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?
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