Good Endings make Better Beginnings. (Big Dreams Blog Update #27)

YEAR-END UPDATE DAY!

Thanks to Shah Wharton for the banner above.

I’m pretty sure I say this every year (like I do almost every Update post), but 2015 raced by. I can’t believe a year’s come and gone from my last New Years’ Update. Ahh. The time. Where you go?

*ahem*

So let’s review some of my year’s goals.

I actually have no problem with New Years’ resolutions. Some people mock them, other people revere them, I probably fell in the former category a few years back and since I started this blog, I began leaning towards the latter opinion of reverence. Heck! Last year I set these (favourite) New Years’ resolutions:

1) Eat healthier and exercise more.

2) Find a job (*cough*thatIlike*hack*)

3) Write two more novels and send them to agents or directly to publishers.

For me the same old goals I recycled (maybe tweaked) since 2014.

Sitting here mentally reviewing 2015 and writing this post has made me consider that resolutions are fine and dandy…when coupled with a goal plan.

It’s easy to say that this is the year that you’re going to cut down on chocolate, open a business and roll in the profit and quit the day job, and so on. It’s harder to put that ‘bigger’ plan to action.

So my broader goal in 2015 is to outline an action plan for each of my goals (even the small ones). How will I be doing this? By continuing my monthly Update reviews, and within those Updates setting smaller goals towards the bigger goals.

For example, one of my goals for 2015 is to renew my writing goals from 2015. This year, in particular, I wanted to write one sentence daily. That didn't happen. In fact that one-sentence goal was re-constructed from another failed goal of 750 words/daily. It's all here if you want to read about it. Instead of aiming for writing daily, I know that all my finished projects usually require me to focus and write on the project daily.

So if I can do that much, then great. Otherwise it's taken me two years to get to this point, but I now accept that I won't be writing daily. And you know what? That's just fine.

As long as I set my resolutions, have my mini action plans for each and I use this blog to keep myself accountable then I see a productive new year.

My resolutions for 2016 include:

✿ WRITING: this year I won't be setting a calendar of projects, instead I'd like to complete projects as per priority and take it a day at a time from there. For instance I'm opening the new year with a short story I have plans for but I can't speak about yet.

✿ READING + REVIEWING: I surpassed my goal of reading + reviewing 52-53 books for 2015. I actually read a little more than 100, but I didn't review some of those novellas. I reviewed only 100 and I'm all the better for those 100 and some reads.

Now I know this blog is called "Read, Review, and Rinse" and I started 2014 with book reviews, but I'll be stopping that this year. Why? I never really enjoyed reviewing books. It was an experience I'll cherish, not one I want to re-hash anymore. Maybe I'll feel differently after the next 366 days... We'll have to see. In the meantime, I will renew my reading goal of 52-53 books for 2016 and will continue to update my reading list -- I just won't be reviewing those books.

✿ MISC.: this is where my health and financial plans go. Health-wise I didn't really appreciate my body and my spirit all that much this year.

I was mostly equally depressed as I was happy, and some days I felt like I was tiptoeing around my mood to ensure my productivity for the day. 'Cause I don't know about anyone else, I just can't do anything when I'm all weepy and pissy. I also tend to binge-eat sweets when I'm sad, so I'd like to replace sugary treats with more fruits. I won't be doing baking reviews anymore. That was a trial for this year and I didn't like reviewing as much as I liked baking, so I'll keep up the baking just toss out the reviews. And I'll be searching for healthier desserts and whenever I find one I like, I'll share it real quick on here (or maybe Twitter or something). Fair?

Financial stuff is my business, but I'm hoping to turn around my finances this year. Pay off more student loans, and learn to budget better. I'll probably do the latter by visiting the library and reading up on how-tos and all that. You learn by doing, right?

Now that I listed my resolutions/bigger goals, I would go through each and break down my goals and they'd look something like this:

✿ WRITING: complete short story and edit short story; I'll see what comes after that but I've got an idea for another project I'm co-authoring so that's probably what will come next

✿ (JUST) READING: read 1 book/week and I already have my first two books lined up for the new year

✿ MISC.: continue exercising (I exercise every other day for 30 mins at least, and I tend to break out into dance throughout the day anyways, so more exercise); keep a food journal -- this will be within my art journal (<-- more on both these in January); try to keep spending down to a minimum (I still live with the 'rents and they're cool with it, but I'd like to start to pitch in with the bills more) -- I'm looking into some jobs, and hopefully I can talk about my progress in the first quarter of 2016).

Really vague, I know, but it's enough to expand from resolutions to actual do-able goals. Next up, I need that accountability. Some people don't, and that's cool, but I know that if I don't feel like I'm looking over my shoulder just a bit that I'll start to slack off. And that's where the Do You Have a Goal? blog hop has come in for a bit more than 2 years now.

If I didn't know that there were 11 other bloggers out there trying to achieve their goals

Created by authors Misha Gericke and Beth Fred, the Do You Have a Goal? hoppity hop invites you to set one (preferably big and crazy) goal to reach by July 2018 (five years after the blog hop's beginning).

My goal is 1 million words in completed stories because the 1 million and first word is supposed to be my first good word -- all lies, I just like "fullness" of 1 million. Whatever that means. But I am closing the year off with 192K (going down from ~250K because I haven't read some of those finished manuscripts, and once I do I'll add them to the count).

As a member of the blog, every month I do an Update post recounting my goals from the previous month. Where am I at? What did I do for the past ~4 weeks? What are my goals for the coming month?

Like I said, AMAH-ZING for folks like me who are shaky with time management.

Interested in the blog? Click the icon up at the top of this post, or right HERE or Uncle Sam to join in the fun now.

All in all, 2016 will be about upward change. Improving, stumbling along the way but remembering what worked and didn't work to ensure I don't keep falling flat on my face by repeating poor, old habits.

The reason I chose an English proverb* for this blog's title is to show how a New Year doesn't have to start at January 1st 12:00 AM; beginnings can start whenever, and there's always room to change, adapt and grow. Just make sure to have fun while you're doing all that. 

Here's to a healthy, happy and successful year.

Cheers!

*actual English proverb: "A good beginning makes a good ending."