Rachael Arsenault's Blog - Posts Tagged "goals"
Look back on 2019 and looking forward to 2020
2019 has been quite the year. I know it's been a rough year for some, a great year for others, and a complicated mix for everyone else. The year certainly had its share of ups and downs for me.
Coming off the tail of a very rough 2018 (to make a long story short, my house got wrecked and I was technically homeless for six months), it would have been a tall order for 2019 to be worse or even comparatively bad. Still, the year had its share of stresses. My husband was in a minor car accident - he was uninjured, thankfully, but our poor old car kicked the bucket. A busy work schedule for my husband meant I didn't get to see him nearly as often as I would have liked. And, of course, there was the ongoing nightmare of watching all the upheaval in the news and global politics.
But overall, 2019 ended up being a pretty great year for me. I enjoyed some awesome new experiences. I started a new job. And I achieved some of the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of the year, along with some unexpected but really cool achievements.
1) I published She Who Rises, the first book in the A New Age of Magic series. It's available as an ebook on Amazon and I've really, really been enjoying working on the second and third books throughout the year. Which brings me to...
2) Finishing a draft of the sequel. In fact, I'm now in late editing stages. :D Hopefully Book 2 will be ready to publish in a few months time.
3) I wrote a poem every day - well, mostly. I was basing this goal around the word-a-day calendar that my husband bought me for Christmas, and there were definitely a few words I looked at and just said a big old nope to. But I still wrote way more poetry than I would have otherwise, even if I didn't stick to my plan of posting all of it to Twitter and Facebook.
4) I completed my Duolingo French tree. For one day. Then the app updated, adding a whole bunch more lessons and leaving my tree incomplete once again. Oh well - I still technically met my goal.
5) My short story "The Salt of Seas and Sorrow" was not only included in Polar Expressions Publishing's "Our Town" anthology, but it won honourable mention!
6) And on the tail end of the year, I received an email from Æther/Ichor telling me that my short story "One-Tenth Merperson" is being published in their January 2020 issue, "Beasts of Legend". Edit: And here's a link!
I didn't accomplish every goal I set for myself, but I also don't think it's necessarily realistic to expect that. Goals and priorities can change throughout the year. I'm just glad to achieve what I have, and I hope I can continue the trend into the new year. That being said, here are some loose goals I've set for myself in 2020:
1) Read more. This year I read something like 28 books, which is definitely way more than I've read in past years, but it was also mostly comic books. Not that reading comics is a bad thing, but I know I went long stretches of time without reading much of anything. I want to get better about setting a reading routine for myself. I love books and I want to read way, way more of them.
2) Finish and publish Book 2 of ANAoM. This one shouldn't be hard. Like I said, I'm already in the late stages of editing, so it's entirely plausible to have this one ready to go in the next few months.
3) Get to late editing stages on Book 3. Similar idea to the above - I'm already on draft two. It's not a tall order to get to a late stage over the next 12 months.
4) Finish draft of Book 1 in new series. This one I'm very excited for. I'm 100 pages into the first draft and absolutely loving it.
5) Submit to more contests and publications. Doing this has served me well in 2019, but I can't continue that trend if I slack off on submissions. So I want to make an effort to pursue short story publication more dedicatedly in 2020.
6) Write and promote more articles. I'm not sure I've even mentioned this here, but I've started writing articles on Vocal. They're a ton of fun and a good way for me to nerd out and write essays like I'm back in university again. (Incidentally, I have a bit of a strange definition of "fun" sometimes.)
7) Study German. In a similar vein to last year's French goal, I want to see if I can complete the German language tree on Duolingo in one year. I miiiight attempt the same with Irish, too, but we'll see. I don't want to overload myself.
8) Write a poem a day, v.2. I got a word-a-day calendar from my husband again, so I'm gonna take a shot at this challenge at least one more time. I'll take the pressure off by not posting everything online, though.
And that's about it. I'm excited to check back in 12 months from now and see what goals I stuck to, what I knocked out of the park, what I gave up on, and what came completely out of nowhere. If you want more regular updates on my life, Twitter and Instagram are probably the best places to check.
What kind of goals did you accomplish this year - planned or unplanned? And what do you have in mind for 2020?
Coming off the tail of a very rough 2018 (to make a long story short, my house got wrecked and I was technically homeless for six months), it would have been a tall order for 2019 to be worse or even comparatively bad. Still, the year had its share of stresses. My husband was in a minor car accident - he was uninjured, thankfully, but our poor old car kicked the bucket. A busy work schedule for my husband meant I didn't get to see him nearly as often as I would have liked. And, of course, there was the ongoing nightmare of watching all the upheaval in the news and global politics.
