scordatura (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scordatura) wrote2020-02-10 10:22 am
scordatura) wrote2020-02-10 10:22 am
Entry tags:
2020 Resolutions
WELP, I meant to post this way sooner and life very much got away from me, but... better late than never, I guess?? We're not SUPER far into the second month of 2020, so I guess it's not too ridiculous to post my goals for the year now?? :")) Especially since January was so busy I gave myself a break from working on them, but JANUARY IS OVER AND SO THE TIME FOR GOALS IS NOW, FRIENDS!!
I said in my recap and on Twitter that if 2018 was my rebuilding year, 2019 was the year that made all of said rebuilding come to fruition -- so 2020 is going to be the year in which I finally have a stable garden in which to sow the seeds of said fruition (pardon the extremely mixed metaphors in play here). I finally have a stable foundation off of which I can springboard into the future, so I want to use it, and I want to keep moving forward in the best and healthiest way for myself.
And it's relieving to know, looking at these goals, that they're similar ones I've been setting in the past several years! Some of them are a little depressing, since they're returning goals I haven't achieved in years prior, ha, but many are just continuations of the things that remain important to me and that I want to keep working on. It's nice to have achieved that sense of consistency, and to learn from years of honing how I work best and what I hold most dear.
So having said all of that -- let's get to it! Read on to learn what's (hopefully) in store for me in 2020!
Writing Goals
• Finish drafts of Gay Werewolves, CMRN #2, and CMRN #3. For the most part, a repeat goal! I've been working on the second draft of Gay Werewolves since 2017; here's hoping this will be the year I finally make the magic happen! I'd hoped to finish CMRN #2 (the Torrie/Aurora story) before NaNo last year and didn't quite manage, so I'd like to finish both this and CMRN #3 (the Ten/Evander story, which I think is closer to done than either of the prior ones were at the end of NaNo!) this year, in preparation for CMRN #4 (as yet unnamed lighthouse witch/sailor story!) for this year's NaNo.
I've planned out goals for all three to try to finish them at a neat, reasonable pace -- I sadly didn't have much of a chance to write last month, but I've been doing better so far this month and will keep everyone posted on these goals as I keep working, both here and in my writing newsletter!! (WHICH IS BACK, BABY, SO SUBSCRIBE IF YOU HAVEN'T YET, FRIENDS.)
• Work a little bit more on my next project and plan out what else I'm interested in working on. So while I do want to focus on my two biggest projects, my writing has also been so insular over the past couple years, I really do miss working on other stuff! I had so much fun writing a bunch of fic in 2017 and I always remember, while Yuletide-ing, how much I enjoy that too -- I have so many ideas I want to keep working on, and I'd like 2020 to be the year I figure out where to go next, even if I don't get too far, just to get the momentum going!
So I want to do some planning for the big projects I know I want to work on -- namely, Urbomancers (my story about mages whose power is linked to cities, and also about reckoning with who you use to be and who you are now and the meaning of home) and Gay Werewolves #2 (which has some loose emotional and plot beats figured out, but needs a loooot of outlining for clarity and proper plot progression). And then I want to go back to my big list of shit I want to write and figure out what comes next for me -- what I'm still feeling inspired by, what I might want to add to the list, and what calls to me in terms of what's coming next!
Other Creative Goals
• Knit a sweater. I have already technically knit one, but it's more of a giant loose cardigan than a real, properly shaped one -- I want to find a sweater pattern and knit the whole damn thing!! I think I still need to practice for another couple months, at least, before I feel confident enough in my ability to start in on this project, but it's a goal I want to set for myself and I'm VERY excited about fulfilling it. (I want to knit a bunch of other things, too, but that's more of a regular hobby I just want to ensure I keep pursuing; this is a really specific goal that I feel like I can set and meet, and that'll indicate how far I've come! Maybe I'll circle back here again and add some more specific goals at some point, depending on how things go!)
• Every month, cook something new, bake something new, and make something new that's yeast-based. I didn't end up experimenting with food as much as I'd hoped last year while I still had access to my parents' big kitchen and hefty food budget, and it took us so long to get our kitchen set up (and me to get into my work routine!) that while I did make some fun things, I didn't do nearly as much cooking or baking in the latter half of the year.
ALL THAT CHANGES NOW, THOUGH!! I want to keep expanding my cooking and baking repertoire, and I want to experiment more with breads and things, too. (I'm saying "yeast-based" here to include things like cinnamon rolls, but I do want it to be mostly bread!!) I think three new recipes per month is super attainable -- that's less than one a week, which leaves plenty of room for making old faves! -- and there's a bunch of things I've just been dying to try, so LET'S MAKE THE MAGIC HAPPEN.
