you all have a happy, prosperous, successful, and blessed New Year, in whatever form that takes for you!
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 