But overall, 2019 ended up being a pretty great year for me. I enjoyed some awesome new experiences. I started a new job. And I achieved some of the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of the year, along with some unexpected but really cool achievements.
1) I published She Who Rises, the first book in the A New Age of Magic series. It's available as an ebook on Amazon and I've really, really been enjoying working on the second and third books throughout the year. Which brings me to...
2) Finishing a draft of the sequel. In fact, I'm now in late editing stages. :D Hopefully Book 2 will be ready to publish in a few months time.
3) I wrote a poem every day - well, mostly. I was basing this goal around the word-a-day calendar that my husband bought me for Christmas, and there were definitely a few words I looked at and just said a big old nope to. But I still wrote way more poetry than I would have otherwise, even if I didn't stick to my plan of posting all of it to Twitter and Facebook.
4) I completed my Duolingo French tree. For one day. Then the app updated, adding a whole bunch more lessons and leaving my tree incomplete once again. Oh well - I still technically met my goal.
5) My short story "The Salt of Seas and Sorrow" was not only included in Polar Expressions Publishing's "Our Town" anthology, but it won honourable mention!
6) And on the tail end of the year, I received an email from Æther/Ichor telling me that my short story "One-Tenth Merperson" is being published in their January 2020 issue, "Beasts of Legend". Edit: And here's a link!
I didn't accomplish every goal I set for myself, but I also don't think it's necessarily realistic to expect that. Goals and priorities can change throughout the year. I'm just glad to achieve what I have, and I hope I can continue the trend into the new year. That being said, here are some loose goals I've set for myself in 2020:
1) Read more. This year I read something like 28 books, which is definitely way more than I've read in past years, but it was also mostly comic books. Not that reading comics is a bad thing, but I know I went long stretches of time without reading much of anything. I want to get better about setting a reading routine for myself. I love books and I want to read way, way more of them.
2) Finish and publish Book 2 of ANAoM. This one shouldn't be hard. Like I said, I'm already in the late stages of editing, so it's entirely plausible to have this one ready to go in the next few months.
3) Get to late editing stages on Book 3. Similar idea to the above - I'm already on draft two. It's not a tall order to get to a late stage over the next 12 months.
4) Finish draft of Book 1 in new series. This one I'm very excited for. I'm 100 pages into the first draft and absolutely loving it.
5) Submit to more contests and publications. Doing this has served me well in 2019, but I can't continue that trend if I slack off on submissions. So I want to make an effort to pursue short story publication more dedicatedly in 2020.
6) Write and promote more articles. I'm not sure I've even mentioned this here, but I've started writing articles on Vocal. They're a ton of fun and a good way for me to nerd out and write essays like I'm back in university again. (Incidentally, I have a bit of a strange definition of "fun" sometimes.)
7) Study German. In a similar vein to last year's French goal, I want to see if I can complete the German language tree on Duolingo in one year. I miiiight attempt the same with Irish, too, but we'll see. I don't want to overload myself.
8) Write a poem a day, v.2. I got a word-a-day calendar from my husband again, so I'm gonna take a shot at this challenge at least one more time. I'll take the pressure off by not posting everything online, though.
And that's about it. I'm excited to check back in 12 months from now and see what goals I stuck to, what I knocked out of the park, what I gave up on, and what came completely out of nowhere. If you want more regular updates on my life, Twitter and Instagram are probably the best places to check.
What kind of goals did you accomplish this year - planned or unplanned? And what do you have in mind for 2020?
2020 Reflections / 2021 Resolutions
(Photo by Galina N on Unsplash)
It’s kind of beating a dead horse to say that 2020 was a year full of unexpected obstacles and setbacks, or that plans were consistently thrown by the wayside, or that it was just straight up a difficult year. But those things are all true. When I shared my reflections and resolutions to round out 2019, those goals seemed reasonable and very accomplishable – but many of them didn’t happen, or didn’t happen the way I had hoped.
That being said, I’m going to be gentle with myself about how much I actually accomplished this year. That I fulfilled any of my goals is worth celebrating. Still, I want to be realistic and honest about how my year went, and I want to share my resolutions for next year to help hold myself accountable to what will (hopefully?) be a slightly better year.
What Were My Goals for 2020?
(For the post where I originally shared these goals, look here.)