Language-Learning Goals
• Finish French and Italian courses on Duolingo; get halfway through German and Russian. This is kind of a stretch goal; I fully, FULLY anticipate I won't even get close to the latter (but I like numbers, so!). Mostly this is just here to expand my language-learning; I've really liked having both French and Italian regularly going on, but I realized that if I stick really closely to just those and don't move on until I've completed them, that's a lot of time in which I could have potentially been learning something new, too, and if I want to actually learn new languages, I gotta start as early as possible. So, German and Russian!! The two that seem to have the most immediate utility for me! And continuing both French and Italian, because it's always nice to have something easier to fall back on when learning a new skill, ha. :")
• Read a book in Serbian. I had a goal a couple years ago of reading six books in Serbian, which... considering I have not managed EVEN ONE FULL ONE since, seems laughable now! But I'm going to set a reasonable one now: ONE WHOLE BOOK, BY THE END OF THE YEAR, I'M GONNA DO IT. I need to practice, especially now that I'm living away from home and am getting rusty again!!
Academic/Professional Goals
• Finish a draft of my dissertation. This one is probably not entirely up to me, but I'm very close to being done with my hypotheses, which means I'm very close to being able to write up my results, which means I'm very close to the means to finish said draft, however initial!! I'm not going to sweat however long it takes me -- I have two years left to finish the degree, and I'm confident I can do it by then, and I'm not going to worry too much about it, BUT I do really want it done and out of my way, so this year I am!! committing!! We're doing this, kids! Out by 2021!!!
• Identify a professional development trajectory at work. (I originally also had "get a raise" under here, but a. I've already managed to do that, HA, and b. I had it confirmed for me that pretty much everyone gets raises at their annual appraisal, SO not gonna sweat it as long as my work stays quality. :"))
So if you've talked to me at all in the past ~eight months, you know that I really, really love my job! Part of what I love about it is that it's remote -- but that also means that it's hard to get a solid idea of what a traditional trajectory looks like, what might come next for me, or the kinds of opportunities I have ahead of me, in terms of projects to work on or what aspects of my job I can incorporate more of, should I want to! So I'm going to set a goal for myself to pay more attention to the company at large and talk more with my coworkers about what they're up to -- to get an idea of what kind of work I might want to be doing after my current project is done, to expand into figuring out what I like about my job and want to do more of, and to figure out where I might be able to go from here, jobwise! I would really, really like to stay on in this position, so I think figuring these things out early on is a good idea, and I'm really looking forward to it!
Personal/Interpersonal Goals
• Write letters to friends. Something I've wanted to do for a while, and finally have the stationery for!! I want to make sure I carve out time in my life to do this, because the simple act of sitting down and putting feelings to pen and paper, directed at one person in particular, is just so special to me, and it's exciting to finally have the means to make it happen. SO LET'S MAKE TIME FOR THIS THIS YEAR, HELLS YEAH.
• Continue identifying and working on my bad habits. This seems pretty self-explanatory in general -- I've spent a lot of time figuring out how I work best and identifying what I need, and with that has come a lot of noticing, identifying, and trying to fix my bad habits! Things like hyperfocusing on shit that distracts me from work for totally arbitrary reasons, or tuning out when someone's talking to me for a long period of time and missing important details, or deciding that it's too late in the day to get things done so I'm not going to bother, or fixating on a potential thing that could go wrong and obsessively thinking about it to the detriment of all else... and, you know, a lot of that is mental health-adjacent, things like processing or attention issues, so hopefully if I ever drag my ass to therapy, it'll help a lot! But there's also a lot to be said for recognizing those habits in myself and doing my very best to address them, hard as it feels. I'm trying to be gentle with myself and not go in hard on the self-hate whenever one of those things does happen, but the important thing is to identify them and do what I can to form better habits around said things. So fingers crossed I can keep doing that, and cope as well as possible on my own before I can find someone to talk to about these things!
•Start a personal life newsletter? This one has a big question mark, ha, because I've been bad enough at keeping up with my regular newsletter! But this is something I've been thinking about for a while -- I like the idea of talking about my personal life in more depth than Twitter allows, and now that two of my favorite friends have dramatically scaled back their Twitter use, I'd like to keep them updated on my regular comings and goings and such! So I'll see if I have time for this, but it is something I'd like to prioritize, if at all possible.
