2015 in Review and Goals for 2016

Well, look at that; the calendars have changed, a New Year has rolled over, and some of us were out WAY past our bedtimes last night…

What? The little one? No, you fools, I meant me!

So it’s 2016, which means that it’s time to sit back, relax, reflect on the past year, and re-evaluate for the coming one.

Last year at this time I made three very broadly-termed goals:

1. Take care of myself more.
2. Continue to build my readership/viewership.
3. Write. Write a lot.

If I were to put a label on my success or failure of those three goals for the year of 2015, I would say, “moderately acceptable”.

Let’s start with the first goal: Take care of myself more. I think that, when looked at as individual moments, this goal could be considered something of a success. I did a lot of different things in an attempt to take better care of myself…I ate better, went for runs, took long, relaxing baths, learned how to meditate, and unashamedly enjoyed quiet nights of nothing but Doctor Who, among other things. The problem is that each of these steps forward often stood alone and was accompanied by several steps back. For instance, during the times when I was eating better I wasn’t exercising, and when I was exercising I wasn’t finding time to enjoy my shows, and when I was enjoying my shows I was getting less sleep, and so on and so on.

For that reason, this year I want to continue on with the idea of this goal, but be a little more specific. I’m going to continue to take care of myself in general, but specifically I’m going to do so via two mini-goals: I’m going to walk 10,000 steps per day (counted by my FitBit) even if that means I have to run on the spot at the end of the day in order to hit that number, and I’m going to take at least 15 minutes every day to do something fun and relaxing, whether that’s coloring, or a video game, or listening to music with a face mask on, or whatever.

Those two things, every day, that’s goal number one.

Moving on to the second goal from last year: Continue to build my readership/viewership. That was a very broad goal, based on gaining YouTube followers, blog readers, novel readers, and so on, and I have to say that in general this goal was something of a failure. I definitely gained a lot of YouTube followers this year, but that seems to have been by virtue of my videos themselves, because I did little to nothing to actually advertise them. Marketing myself as a novelist is something I basically didn’t do at all because of a combination of both laziness and the fact that marketing yourself is more difficult and time consuming than it sounds. And the blog…well I hardly even need to talk about the blog because you can just look at WordPress’s end of year review of it. According to those stats, my five most popular posts of 2015 were ones that I wrote in 2014, 2013, and even 2012. That’s a bit ridiculous, if you ask me; it means that no one was coming to my blog this past year for blog posts that I wrote this past year.

I’m not really entirely sure how I should go about fixing these problems, but I have a few ideas, including continuing on with ideas that I came up with at the end of the year concerning the blog. I share a lot of subscription box reviews on this blog these days, but what I need to be doing is more actual writing, so I’m definitely going to continue on with Memoir Mondays and Flash Fiction Fridays, and I’m going to try to spend more time talking about fun stuff on my blog, like the shows, games, and books I’m into, what’s going on in life as the parent of a toddler, any fun stuff I’ve been doing lately, and so on. Finally, I’m going to try to share more of what I’m actually working with on the writing front, rather than simply talking about it all the time. Similarly, I’m hoping to do some more fun, different stuff on the YouTube channel in the future, and if I’ve got any energy left at all I’ll try my very hardest to continue to promote my poor book (pst…there’s a link right there in the sidebar!).

So, more fun and various stuff on the blog, new and different videos on YouTube, and more self-promotion boils down goal number two.

And finally we have the last goal from last year: Write. Write a lot. Last year I decided to be very, very vague with my writing goal because in previous years I’d set numerical goals and spectacularly failed to get anywhere near them. In 2015 I finished up the year with approximately 226,000 words, which is significantly less than I wrote in 2013 and only about 1000 more words than I wrote in 2014. I was vague specifically so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed in whatever the results were to be, but I have to admit that I’m still pretty disappointed because when I look at my projects folders it doesn’t seem like I’ve really got anything to show for the words that I did write, especially considering that most of those words were blog posts, not fiction. So this year I’m not going back to a numerical goal, but I am going to be a bit more specific. I’m going to write. I’m going to write a lot. And somewhere amid all that writing, I am going to write an entire novel. Not necessarily within National Novel Writing Month (although it would certainly be nice to win again for a change), but sometime over the next twelve months. A little more specifically, I plan to both begin and finish Book Two of The Other World. Book One only has a chapter or two to go before I send it out to my beta-reader, so I want to have the first draft of Book Two written this year. And if I’m feeling really ambitious, maybe I’ll even write Book Three as well. 🙂

Write a lot, including beginning and finishing an entire novel. Goal number three is born.

