Totally-Probable Goals for 2015

Well, ladies and gents, this is it: it’s officially 2015. Where the heck did 2014 go? I honestly have no idea. I really feel like it was just yesterday that I was making my list of goals for 2014, and now here I am making new ones for 2015. I must be getting old or something, because time…man.

Anyway, let’s look at happier things than time flying out beneath me. First of all, if you saw my “Year in Review” post yesterday you’d have seen that I had approximately 35,000 views last year. At first that didn’t seem like a very large number to me, but then I looked at previous years and realized that the most views I’d gotten in a year before this past one was about 11,000. So that means that my view base has more than tripled in one year! Not too shabby, I’d say. However, something that I noticed when comparing my stats with some of my fellow bloggers’ is that while I have more views than several of them, almost all of them have significantly more comments than me. This makes me wonder if there’s something about the way I write, the topics I choose, or some other factor that makes people not want to bother interacting with my posts, and that’s something that I’d really like to work on. So if anyone has any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please let me know! Interaction is important. 🙂

So with that out of the way, what about the coming year? Well, I’ve learned a few things from last year that I plan to apply to the coming year. First and foremost, I am not making any goals pertaining to weight loss. Screw you, diet industry. And it’s not that I don’t think I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I’m just sick and tired of setting myself up for failure. The fact of the matter is that regardless of how I feel about my weight, it is not the most important issue in my mind, not by a long shot. Therefore making a goal like that, I may as well just admit today that it’s not going to be accomplished. Hands down, when my options are to exercise, to write, to sleep, to spend time with my family, to play games, or to work on the blog/social media/etc, exercise will always be the absolute last choice. There’s no denying that. So from here on out, no goals about weight loss. Weight loss would be awesome, but I’m not holding myself to a goal like that any more.

Second of all, in the past two years I’ve made my list of goals and then reported on them on a weekly basis: my “Accountability” posts. I’m not going to do that anymore. About midway through 2014 I began to realize that those posts were more or less a way for me to have a really easy writing day every week, and that they weren’t contributing anything to the blog. Yes, occasionally I got some interaction on those posts from readers, but I think I would have gotten just as much interaction had they been monthly posts instead of weekly ones. So from here on out, my “Accountability” posts will be an end-of-month report instead of a weekly whine-fest. (Oh yeah, I’m going to try to work on the whining too…lol)

Third, sometime over the course of the next month (before I return to work), I’m going to try and straighten up the blog a bit and create an actual author page. I like the blog the way it is and I don’t really want to change it, but I think that as a published author I should have at least one page that just says who I am and promotes the book. Something a little more professional-looking, yes? Maybe with a couple of widgets so that you can still connect to my forms of social media via that page. We’ll see how it turns out. 😉

And finally, I guess it’s time to talk about the actual goals. So what are my goals for 2015?

Goal #1: Take care of myself more.
I may not be making any goals about weight loss, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a goal pertaining to my physical and mental well-being. This is a very broad goal, but basically boils down to the fact that I want to work on thinking about myself more often. I’ve already started the trend by taking the time to pamper myself with things like a manicure, or an extra-long shower while wearing a mud mask. Little things to help relax, you know? But I’d also like to work on other little things, like forcing myself to relax and read/play games/watch shows more often, getting up and moving every now and then, and maybe even eating a little better (although that one will always be a huge stretch for me). Basically, this is an all-encompassing goal for the betterment of my personal lifestyle. Wish me luck.

Goal #2: Continue to build my readership/viewership.
Last year this goal was to “work hard on my author platform”. This is basically the same idea, except I’m not really calling it an “author platform” anymore. I’m preferring to think of it as a “me platform”. Yes, the biggest part of my online presence is meant to be “author” me, but there’s really no sense in pigeonholing myself like that. If people find me through Instagram because of a cute pic I posted, that’s awesome. If people find me because they stumbled across one of my unboxing videos on YouTube, that’s awesome. Any way that people come to me is great; it’s not just about directing them to the blog. Ultimately, of course, the goal is to connect with as many people as possible in hopes that they will one day become the readers of my books, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to be chasing after them with a jpeg of the “Nowhere to Hide” cover, screaming for them to buy. No, I want people to find me whichever way they can, and hopefully that will eventually lead to more books sold. If not, hey, it’ll still be pretty awesome just to be viewed.