Now, since it's ALREADY WELL INTO FEBRUARY, SERIOUSLY, WHERE HAS THE GODDAMN TIME GONE, I'm not going to hold myself to these goals till the end of this month; I'm going to try, though, starting at the end of the month, to make a monthly update post on the more concrete goals, to keep everyone posted on how things are going, to keep myself accountable, and to relish in all the progress I've made, even if it's minimal! And I hope that y'all will be there cheering me on along the way for all of it. ♥
I said in my recap and on Twitter that if 2018 was my rebuilding year, 2019 was the year that made all of said rebuilding come to fruition -- so 2020 is going to be the year in which I finally have a stable garden in which to sow the seeds of said fruition (pardon the extremely mixed metaphors in play here). I finally have a stable foundation off of which I can springboard into the future, so I want to use it, and I want to keep moving forward in the best and healthiest way for myself.
And it's relieving to know, looking at these goals, that they're similar ones I've been setting in the past several years! Some of them are a little depressing, since they're returning goals I haven't achieved in years prior, ha, but many are just continuations of the things that remain important to me and that I want to keep working on. It's nice to have achieved that sense of consistency, and to learn from years of honing how I work best and what I hold most dear.
So having said all of that -- let's get to it! Read on to learn what's (hopefully) in store for me in 2020!
Writing Goals
• Finish drafts of Gay Werewolves, CMRN #2, and CMRN #3. For the most part, a repeat goal! I've been working on the second draft of Gay Werewolves since 2017; here's hoping this will be the year I finally make the magic happen! I'd hoped to finish CMRN #2 (the Torrie/Aurora story) before NaNo last year and didn't quite manage, so I'd like to finish both this and CMRN #3 (the Ten/Evander story, which I think is closer to done than either of the prior ones were at the end of NaNo!) this year, in preparation for CMRN #4 (as yet unnamed lighthouse witch/sailor story!) for this year's NaNo.
I've planned out goals for all three to try to finish them at a neat, reasonable pace -- I sadly didn't have much of a chance to write last month, but I've been doing better so far this month and will keep everyone posted on these goals as I keep working, both here and in my writing newsletter!! (WHICH IS BACK, BABY, SO SUBSCRIBE IF YOU HAVEN'T YET, FRIENDS.)
• Work a little bit more on my next project and plan out what else I'm interested in working on. So while I do want to focus on my two biggest projects, my writing has also been so insular over the past couple years, I really do miss working on other stuff! I had so much fun writing a bunch of fic in 2017 and I always remember, while Yuletide-ing, how much I enjoy that too -- I have so many ideas I want to keep working on, and I'd like 2020 to be the year I figure out where to go next, even if I don't get too far, just to get the momentum going!
So I want to do some planning for the big projects I know I want to work on -- namely, Urbomancers (my story about mages whose power is linked to cities, and also about reckoning with who you use to be and who you are now and the meaning of home) and Gay Werewolves #2 (which has some loose emotional and plot beats figured out, but needs a loooot of outlining for clarity and proper plot progression). And then I want to go back to my big list of shit I want to write and figure out what comes next for me -- what I'm still feeling inspired by, what I might want to add to the list, and what calls to me in terms of what's coming next!
Other Creative Goals
• Knit a sweater. I have already technically knit one, but it's more of a giant loose cardigan than a real, properly shaped one -- I want to find a sweater pattern and knit the whole damn thing!! I think I still need to practice for another couple months, at least, before I feel confident enough in my ability to start in on this project, but it's a goal I want to set for myself and I'm VERY excited about fulfilling it. (I want to knit a bunch of other things, too, but that's more of a regular hobby I just want to ensure I keep pursuing; this is a really specific goal that I feel like I can set and meet, and that'll indicate how far I've come! Maybe I'll circle back here again and add some more specific goals at some point, depending on how things go!)
• Every month, cook something new, bake something new, and make something new that's yeast-based. I didn't end up experimenting with food as much as I'd hoped last year while I still had access to my parents' big kitchen and hefty food budget, and it took us so long to get our kitchen set up (and me to get into my work routine!) that while I did make some fun things, I didn't do nearly as much cooking or baking in the latter half of the year.
ALL THAT CHANGES NOW, THOUGH!! I want to keep expanding my cooking and baking repertoire, and I want to experiment more with breads and things, too. (I'm saying "yeast-based" here to include things like cinnamon rolls, but I do want it to be mostly bread!!) I think three new recipes per month is super attainable -- that's less than one a week, which leaves plenty of room for making old faves! -- and there's a bunch of things I've just been dying to try, so LET'S MAKE THE MAGIC HAPPEN.