And I’m going to stick to three goals because three seems like a nice number, a reasonable number. Throw too many things in there and you just stress yourself out, right? Right.

So there you have it…my three goals for 2016 are as follows:

1. Take good care of myself, specifically by walking 10,000 steps a day and taking at least 15 minutes per day to do something fun/relaxing.

2. Build readership/viewership by putting more focus and energy into my blog posts, shooting fun and different YouTube videos, and putting more effort into self-promotion.

3. Write as much as I can, including writing an entire novel from start to finish.

I think those goals are attainable, don’t you? It’s going to take time, effort, and a better attitude than I normally have, but I think my day-planner and I can figure something out. 🙂

So how about you guys? How was your 2015? What are your plans for 2016? Do you have any major goals? Any little ones? How did you spend New Years Eve? Are you possibly feeling a little hungover today? XD Please share! And Happy New Year! ❤

Accountability Tuesdays: Week 52 and A Year in Review

This is it. Not only is this my last accountability post of the year, but at midnight tonight 2013 will be complete.

Image borrowed from seaandbescene.com

It’s been a busy and interesting year. I spent the first six months of the year working out West in the Alberta oil sands on a 2 weeks out, 2 weeks home schedule that involved a heck-of-a-lot of flights back and forth across the country and quite a bit of time away from my daughter and husband. The other six months I spent contentedly unemployed, enjoying just being home but also very busy with a growing toddler, your usual insane amount of housework, and trying to fit lots of writing and a reasonable amount of leisure time in there was well.

This year I turned 29. Thanks to my work out West I paid off both my and my husband’s student loans, and completed the payments on our car, leaving us with no other debt besides our mortgage. I also struggled – both during work and during unemployment – to work as hard as I could on my writing, both the fiction and the blogging varieties. This year I participated in my sixth NaNoWriMo and netted my fifth win.  I also (nearly) completed editing on my first ever finished manuscript, and I wrote a significant amount toward a fantasy adventure that I’ve been working on for several years now.

I wrote 248 blog posts this year. Two hundred and forty-eight.

My daughter turned three years old this year. I made her a kick-ass MegaMan costume for Halloween, which she loved, and I built (from scratch) a tickle trunk for her for her birthday. Speaking of which, I baked and decorated about a million My Little Pony cupcakes for that birthday as well.

We had an awesome holiday, I was given some truly awesome presents by my husband and my whole family, my daughter proved that she could quickly figure out the use of a kid-tablet that’s marketed more toward older kids, and here we find ourselves at the end of 2013, just waiting for the clock to tick over.

And so here is my last bout of accountability for the year, with comparisons to the “Wildly Improbable Goals” that spawned them in the first place.

Health and Body Image Goal

1. Get into some kind of shape that makes me feel good about my body again…I’m not looking at a particular amount of weight-loss or anything specific, just a state of physical being that I feel good about. I slate this as a wildly improbable goal because, as I’ve mentioned before, my work schedule makes devoting time to such a thing particularly difficult.

A year has passed since I wrote the above, and not a lot has changed outwardly. If I were to go hunt down a photo of myself from last January and compare it to a photo now you probably wouldn’t see much of a difference. I had periods throughout 2013 where I did an excellent amount of exercise, and periods when I was more slovenly than I’ve ever been in my life. I had periods during which I ate pretty well, and periods during which I deserved every second of the stomach pains that I incurred. I managed to work myself toward running a 10 min/mile, and then completely lost that ability.

But here’s the thing: though I didn’t lose any (significant) weight or inches, wasn’t able to go down a pant size or stick to a healthy eating routine, I did accomplish something. I came to a realization that while I do want to lose some weight and become healthier overall, I am perfectly satisfied with my body the way it is right now. I don’t feel fat, I don’t feel ugly. I feel like a mom and a wife and a tradeswoman, and that’s okay with me, even if I go a whole year more without losing a single pound.

