As I went to look back on the year and plan for this post, I found my post from January 1 to see what I had written, what goals I had set for myself:
"In 2017 I will strive to be more productive.
I will aim to be more positive.
But I will also try to be better about giving myself some slack when I'm feeling overwhelmed."
And that's it. Kind of vague, and hard to measure.
I don't know that I was more productive in 2017. I did get one short story written, publishing-ready, accepted for publication, and published within the year, so that's something. I also was planning a wedding for a good portion of the year, and that takes a lot of time, so I feel I kind of get a pass on that. I revamped my website, launching the new layout in March, and with very few exceptions, have met my goal of a post each week. So I guess I have been productive. It's hard to measure "more" productive, though, as I spent the majority of my free time in 2016 looking for a new job.
I have definitely made an effort to be more positive in 2017. It helped that early in the year I got a new job with a very supportive supervisor, in a completely different environment. I also made an attempt to find the positive in things rather than focus on the negative (and, yes, I know you can't always do this, but I did it when I could). In an effort to help with this, I started a "good things jar" - each week you write something positive that happened to you and put it in the jar. Tomorrow, I will go back through and read all of them. But this helped me with the way I think about things - even if you've had a bad week, you can usually find something good, even if it's just "I had really yummy macaroni and cheese on Wednesday" or "the dog snuggled with me tonight."
I think I was also better this year about recognizing when I needed a break - "I should be [insert activity here] but I really need to just chill and give my mind a rest."
So, now that I've decided that I reasonably met my goals for 2017, what for 2018? (I don't make resolutions. The word "resolution" has developed a connotation as being an unreasonable expectation that people give up on in a week. I make goals.)
My writing goals* for 2018 will include:
1. Prep and submit my latest short story, "The Cause of the Disturbance." This will actually require some research as it is a decidedly different genre and style than my three other published stories, and may need to be submitted to different places than I have been submitting to.
2. Make measurable progress on The Wolf and the Sheath. Don't ask me what "measurable" means right now - this may end up being the amount of new material written, amount of editing/rewriting, etc.
3. Attend my writing critique group semi-regularly.
4. Manage my time better in the evenings.
At risk of boxing myself back in and giving myself grief about not meeting goals or schedules, #4 is probably the one that will be my biggest challenge this year, as I let it go a bit (especially toward the end of the year) this year. What I need to do is something like this:
-Monday: Use the time before Jason gets home for exercising and keeping up to date on the news. Make my writerly quote of the week post. Use the time after dinner for housekeeping and other non-writing business.
-Tuesday: Use the time before Jason gets home for exercising and keeping up to date on the news, see if I can squeeze in a walk for Baldur before dinner. Use the time after dinner for only writing; I can give myself more time if I plan to buy my lunch the next day rather than taking time to prep it in the evening.
-Wednesday: Jason often works from home; use the time between when I get home and we make dinner to catch up on small tasks. Check ads and coupons for groceries.
-Thursday: Same as Tuesday.
-Friday: Prepare to go to the grocery store, free evening. Blogging to be done sometime between now and Sunday.
-Saturday: Be better about spending my time on productive things, including writing. One potential day for writing critique group.
-Sunday: Same as Saturday, but the days can alternate depending on if Jason and I have plans.
*I have a couple other goals that are not writing related, and if I do post about them it will be on my personal Facebook page, not here.
Meet me back here in a year to see how I did.