2015 – Looking Back and Thinking Forward

2015 – Looking Back and Thinking Forward

Here I find myself in a new year. This is a great moment to look back and contemplate the good and the bad from the past. I aim to think forward at the future and upcoming year and contemplate what I want to keep doing right, and I want to think about where I could also use some improvement. I know before even getting started that I feel good about some areas like my family and career, while I know already I that feel bad about my writing projects. I don’t want to minimize the good in my life while making a list of areas to improve.

 

What have I been doing right?

  • My work and home priorities are well balanced.
  • I have made time for family.
  • I have made time for me.
  • I have worked at being more social.

What have I been doing wrong?

  • My time management in my home life has been horrible.
  • My ability to procrastinate is epic, and I have lacked the self motivation to get projects done that have been on my list.
  • My writing projects have not moved forward much.
  • I have not focused on my health much this year.

Thinking forward?

  • Keep up the balance.
  • Keep making time for family and myself.
  • Keep working to not be a home bound basement dweller.
  • Work on my home life project management and procrastination.
  • Start working on getting more healthy.
  • Get butt in chair, and make words.

Going forward from that list I need to remember the good. I need to keep the balance in my life I am proud of achieving, I need to keep making time for family and not let work get in the way of that, and I need to maintain self growth at work and keep moving forward there.

I have been getting out regularly and meeting with friends and being social both where family is involved and with writing and gaming. I am not naturally inclined to putting myself in to social situations. This has been both frightful and good for me.

My writing projects kept stalling out. I get all caught up in plot planning, and story ideas, and learning about the craft, and so on and so on that I never sit down, put my butt in the chair and write. In November I participated in NaNoWriMo. I started on a project, but anytime I got stuck I worked on a stream of consciousness journal. By the end of the month I ended up with the 50K words, but realized that I let self doubt cripple progress on my actual writing progress. Some good stuff came of the journal work, but it was still an excuse and an out that let me sideline the novel I should have been working on. I plan on working to get over that fear and get more words written this year. There is likely going to be much suck and self induced angst before I am happy with the progress there.

Working on getting healthy is almost cliche on these kinds of lists, but here it is. I need to start work on improving my diet and getting more exercise. I need to get rid of some of the jiggly, and just improve my over all health. This sadly has been low on the totem pole of my priorities. I need to find a way to raise it up.

The above lists have been very general and high level. I need to decide what projects are worth pursuing this year, prioritize and get motivated to do them. Some more specific goals I have for this year include making this blog not feel forgotten and neglected, working on more writing and less talking about writing, working on the game project with my son, finding a way to fit in some exercise, diet changes, and learning python and ETL information for work. Oh, I almost forgot about a reading goal I made. I want to read at least 2 books a month this year. I have logged back into GoodReads.com and started tracking that there.

The item from that list that haunts me the most is the writing. I can not continue to let my fear of not being good enough, my inner critic, my constant procrastination, my bad time management, or any other lame excuses get in the way of my getting a significant amount more writing done this year. I did some writing this year. Most of it workshop type stuff one off projects. I have learned a ton this year analyzing others’ writing and studying craft books, but I have not written near as much as I promised myself I would do.

I have taken steps to get more organized including some calendaring and project lists. They help to some extent, but it still boils down to making a decision to do something, and then doing it.

2015, here I come!

 

 

 

 

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