Life Update #15

Hey all! It’s really been a minute since I last posted. Almost a full year.

I thought it would be appropriate to share a life update since a ton has happened.

Shortly after my last post, almost a month exactly, I met a man through a Facebook dating page. We hit it off immediately and we talked for a few weeks before meeting in person. He lived over an hour away so we met up in the middle at a coffee shop. That first date was eight hours long and I suppose this is where I say “long story short” because we got married in November.

I am so incredibly happy! It’s been a whirlwind of a year with a new relationship changing so drastically, meeting so many new people, gaining a brand new family, planning a wedding, and moving to a completely new area. I have so many new friends and relatives and I am so blessed by how amazing everyone is/has been. God brought me a husband at a time in my life I was ready to simply give up on that ever happening. I was still trusting God in His timing. I had just figured He didn’t have anyone for me.

But it didn’t take long when I started dating to figure out that God had been preparing me to be with my husband for the last several years. I don’t think I would have been ready to be married a couple years ago. I guess God agreed because He waited and gave me what I needed to grow into a wife designed for my husband.

That’s the biggest life update I have to share with you right now so I’m just going to rapid fire a few things.

I kept my job at the newspaper and am now partially remote. I commute and stay with my parents for a couple nights a week. It hasn’t been ideal but I like my job and it pays well enough that it’s worth it to do things this way for a while.

My husband and I have been going through a Dave Ramsey class the last couple months and we have actually been able to pay off my student loans! We’re super excited to be moving toward good finances and being debt free.

My senior cat is still alive. My husband is very allergic to cats and dogs but we’ve found that Dodger is basically the perfect cat for us because she’s not very active. She sits on the couch for most of the day and doesn’t go anywhere she’s not supposed to be. She’s good at not spreading cat hair all over the place lol.

I thought I had more little things but I guess that’s about it. I want to write on this blog more often again. I really missed it this last year but it also never felt like the right time to post again. I’m not going to commit to a schedule quite yet but I’m hoping to work my way up to posting once a week again. For now I’ll post whenever I have something to say.

Thanks so much for sticking with me this last year. I know I’ve gained a couple readers here and there, even while being inactive, so I hope you will stick with me as I work on sharing regularly again.

I Paid Off My Car!

I know I’ve been absent from this blog for quite a few weeks. Sorry about that. I don’t have much of an excuse. I’ve been kind of stressed and tired and a bit discouraged. I know what’s wrong with me and it’s that I haven’t been taking care of myself physically, mentally, or spiritually. So that’s on me and I’ll be working on that.

There will be no promises made about me posting on this blog in the future. My resolutions are completely out of whack right now and I haven’t had the energy to reevaluate them. I will say I haven’t forgotten about this blog and I don’t plan on abandoning you! My posts might be a little erratic for a while. As you may have already noticed, it’s Sunday, a day after my usual post time. I don’t think I’ll be following a schedule for a bit. I’d like to simply post when I want to and see how that goes.

While my reasons for this make sense to me, they’re a lot to type out. There are many things going on for me that I don’t want to keep me from posting here. I just want to share my life a little bit without putting a lot of pressure on myself.

So to share a little bit of positive news in my life: I paid off my car! I bought my little Toyota in September of 2021 so it’s been almost a year and a half but I did it. This was on my resolutions list so I’m glad that even though they’re a mess right now, I was still able to accomplish something.

I hope you will stick around with me for my continued journey in blogging. I appreciate each of my readers very much and I genuinely enjoy sharing with all of you. If there’s any specific topic or blog type you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments. I’m open to any suggestions!

Resolutions 2023

I’ve been making new year resolutions for a while now. I have posts on this blog from 2017, 2018, 2019, lost my 2020 ones, 2021, and of course 2022. Each year, they change and grow and I started feeling like I was getting a grip on how to accomplish my goals.

Then 2022 happened and I’m not sure why, but it truly feels like I failed myself in all my goals. DESPITE the FACT that I accomplished several goals and definitely made a lot of progress in my writing. I’m not sure what hit me at the end of last year but overall I felt so meh about all my goals. Midway through December I realized I needed to come up with some resolutions for 2023. I usually begin thinking about them before November but for some reason I didn’t mentally feel like dealing with it until what I would consider, really late for me. Once I sat down to come up with goals I realized that I was all over the place. Not sure why.

I don’t know if it’s because of how meh I’ve felt over 2022 or if it’s because I drastically changed jobs in 2022 or if it’s just because 2022 was an off year for everyone. Whatever the reason, I’ve deeply struggled with coming up with goals. Well, not every goal. I had three that I have intended for a while but to be honest, they’re not even goals the way most of my resolutions are. The three are: write 200/365 days again, read daily, and spend time on Bible memorization daily. Those three things are what I have known I wanted to do for months. But everything beyond that… I’m not sure.

