Goals for 2017

I found my goals for 2016 post, and I've gotta say, I did better than I expected!

• I wrote every day of 2016 instead of just 70% of the days! (Though to be fair I did change that goal to "every day" shortly after I made that post ... but I did manage to reach it!) 
• I do kind of have a readable draft of Casanova, though I haven't checked it past putting together the scenes I had in my outline. So like, I do have a chronological draft, I just don't know if it makes sense yet lol
• I posted here every 3 days! I did take a couple cheat days where I posted "I forgot to write something for today OTL" but like ... that's technically still a post ...

So what are my goals this year? 

1. Keep writing every day

My (updated) goal for 2016 was to reach at least 500 words every day, which was definitely a good challenge, but I think I'll be a little more forgiving with myself this year. Pushing myself to get 500 words every night was definitely hard some nights.

(Though I could definitely fix this problem by doing my writing earlier in the day ...) 

2. Work on more writing projects

I think I still have this lingering fear that if I have too many writing projects ongoing at the same time, that I'll never get very far with any of them. (Which, I guess is true in some respect?) I have a bunch of ideas I've amassed over the years that I'd love to do at least something with, though. 

This past month I started writing for a story idea I'd literally come up with that day, which is really unusual for me. And I enjoyed it! It gave me the courage to try out a couple different ideas and even finally start writing out an idea I'd been working on for almost two years.

This year I'm hoping to keep a "misc" column in my word count Excel sheet for little projects I'm not actively trying to draft. I've proven to myself that I can keep myself dedicated to the big projects so there's no reason I can't shake things up a little and try out some new ideas. 

3. Talk to more people

This is definitely the most ambitious goal lol. I'm super introverted but I've gotten better at holding up my end of conversations and going out to do things with friends. I actually decided on this goal because of tumblr; I want to get better at sending people messages and holding up conversations online. (In all honesty, this goal is just so I can maybe make more internet friends.) 

This goal isn't really measurable other than, like, the frequency of sending messages lol. It's just something I wanted to commit to so I'd maybe get somewhere with it. 

I set three goals last year, so I'm gonna keep with that again lol. I guess continuing to post here every three days is a goal, but that's also the blogging schedule I decided on, so I don't think that really counts. 

Here's to hoping that 2017 is a much better year! 

Goals for 2016

Man, it's difficult to come up with posts when I'm not getting through a backlog of book reviews. (I haven't finished a book in, like, a month. I think I'm going through withdrawal.)

I didn't want to call these "resolutions", since they're nothing ~life-changing~ for me. I've pretty much covered these already in other posts.

Hopefully collecting all of these into one post will feel more ~accountable~, but again, I haven't actually proven if that's actually going to work yet. We'll see.

2013

I debated making a new year's post, and I ultimately decided for it. I am making no promises on how good it is.

I started this blog a year ago as an "extension of my YouTube account". My main resolution for 2013 was to vlog -- and I'd say I did pretty well with it! I recorded vlogs during Katsucon and Otakon (though I skipped Anime USA, aka Chillcon), as well as a bunch of videos with my friends which I have since made private. I don't think I'm at that point yet where I can sit down with my camera at home and just talk. That's what everyone pictures for the word "vlogging". I'd love to start, eventually, but I think there are still some things I need to improve on before I can vlog in a "traditional" sense.

I also wanted to become better at cosplay and blog more. The cosplay thing is still up in the air -- it's not like there's any point where you can say "I'm perfect at cosplaying and there's no way I can improve". Even if my cosplays haven't improved, I can say I'm more confident with my cosplays. At first cosplaying was a little nerve-wracking, but by Anime USA I could say I was completely at ease while riding the Metro in a green wig with lines drawn all over my face and wearing a hoodie with a Cheshire cat-like face painted on it. Going to cons and cosplaying has definitely improved my self-confidence, and I hope that will continue even further in 2014. I did okay with blogging this year but I definitely could have done better.

A smaller resolution I made for this year was to record good things that happened every day. I found the inspiration through tumblr -- the idea was to write something good that happened on a slip of paper and put it into a jar or container, and then at the end of the year open it up and see how many positive things happened over the course of the year. I decided to do it in a more organized way and on a daily basis:

I'm really glad I decided to start the journal, because it's a good way for me to look back and figure out what I did each day without having to blog about it. Some of the entries aren't very long, and there are a lot of repeats, but I have managed to find at least a small good thing about every day this year. It's a really positive way to keep track of the year! I'd totally recommend it (or some other similar version) to try during 2014. 

For 2014, I think I'm going to keep the same resolutions. They're still things I want to work on, and there's no reason to change something that's working. I'd also like to add:

• keeping my room better organized because I absolutely sucked at that this year
• eating a little healthier because I tend to eat all of the unhealthy food in the house first
• not being so lazy because I'm sure I can accomplish a lot more in 2014 if I just suck it up and do something instead of sitting around on tumblr all day

Anyway, I think that 2013 turned out really well for me, and I hope 2014 is even more so.