Succeeding and Stalling
It’s been a long time (May?) since I did a goals check-in. In some ways, I’ve made huge progress since then. In other ways, I’ve flopped.
My original new years resolution was to reignite my passion for creative writing. Because of my early success with that original goal, three pretty huge sub-goals came about that I never expected.
Writing reignited my love for reading, and I managed to climb out of the nearly decade-long reading slump. So after a few months early this year of consistently reading three books a month, I set a goal for myself to read an overall 36 books this year. And last night, with the conclusion of The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, I finished my 36th book. I’m crazy proud of myself, after having not read more than 5-6 books a year for the last…many…years. I have no plans of slowing down, so I’ll be interested to see how many books I’ve read by the end of the year (50? Seems like a stretch but maybe?).
2. I started working on a novel. And after a couple months of making consistent progress, I set a new goal to complete a first draft of that novel by the end of the year. But then I hit a wall, and I didn’t do any writing over the summer. So now, approaching the end of September, I’m fairly confident I won’t be able to pull off a complete first draft by the end of the year. I’m disappointed in myself for falling off. BUT, as per my last post, I signed up for a fantasy and sci-fi writer’s group, which meets once a week through early November. So I’m back to making progress, and that feels good. As long as I keep making progress every week for the rest of the year (save maybe the holiday weeks), I’ll feel like I recovered the fumble.
3. My love of reading and writing spurred me to start a BookTube channel, where I interview folks in the literary world, and discuss the books I’ve been reading. Definitely never saw this coming when I set the goal for myself back in December, but I’m having a ton of fun with it. It’s encouraging me to read more, think about what I’m reading more critically and articulate it, meet new people, and gain video editing skills. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s super fun. My goal now is to continue putting out at least two videos a month for the rest of the year. I don’t think that’ll be hard, I already have two more videos filmed (but not edited), and a ton more content ideas rolling around.
So that’s where I’m at with my 2022 new year’s resolution and where it’s lead me so far. Looking forward to continuing to make progress in the last quarter.