So I have come up with some goals. But they’re not particularly ambitious, or they don’t feel like it. And they’re much more about tracking than doing. I’ve made some charts to track my car and student loans as I pay them off but haven’t really made the goal of paying them off per se (my car has little enough left that it would be an effort to NOT pay it off this year). I made a goal to practice a couple new skills but there isn’t much of an end goal there besides just practicing a bit. And finally, I want to listen to podcasts again. I used to really enjoy them but fell away from listening for a while. So I want to listen to one podcast a week or 52 total by the end of 2023.

And that’s about it. I’m not sure how to describe how I feel. Just so so off. So so weird. I feel like I just lack the motivation I usually get at the beginning of the year. I have a chart to track my three daily habits and so far, I’ve done each of them every day. So it’s not like I’m giving up on doing things. I haven’t just stopped trying to better myself. I’m working toward goals, they’re just ambiguous. Much more so than usual.

Maybe this is my full circle. I used to make vague goals and never accomplish them. Then I moved on to very specific goals. Then I found a kind of middle ground where the goals were specific with breathing room. Now I’m back to vague goals. Maybe that’s just the natural cycle my resolutions are going to move through in my life. Now that I’ve practiced mentally tracking my goals, I feel better equipped to relax a bit.

I would like to keep up on this blog much better this year than I have the last couple months. I know I’ve been a bit absent. I have no reason for it. I wasn’t extra busy. I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed. I just wasn’t writing posts.

So here’s to another year of goals, vague or otherwise.

Average People

I took over a month off writing this blog and have returned to complain about things completely unrelated to this blog and the holidays. Enjoy.

I recently listened to a motivational speaker and it reminded me how much I don’t like listening to motivational speakers. Not to be a total Debbie downer but I find them completely unrealistic and largely uninteresting.

I’m going to focus on one particular part of her speech that annoyed me. The part where she basically told everyone that they shouldn’t let themselves fall into being average. She called it a mistake to be average and that you’re capable of doing anything. It’s a really normal thing for speakers to say. You might say it’s part of the average speech.

What bothers me about this is that it ignores that it’s totally fine to be average. I, in fact, mostly aspire to be average. If you’re not average, if you want to be exceptional, then more power to you. But you, as an exceptional person, need to remember that it is the average people who prop up every part of society for you. It is the average person who is doing snow removal. It is the average person designing websites for your new business. It is the average person writing informational books. It is the average person cleaning the schools. It is the average person serving you in a restaurant. It is the average person who is driving goods across the country. And it is the average person who will be your employee in whatever endeavor you choose.

Stop making average something bad. It’s not. I would very much like to live an average life. I want to write some average books. Maybe one day I’ll marry an average man and have some average kids. I’ll live in an average house and make and average income. And I will be quite happy and content doing that. If you’re not content doing that then fine, go do some crazy stuff and make that happen. Just remember that you’re not as special as you think you are.

In a very real and logical twist, if you make EVERYONE exceptional then the average just moves along the spectrum until there’s a group of averages again. You might end up in that new average.

This has bothered me for a while. It’s just so common for there to be vague motivational thoughts for people to latch onto and think they’re sooo important for not being “average.” I hate it. I hate that it makes people think that being satisfied with where you are in life, being happy and content with what you have, is somehow wrong. It means you’re stagnant and secretly unhappy and you MUST WANT MORE FOR YOURSELF. No. I actually don’t. Personally, I’m very happy where I am in my life. Would I like to finish a couple books and get them published? Yeah. Even average people have goals they’re working toward. Is my goal to sell ten billion copies of my books? No. I’d be super surprised if that happened. Does this mean I have no ambitions and don’t want anything good to happen in my life? NO.

Anyway, this has been a rant by me about being average. Please go forth and be guilt free about being average. You truly carry the world on your shoulders. We need the exceptional to keep us moving forward but we need the average to keep everything functioning. Please get your average education. Marry your average significant other. Adopt an average pet. Raise average kids. Be a happy average person and don’t let the exceptionals make you feel like you’re less of a person for it.

Edit as I Go

There’s a line in the classic movie, Singing in the Rain, where one of the characters briefly thinks he’s getting fired from his job. His response is, “At last, I can start suffering and write that symphony.” He immediately learns he’s not losing his job and says, “As last, I can stop suffering and write that symphony.” If you talk to my friends and family, they’ll tell you that I have incorporated this quote into the very depths of my personality. Not only do I think it’s hilarious, but it also shows a good life perspective.

