First Monday Update of the New Year

[blythe025]

Even though I know that the possibility to change, grown, and improve one's situation exists every day, there's something about the symbolism of a new year starting that helps to inspire me to help me refocus and to get my rear in gear and jump start my goals again. So here I am publicly setting my goals for the new year.

Last year, I didn't set any year long goals, and instead tried to stick to weekly goals. I only sort of succeeded. I still intend to set weekly goals this year as a way to keep me constantly aware of what I'm up to, but I also have some BIG things that I want to get accomplished in the course of this year, so I'll go ahead and post those, too.

2010 Goals:

• Finish draft 0 of my Untitled Alternate World Fantasy Novel (currently at 51,189 words). In order to accomplish this, I plan to set aside time to write. There's a local coffee shop, where I know there's no wifi, so I can go there and get some focused writing done one to two days a week. Otherwise there are just too many distractions at home. It's the same way I was able to complete Nano.


• Actively write poetry and short stories for submission to anthologies (which will give me focus and a deadline), preferably a minimum of one submission a month. This is rather scary for me, because completing that many stories and poems on top of completing a novel feels like a lot, not to mention the possibility of facing rejection. However, I'm trying to look at it this way: if I complete a story that's rejected by an anthology, then I will still have a story that can be reworked for submission elsewhere.


• Train for and participate in the Disneyland Half Marathon in September. I'm not putting "lose weight" as a goal, because I don't think that's a good thing to focus on for me. But running in a marathon with my mother and sisters will be a lot of fun, will challenge me physically, and will probably achieve the "lose weight" thing in the process.


• Attend a convention of some sort. This is just something that I've been wanting to do and talking about doing for quite some time. I think it's about time I actually did it.

* * * *

Things I MUST do this week:
-- do my 3-4 marathon training days
-- write a minimum of 5000 words on my UAWF novel
-- complete this week's brigits_flame entry
-- post a collab channel youtube video

Things I HOPE to do this week:
-- post a personal youtube video (will complete today)
-- update my resume (just in case)
-- prepare and send out a poetry/short story submission submission (may happen)
-- do a sketch or two and/or get animation art pages done (could happen)
-- do morning poetry/journaling (0/7 days completed) (should happen)

[X-posted (in part) to >my webpage.]