Welcome to 2025!
A sort of goals post, but not really
The kids are back at school, so the year has officially started. The whole year stretches in front of me to be filled with made up places and people, as well as all the real world stuff that will no doubt intrude on my fantasy. In previous years, I've set a list of goals at the start, of things I think I should be able to achieve. While that is helpful, I've been finding recently that the weight of falling behind, especially when it has a knock-on effect to everything else in the list, makes me feel so guilty about everything and really dries up my creativity. It's finding that sweet spot in your goals where they are high enough to be motivating, but not so out of reach that they are demotivating instead that I've been struggling with.
So, this year, I've made a list of things I'd like to do instead. This gives me the flexibility to pick and choose between them, and end up at the end of the year with some of them undone. I would like to do all of them, but I know from hard experience that life happens and things go of course. Also, new ideas and opportunities spring up at the oddest moments to throw plans off for a good reason as well. I plan to pick one thing at a time, work on that as my main focus, and then choose which one I am most excited about to work on next.
My overall plan is to focus on writing. I have so many ideas, and stories I want to tell, they are queuing up in my head and I need to get them out. For my sanity, as well as to share them with all of you. This is what I've chosen to do, after all, so this will be a year of writing. Once that is done, I can see what other time I have to do the marketing, business, and admin side of things. But getting words on screen (words on paper sounds so much better, but isn't accurate) is more important, even if not always as urgent. I also want to focus on working out what works for me and the direction I want this career to go in, rather than following all the trends and doing what other people shout about. I can’t do everything, so I need to be strategic about what I do do.
It is hard for me not to line up the things in the order I want to do them now, but that leads to increasing deadline issues if things start to slip. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. It is going to be hard, as I have a picture of what I'd like to achieve over the course of this year. But, hopefully, stating this intention, and sharing it with different groups of people will help me keep that light feeling. I am excited to see what 2025 brings, after everything over the last year or so, I am ready to get back into it. This is going to be my year!
So, I'd better get writing!