Goal #3: Write. Write a lot.
I seriously considered setting myself another specific word count goal this year, but I eventually decided against it. You know why? Similarly to the weight loss goals, it just sets me up for failure. I don’t need a specific word count to strive toward; all having one does is make me panic as I steadily realize that I’m running out of time. So this year I’m just focusing on the writing. I’m going to try for 500-1000 words per day, but I’m not going to panic if I don’t accomplish that. Just as long as I’m writing. And I will still keep track, but only because I’ll be interested to see what the final numbers work out to. Hopefully this last goal will lead to the publishing of another book this year, but again, I’m not going to hold myself to it because I don’t want to rush and stress myself out. All things in good time.

So those are my goals for 2015. Take care of myself, keep building the blog/YouTube channel/various other social media outlets, and write like I mean it. I think they’re pretty good ones, ones that will keep me grounded this coming year without stressing me out.

What do you think? Have you made any goals for 2015? How are you planning to go about achieving them? Please share! We can support each other. ^_~

Go With the Flow. It’s Going to Drag You Along With it Anyway!

Planning versus pantsing. It’s one of the great debates amongst writers. Which is the best? Why? What are the pros and cons of each?

I’ve discussed this before, but with Camp NanoWriMo just ending (I failed to reach my goal by the way…very sad about that) I figured I’d bring it up again, since Nano has been traditionally all about pantsing.

For those who don’t know, “pantsing” (or “flying by the seat of your pants”), is basically the exact opposite of planning. Rather than work out your plot line, character archs, and important scenes beforehand, you just write, going for quantity over quality, and deal with the results in editing.

Today I’m going to discuss a different kid of proponent for “pantsing”. I’m going to discuss my wedding.

Many women plan their wedding to death. They drill every detail into the ground. What color are the napkins going to be? Oh no, we can’t sit Aunt Agnus next to Cousin Greg! My shoes can’t have a silver beading on them, it all has to be white!!!!

You can’t really blame them too much because for many women their wedding is the most important day of their life, something they’ve been waiting for since they were little girls. It has to be perfect. It has to be flawless. Any misstep will follow her around for the rest of her days.

Right?

When I first started planning my wedding I was a little crazy as well. Even though I didn’t even want half of the bells and whistles that one is used to seeing at a wedding, I still wanted it to be perfect. No room for error!

But here’s the thing…things started going wrong almost immediately. Little things at first, like when I couldn’t find a printer to do the invitations. Then it was big things, like when two of my hubby’s three groomsmen had to cancel. Finally it was an enormous thing: we heard word that our venue – a bed-and-breakfast style inn with lovely grounds – was going out of business. I’ll admit, in those days I nearly had a nervous breakdown. At the time that we heard about the venue we only ha about two months to the wedding, and the invites had all already been sent. How was I going to find another venue this late and communicate the change to some 200 possible guests? I spent more than one work day gritting my teeth and trying not to burst into tears in front of all my coworkers.

As it turned out, the venue held on a little longer and we were still able to have the wedding there. When I found this out not only did a huge weight life from my shoulders, but my entire attitude toward the wedding changed. I realized that yes, things were going to go wrong. Things were going to turn out differently than I imagined. Things were not going to be perfect and flawless. That’s just life. And when I realized this and accepted it, it made all the difference to my psyche.

No, relaxing and letting things flow did not suddenly and magically make everything work out wonderfully. We still had lots of issues. My wedding dress almost wasn’t hemmed in time. The venue manager forgot to order the tent, which would have been a disaster of it had rained. My bridesmaids and I woke up the morning off feeling sick as dogs. My uncle mistook the seating set-up for the church equivalent and had the front row completely empty, expecting the wedding party to sit there. My mother-in-law went head-over-heels trying to get a picture of me coming down the aisle. I could go on, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. Despite everything we had to deal with before and during the wedding day, the wedding was beautiful. We got married on the sunniest day we’d seen yet that summer. My best friend’s father played beautiful music for us and we took hundreds of gorgeous pictures. We had a ton of fun drinking and dancing with our friends and family. And in the end, the most important bit happened: my husband and I traded rings and became man and wife.

