The Annual Resolutions Post
Happy New Year!
It’s been a while, I know. Between the holidays and my husband being kind enough to share his cold with me Christmas week, my motivation to do much other than the necessary was pretty much gone for a good while there.
I did manage to update the blog template – which you won’t see if you’re reading via email or feed reader, but I quite like the lighter look and style.
I’ve spent the last few days really looking at what needs to change and how to change it, and I think I’ve come up with some great new workflows and routines that are really going to help me meet my top three goals/resolutions this year, which are:
– Make time to find/be “calm” every day.
– Aggressively pay down debt.
– Write a minimum of 100 words (fiction or non) at least 5 days per week.
Full transparency – when I was looking back on last year’s goal list, I had to look away and shrug and decide that I’m just starting over from scratch. Because I didn’t accomplish anything I wanted to last year, and on several of the items, I actually went backward by quite a ways. That was a little disheartening.
But I’m still making goals and resolutions, because I have to have something to reach for, or I will absolutely just sit on the couch and play games all year. And feel like a worthless lump at the end, of course.
Aside from my top three, there are smaller things I’d like to improve on as well. For example, I want to keep my bathroom cleaner, and I also want to dust more. Who says that anyway? Weird people. But it’s true – I would like to dust more often. I would also like to wash my walls and keep my house at a slightly higher level of clean than I normally do. Because, frankly, I have better things to do than clean most of the time, and anyone can see that the second they walk in my house. I’m not looking for white-glove pristine, just one level up from where my house is now.
And a clean dining room table.
I also need to lose some weight, like practically everyone else out there. This does not translate into a specific goal of “losing weight” necessarily. It’s more about living healthier, working out more consistently, eating less, and eating healthier foods. I generally do pretty well if I keep track (and stay healthy). But I need to get back on the wagon and stay there, so to speak.
And I’m trying to cultivate a new mindset towards work and stress, trying not to get stressed out, and also taking time for myself. I’m going to work toward protecting my mental peace, both at work and at home, so that I have more creative energy.
That’s something I have been seriously lacking for the last year, year and a half, probably two years, honestly – creative energy. I come home, I’m exhausted, and then I’m trying to do all the things, and I’m still exhausted. I get to where I might be able to actually sit down and write, and my brain is just so tired that it’s like, “Nope, we have to rest now.”
So that really is my number one priority going into the new year: to protect my mental peace, to make sure that I get enough quiet, that I take some breaks during the day, go for a walk, and be quiet. I’m going to use earbuds to block out noise and play relaxing background music, and use dictation a lot more when driving to and from work, in order to “create” while I still have energy during the day, rather than when I’m worn out at night. And sometimes in the evening as well, because speaking is so much faster than typing, even on a good typing day.
I’ll post more on that later. I’m actually dictating this blog post right now, and I will post a dedicated piece on how that’s all working in the next week or so. I’ve recently come up with a workflow that seems to be working really well, and I’m very excited about it.
My plan going forward is to post here every Friday, every Monday on the Snake Bites blog (scroll to the bottom – yes, I need to update that template too) and every other week on my alter ego blogs, taking turns there.
I hope your New Year’s got off to as positive and hopeful a start as mine.Do you have any goals for the new year you’d like to share?
Thanks for reading, and happy writing!
Support your author:
Buy directly from me at Brazen Snake Books, or:
This House of Books (my local bookstore!) | The Book Depository
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks | Audible
Google Play (digital) | Google Play (Audio)
- Pivotal
- The Edge of the Cliff