1) Read more. I definitely didn’t read more books compared to 2019, which is kind of strange since you’d think I would have way more time for reading with all the lockdown and quarantine situations. Sadly, there are a few reasons that wasn’t the case. For one, I work from home, so I was used to reading in an empty house as a break from work – something that was hard to come by this year, especially early into the pandemic when everyone was at home. Moreover, all the stress and uncertainty took a toll on my mental health, which in turn impacted my ability to focus, read for long stretches of time, or even feel interested in the books on my shelf. So I’d say reading 21 books this year is still pretty great. And there weren’t as many comics as last year!
2) Finish and publish Book 2 of ANAoM. Done and dusted! A bit later than originally intended, but Those Who Fall is out in the world and waiting to be read.
3) Get to late editing stages on Book 3. Doing pretty well on this one. I have some sections to rewrite and extensive continuity edits to do, and then I should be ready to get some extra eyes on it for feedback.
4) Finish draft of Book 1 in new series. Also done! Still loving this book, its world, and the characters I’ve crafted.
5) Submit to more contests and publications. This was a bit more of a struggle. The frequency with which I could find magazines or journals to submit seemed to decrease quite a lot this year, and the types of stories that those publications were looking for didn’t include the genres I write in. For comparison, I made 24 submissions in 2019, while in 2020 I only did 18 submissions. Still, I’m proud of myself for sticking it out and continuing to make an effort. Plus, I still got a new short story published: Living With No Reflection
6) Write and promote more articles. It’s hard to make an exact comparison on this one, since I didn’t start writing for Vocal until late into 2019, but I think I kept up a nice, steady pace with publishing articles, averaging about three articles per month.
7) Study German. Didn’t complete my language tree (though I didn’t honestly expect to), but I did consistently do my German lessons every day for the entire year! That’s a pretty major accomplishment in my opinion.
8) Write a poem a day, v.2. I ended up bailing on this one halfway through the year. Between pandemic stress and pregnancy fatigue, I just wasn’t able to stick to it for the entire 366 days of 2020. But I still wrote a lot of new poems, and that’s nothing to scoff at.
So, overall, definitely not quite the year I projected for myself, but I made the best of the situation we were given. And I did more than just these eight things in 2020!
Bonus Achievements and Milestones of 2020
Getting pregnant. This is one of those things that was sort of planned, sort of not. My husband and I had been trying to have kids for a little while, but (due to an assortment of medical concerns) we weren’t sure if we would be able to do so naturally. But we did! And I’m very, very excited to hold my sweet little bear come January. <3
Getting married. Okay, I know I consistently refer to him as my “husband”, but technically we were only, like, half-married – we were common law and I was officially recognized as his spouse on various paperwork, but we hadn’t gotten a marriage licence or jumped through all the legal hoops to be “officially” officially recognized as a married couple. The pandemic threw a lot of wrenches into this plan, especially because the Queen’s Bench in our region completely shut down for officiating marriages. But, eventually, we got it done, and I’m super excited.
Published my first paperback. She Who Rises is available in paperback! I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach a point where saying that doesn’t make me giddy. It’s so surreal. You can hold my book in your hands! You can order it in at bookstores!! You can ask your local library to get a copy!!! IT’S ALL SO COOL!
What Are My Goals for 2021?
Not gonna lie: I’m not gonna set myself a lot of goals for this upcoming year. The pandemic is still going, plus I’m going to have a newborn baby, so I just don’t want to put a lot of pressure on myself.
1. Publish book 3 of ANAoM. This hopefully shouldn’t be too big of an undertaking, since I’m into late editing stages. It might be published later in the year, but I’m confident that I will be able to finish and publish it.
2. Get to late editing drafts of book 4. Basically, hoping to keep pace with my writing and publishing routine from the last couple years.
3. Publish at least one Vocal piece per month. Now, ideally, I would be keeping pace with or improving on 2020’s average, but – as I already stated – I’m gonna have a baby. Hitting a minimum of one article each month seems like a much more reasonable production rate to set for myself.
4. Continue with my monthly wrap-ups. These wrap-ups might be smaller – I might not have a lot of publishing news to share, and I might not read a full book every month – but I’d still like to have a little sum-up of what I read and write each month.
And that’s about it. Some simple, reasonable goals in keeping with the habits and routines I’ve already set for myself. To be fair, there maaaay be some bigger, more exciting things coming down the pipe in 2021 – but that’s all hypothetical and up in the air right now, so I won’t know anything for sure for several months.
How did your 2020 goals turn out? Anything planned for 2021?