I tell you all of this not because I think “pantsing it” is the only way to go. I’m not trying to convince you that everything will be cupcakes and unicorn rides if you just go with the flow. But if you can convince yourself I the truth – that nothing in this world is perfect and that trying to obtain perfection, especially on the first try, is tantamount to insanity – you’ll be a lot better off. I could have obsessed about every little thing that went askew with my wedding, but I choose to focus on everything that went right, because that’s what really matters.

I challenge you to apply this way of thinking to many areas of your life, whether it be your own wedding, writing a book, building a house, teaching yourself a new skill, expectations you have for your children, or any other number of life events. I won’t promise that everything will magically work out for the better, but I’d be willing to bet that you’ll be significantly less stressed out.

A Day at Kearl Lake

I have come to the conclusion that the Internet in my camp room is not going to get fixed while I’m actually still here, so let it be known that I plucked out this entire entry on my iPhone. 😐

Camp life is definitely a different kind of life.

I wake up between 4:00 and 4:30 am. The bed is a little stiff, but I’m used to a cushion-top mattress, so I might be a little biased there. I wash up at the sink in my room, throw on some clothes, grab my lunch bag and stumble down to the main area of the camp.

Breakfast is served in the dining room, should you wish to partake. There are dispensers of cereal, tons of fruit, and you can also get stuff cooked in the kitchen, such as various forms of eggs, sausages, bacon, etc. To drink you can get milk, several kinds of juice, tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. I don’t usually get breakfast in the dining room because I’m lazy and don’t normally eat much for breakfast anyway.

For your work lunch you go to the bag-up room. This room is full of easy-to-grab things like fruit, sandwiches and wraps, sweets, salads, and refrigerated portions of stuff from the kitchens, like lasagna, chili, chicken and potatoes, etc. These things are marked with stickers showing the day they go bad so you can see how old they are and judge whether you’d want to eat them. Of this stuff you can effectively take as much as you want. I usually grab some oatmeal and fruit (which I eat while waiting for the morning work meeting), one of the kitchen things (today I have spaghetti) and some snack stuff like celery and peanut butter, a bagel, some cookies, or whatever.

To get to he job, I line up at the gates at around 5:10 am. The buses line up at 5:15 and leave at 5:30. You have to swipe your card and go through a turnstile and then find the bus that goes to your section of the site. I haven’t actually counted, but I think there are close to thirty different buses. You have to get on the right one or you’ll end up in a section you’re not allowed in. The bus drive takes about half an hour to 40 minutes.

At work we have a meeting and then head out into the site. The site is so huge that you have to sign in to which area you’re going to in case of emergencies. I’m in the Froth section, which is the part of the system that will remove the oil (bitumen) from the sand. It’s still under construction so right now my main duty is to familiarize myself with the equipment. There’s a lot of walking and climbing. A LOT. The other day myself and a couple of the guys climbed to the top of the highest structure on site. It took almost half an hour to get up, but it was a pretty awesome view.

We catch the bus back to camp at the end of the 12-hour shift. If you’re quick you can jump in the bag-up room before it closes and grab some snacks to take to your room. I usually jump in and grab some cookies or something. For supper the dining room generally has two or three entrees and half a dozen possible sides, plus a bunch of deserts. Yesterday I had roasted potatoes and lemon-crusted sole. The night before I had hot wings and fries.

Finally, after supper I basically go up to my room, take a shower, and relax. There’s a gym with lots of equipment but I’m too beat by the end of the day to use it. Maybe I’ll get used to it after a shift or two and start adding in some stints at the gym but for now I just go up to my room, maybe give a call down home, and watch shows on my computer until I fall asleep (which doesn’t take very long).

Eventually I’ll figure out how to squeeze some writing into the day somewhere. 😐