Language-Learning Goals
• Finish French and Italian courses on Duolingo; get halfway through German and Russian. This is kind of a stretch goal; I fully, FULLY anticipate I won't even get close to the latter (but I like numbers, so!). Mostly this is just here to expand my language-learning; I've really liked having both French and Italian regularly going on, but I realized that if I stick really closely to just those and don't move on until I've completed them, that's a lot of time in which I could have potentially been learning something new, too, and if I want to actually learn new languages, I gotta start as early as possible. So, German and Russian!! The two that seem to have the most immediate utility for me! And continuing both French and Italian, because it's always nice to have something easier to fall back on when learning a new skill, ha. :")
• Read a book in Serbian. I had a goal a couple years ago of reading six books in Serbian, which... considering I have not managed EVEN ONE FULL ONE since, seems laughable now! But I'm going to set a reasonable one now: ONE WHOLE BOOK, BY THE END OF THE YEAR, I'M GONNA DO IT. I need to practice, especially now that I'm living away from home and am getting rusty again!!
Academic/Professional Goals
• Finish a draft of my dissertation. This one is probably not entirely up to me, but I'm very close to being done with my hypotheses, which means I'm very close to being able to write up my results, which means I'm very close to the means to finish said draft, however initial!! I'm not going to sweat however long it takes me -- I have two years left to finish the degree, and I'm confident I can do it by then, and I'm not going to worry too much about it, BUT I do really want it done and out of my way, so this year I am!! committing!! We're doing this, kids! Out by 2021!!!
• Identify a professional development trajectory at work. (I originally also had "get a raise" under here, but a. I've already managed to do that, HA, and b. I had it confirmed for me that pretty much everyone gets raises at their annual appraisal, SO not gonna sweat it as long as my work stays quality. :"))
So if you've talked to me at all in the past ~eight months, you know that I really, really love my job! Part of what I love about it is that it's remote -- but that also means that it's hard to get a solid idea of what a traditional trajectory looks like, what might come next for me, or the kinds of opportunities I have ahead of me, in terms of projects to work on or what aspects of my job I can incorporate more of, should I want to! So I'm going to set a goal for myself to pay more attention to the company at large and talk more with my coworkers about what they're up to -- to get an idea of what kind of work I might want to be doing after my current project is done, to expand into figuring out what I like about my job and want to do more of, and to figure out where I might be able to go from here, jobwise! I would really, really like to stay on in this position, so I think figuring these things out early on is a good idea, and I'm really looking forward to it!
Personal/Interpersonal Goals
• Write letters to friends. Something I've wanted to do for a while, and finally have the stationery for!! I want to make sure I carve out time in my life to do this, because the simple act of sitting down and putting feelings to pen and paper, directed at one person in particular, is just so special to me, and it's exciting to finally have the means to make it happen. SO LET'S MAKE TIME FOR THIS THIS YEAR, HELLS YEAH.
• Continue identifying and working on my bad habits. This seems pretty self-explanatory in general -- I've spent a lot of time figuring out how I work best and identifying what I need, and with that has come a lot of noticing, identifying, and trying to fix my bad habits! Things like hyperfocusing on shit that distracts me from work for totally arbitrary reasons, or tuning out when someone's talking to me for a long period of time and missing important details, or deciding that it's too late in the day to get things done so I'm not going to bother, or fixating on a potential thing that could go wrong and obsessively thinking about it to the detriment of all else... and, you know, a lot of that is mental health-adjacent, things like processing or attention issues, so hopefully if I ever drag my ass to therapy, it'll help a lot! But there's also a lot to be said for recognizing those habits in myself and doing my very best to address them, hard as it feels. I'm trying to be gentle with myself and not go in hard on the self-hate whenever one of those things does happen, but the important thing is to identify them and do what I can to form better habits around said things. So fingers crossed I can keep doing that, and cope as well as possible on my own before I can find someone to talk to about these things!
•Start a personal life newsletter? This one has a big question mark, ha, because I've been bad enough at keeping up with my regular newsletter! But this is something I've been thinking about for a while -- I like the idea of talking about my personal life in more depth than Twitter allows, and now that two of my favorite friends have dramatically scaled back their Twitter use, I'd like to keep them updated on my regular comings and goings and such! So I'll see if I have time for this, but it is something I'd like to prioritize, if at all possible.
Now, since it's ALREADY WELL INTO FEBRUARY, SERIOUSLY, WHERE HAS THE GODDAMN TIME GONE, I'm not going to hold myself to these goals till the end of this month; I'm going to try, though, starting at the end of the month, to make a monthly update post on the more concrete goals, to keep everyone posted on how things are going, to keep myself accountable, and to relish in all the progress I've made, even if it's minimal! And I hope that y'all will be there cheering me on along the way for all of it. ♥