Editing Goal

2. Finish editing my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide. It’s time to get this f’er on the shelves, damn it!

A good chunk of 2013 saw this goal effectively ignored, due to my complete inability to find a decent word processor to work from my tablet while I was out West. But when I did finally get to work on this goal, I really went crazy. Everything came to a screaming halt once the holidays hit, but to date I only have approximately two and a half chapters (which, I think, are the best-written chapters anyway) to finish editing. So while I didn’t technically complete this goal, I feel very good about where I managed to find myself and am confident that I’ll be able to do something great with my manuscript in the new year.

1,000,000 Word Goal

3. Write 1,000,000 words in 2013. This is the big one. Where am I going to find the time? I have no idea. But between blog posts, drabbles, new stories, and new scenes added to NtH during editing, I want to accomplish a total word count of ONE MILLION words by the end of 2013. Wouldn’t that be something? I think it would.

It became evident within the first few months of the year that this wasn’t likely to happen. There just weren’t enough hours in the day while I was out West in order to write the 83,333 words per month necessary to complete this goal. I eventually came to the conclusion that 500,000 words was a more reasonable goal, though I continued to refer to it as the 1,000,000 word goal, because wouldn’t that be awesome? Unfortunately, as with my editing goal, the holidays hit at just the right time to keep me from progressing quite far enough. As of the completion of this post, my grand total word count for the year of 2013 came to 457,067 words. I didn’t come anywhere near my original million word hope, and I came several thousand words short of my revised half-a-million word hope, but I have to be honest: I’m quite amazed with what I did manage to do. I’ve been writing for more than 15 years, and I don’t know if I wrote so many words over the course of the first 14 all together, never mind that many over the course of one year. I’m incredibly proud of myself and have every intention of blowing away that personal record in 2014. Here’s to acting like a real writer. 🙂

So there it is. One year ends, another one begins. I hope everyone has a great New Years Eve, and that everyone greets 2014 with heads held high.

See you all next year. 🙂

Upholding a Proud Tradition of Stolen Ideas…

Well the New Year has come and gone. I had a nice quiet night with my husband, our daughter, and my inlaws, sitting at home watching ridiculous shows and having a few drinks. My daughter ran around like a maniac until a few minutes before the ball dropped, at which point she cheered with the rest of us – despite having no idea what was happening – and then promptly conked out while snuggled up over my shoulder. It was a pretty good night.

But since then I’ve been think about resolutions. I’m not a big resolution person because I don’t see why January deserves to see us pronounce to change ourselves for the better any more than any other month does. It’s no easier to lose weight in January than in July, so what’s the big deal about “New Years” resolutions?

Then I stumbled across dianemackinnon‘s post, Wildly Improbable Goals 2013, in which Diane lists her goals for 2013, which are (did you guess?) wildly improbable. Not impossible, you’ll notice, but improbable. Wildly improbable.

Her vein of thinking, it seems, is, “How awesome would it feel to make a wildly improbable goal and actually achieve it?” And here I sit, finding myself nodding in agreement. It would feel awesome. What is there to lose? Failing at a wildly improbable goal would be no more frustrating than failing at an entirely probable goal, but succeeding…now that would really be something.

So here we go…Tracey’s wildly improbable goals for 2013:

1. Get into some kind of shape that makes me feel good about my body again…I’m not looking at a particular amount of weight-loss or anything specific, just a state of physical being that I feel good about. I slate this as a wildly improbable goal because, as I’ve mentioned before, my work schedule makes devoting time to such a thing particularly difficult.

2. Finish editing my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide. It’s time to get this f’er on the shelves, damn it!

3. Write 1,000,000 words in 2013. This is the big one. Where am I going to find the time? I have no idea. But between blog posts, drabbles, new stories, and new scenes added to NtH during editing, I want to accomplish a total word count of ONE MILLION words by the end of 2013. Wouldn’t that be something? I think it would.

So there you have it. I’m putting myself at the mercy of a trio of wildly improbable goals and I’m putting them right out here for everyone to see and hold me accountable. Hold me accountable, damn it!

When I get around to it (ie: when I get enough sleep at this godforsaken camp to be able to think about such things) I’ll make up a couple of progress bars for my goals so you can all watch me probably fail but maybe succeed.

Here’s to the wildly improbable hopes of 2013!