Changes in 2024

I think we all start looking forward to the coming year around this time.

The holidays, while being both beautiful and stress-inducing, tend to be catalysts for me to start thinking of how I want my life to be different in the coming year than it was in the present. What was I dissatisfied with? What did I enjoy? What would I like to see change? These are the questions I tend to ask myself and sometimes they’re not easy to answer. This year, for instance, was full of ups and downs, wins and losses, and a whole lot of shit in between. Some of it it is stuff I don’t have control over (like all the horrific things going on in the world that continue to get worse) and some of it is the recognition of things I need to change within myself and in my life. But they’re not always things I can compartmentalize into “good” and “bad.”

Substitute teaching is a prime example. I will not go into the teaching field. That is a decision I have made definitively, however hard it was to make. But I can’t say that my choice to be a substitute teacher was a bad one because it wasn’t. I learned a hell of a lot about myself in that job. I learned about public school education from an educator’s standpoint. I saw the ways in which teachers are treated and misrepresented and completely underappreciated. And I met some truly wonderful teachers, as well as some absolutely wonderful children whom I will never forget for as long as I live.

So while the experience itself was, overall, an incredibly challenging one, it wasn’t without its beautiful moments.

If I had to pick 1-3 things that I want to see change next year in my own life, they would be these:

Financial stabilityGrowth in marketing my writingGetting out into nature

2023 was a hard financial year. Teachers make jack shit and substitutes make even less. My finances went from stable to anything but, and so now I’m paying off quite a large amount of debt. I have a strong payoff plan that I’ve been keeping to consistently, so that’s a relief to see, but it doesn’t make it any less stressful to know that I have this debt hanging over my head. When I left my ex, my goal was to be financially independent, to cover the costs of my own life without assistance from anyone. Not to say that it’s wrong to ask for help when you need it, because it definitely isn’t. But for myself, I had a consistent job, I had consistent income, so I knew this was something I could do. I did live paycheck to paycheck for quite a while, but slowly found myself improving my financial situation.

I did it once. I know I can do it again. And I will. Not merely so that I can say I did, but so that I can then continue to grow and, hopefully, give back to people in need in my community. That is something I’ve been doing in small doses when I can, but I would like to do more often.

2023 was also the year I released my debut novel, A Kiss of Glass. And while I have had a very successful six months for a debut release — I’ve sold over 500 copies of my novel; nearly 10,000 pages have been read in my novel; I’ve made almost $1,000 in royalties; I’ve sold copies of my book internationally, and I’ve reached the top 3 in multiple Amazon categories — I know that there are things I could have done differently that would have likely made me even more successful.

One such thing is getting reviews of my book onto Amazon. I have about 16 reviews right now, which is good, but it isn’t until you reach 50 reviews that Amazon’s algorithm starts to suggest your book to other readers. A really great way to get those reviews is through ARC readers, but I only sent out 11 or 12 ARCs for my debut which, at the time, I thought would be a good amount. And it was. Any and all reviews are helpful, and I am immensely grateful to those people. I’ll be asking them if they want ARCs again in 2024 when I release my sequel. But I will also be opening up my ARCs and sending out at least 50 of them. This will be a bit expensive, but I don’t care. It will be worth it.

Another thing I want to do better is understanding and utilizing Amazon ads. I have been using them since this summer, but I have not utilized them to their fullest capacity and I’d like to increase their effectiveness this year. The indie authors who do the best are usually those who invest in advertisements. This year, I want to learn more about how to accomplish that.

2023 was probably the year that I went into nature the least. I even took summer off after the school year, but still didn’t go hiking as much as I had planned. I miss it, honestly. I can tell that my mind, my heart, my body, and especially my spirit are suffering because I haven’t been out into the woods in months. It has been difficult due to the chronic tendinitis in my ankles, and now that I have a job with health insurance, I hope to start treating that, but I also hope to find places I can take my dog that are easy to walk that still get me out into the trees. It’s essential to my wellbeing and I do not give it as much importance as I should in my weekly life.

My plan is to take Kiki, my corgi, for a walk in nature every other week, at the minimum. There are some pretty trails around where we live, but I also want to explore some of my old favorites. It’ll be good for her, it’ll be good for me, and hopefully will also not only get me back into some exercise but will also help to strength my ankles now that I’ve avoided exercise for the last year and a half, if not longer.

I have my writing goals, too, but those are ever evolving depending on how my life is going. I still plan to release my sequel novel, A Shift of Crimson, in 2024, but I don’t know if it will be in summer or later on. I still plan to release two books onto Kindle Vella in my new Olympic Fates Saga and I have the first one a little less than halfway drafted.

And then I’m also finishing up my master’s degree which, thankfully, is finally coming to a close. As much as I love school, I am DEAD to it right now. Not burnt out. Not over it. DEAD. TO. IT. I have one more small essay to write this week and turn in next week, and then I have to give a presentation, and I will be done. It doesn’t help that I hate the class — literary theory with no writers other than white men; in 13 weeks, we have read exactly one woman literary theorist and she, too, was white; there has been no diversity in this class whatsoever and I am so fucking sick of reading dead white men’s writings — and literally have been counting the days until I can just walk away from it.

I love the New Year because I love the freshness of a new beginning. It reminds me of the quote from Anne of Green Gables: “Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it.” I recently watched the first Anne of Green Gables movie and, aside from oscillating between laughing my ass off and crying in the fetal position, I realized why this movie and its sequel have been so important to me throughout my life. Not only do I relate so, so strongly to Anne Shirley — I have never felt so accurately represented in fiction or film — but I also love the ways in which she, as a character, learns to approach life with love, compassion, and empathy.

More than anything else listed in this post, I think that I was want to get out of next year: growth in love, compassion, and empathy. Because that will make everything else more worth the effort.