I’ve had a lot of time off from working. Which means I’ve had a lot of time to write. So my personalized version after quitting my job, would be, “At last, I can stop suffering and write that novel.” Which is essentially what I’ve been doing with a lot of my time. I spent a few hours with my writing partner discussing my recent work and figured out a lot of edits. I’ve also had a lot more time to figure out my writing process. I’ve been writing for my entire life so you’d think I would have a whole system down by now.

Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works with creative endeavors. I have always been a feast-or-famine kind of writer. I go through times where I am writing constantly. I will start dozens of new projects, progress in bigger works, reading 3 books at once, and just generally always moving on some kind of writing. But when the famine would hit, it would be no writing, little reading, nothing new, not touching old projects for weeks or even months. I got to a point in my life where I was spending months and months in the famine stage and only a few weeks at a time in the feast stage. I decided that needed to stop.

Quitting my job and taking a position with significantly fewer hours has finally given me time to figure out what that means. While I am disappointed to not be making as much money as I was before, I am really glad to have time to figure things out. I published a writing prompt book because it’s something I’ve wanted to do forever but didn’t feel like I had time. I also, as said above, figured out my writing process.

Which is something I didn’t realize would be so freeing until I found it. Because I used to berate myself over not getting enough writing done regularly. I would tell myself to just write. Just put something down on the paper. Because that’s what I was told all through college. Get something down, just do the first draft, you can edit later. The vast majority of writers tell everyone who wants to write that they need to get that first draft done. Just write it. No editing. Creatives tend to be part of the perfectionist crowd, so half the struggle is often getting past your own insecurities. So it’s not bad advice. I think that’s incredibly valuable for new and veteran writers. I still do it for shorter works. But what I’ve discovered now that I’ve been able to write regularly without as much pressure on me, is that it doesn’t work for me for writing novels.

The editing process is A LOT. It’s usually the more time consuming part of writing novels. And for me, it’s overwhelming. Since I’ve had better time to reflect on my writing, I’ve realized that the vast majority of my long projects that have been abandoned, were abandoned when I considered editing them. I have pages and pages of unfinished novels. Some are 20 pages, some are over 40, a couple are longer than that. I followed the formula: write first, edit later. But then I’d always leave them behind. Because the idea of fully editing 30+ pages of a story was too overwhelming to me. I would dutifully sit down, start reading through it, realize there was a detail that needed to be changed and that I’d have to find every. Single. Mention. of that detail and I would give up. It was always too much. The thought of heavily editing 40,000 words all at once makes me physically sick.

So I broke the rules. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have never actually followed the rule anyway. Which was an epiphany. I have always edited as I wrote. And it drives me absolutely crazy to not do that. Now I have almost 20,000 words written of a novel and it’s all been edited multiple times already. I feel really good about the story. I like the way the characters are set up. I like being able to sit with my story without feeling like I’m moving too slowly. I like being free to go back and fix things without feeling guilty for editing “too early.”

I especially like the idea of having a more finished product by the end of the story. I’ll still need to edit it at the end. I’ll still have to go through the 40,000+ words of this novel to make sure it’s good. But I (hopefully) will not have to stress over having to make every possible edit.

I finally stopped suffering at a job that, while making me money, was constantly stressing me out and overworking me, and finally managed to work on my symphony. I also managed to figure out the best way for me to write that symphony. I look forward to finishing my novel. I really look forward to seeing how this writing process works for me over time. I haven’t switched things up in a while and I haven’t written anything completely devoid of stress since probably high school. I can’t wait to get this book out, then the next one, and the next one (it’s not a series, I’m just excited for the future in general). It’s taken many years away from college, but for some reason, now is the time I finally feel like I’m on my way as a novelist.

Now just to keep up the momentum!

Snapshot of My Life #13

While it hasn’t been long since my last snapshot post, I feel like my life has undergone a few major changes so I’m writing one now.

Biggest thing is that I quit my job at the bookstore. There were a lot of factors going into that decision (that I may or may not expound on in a blog post eventually), the biggest being bad management. I worked at that store for over five years, which is a long time to work the same retail job. I met some really amazing people there who I’m still close friends with. I expect to have them in my life for a very long time. I also ended up with another not-so-good friend experience but that’s for another time.

I started a new job at a little café in town. So far it’s been great and I like all my coworkers and my boss! I think it’s a good fit for me and it cut my commute down by more than 30 minutes which is awesome. I got sick the last two weeks of March (thank you to my ex-boss for that one) which is why there was no post last Saturday. I forget how disruptive sickness is to my adult life. It was no fun at all to be sick and also trying to change jobs. I ended up calling off the first few days of my new job, which is not the way I wanted to start out. But my new boss is considerably more understanding so she doesn’t seem to hold that against me.

My debts are still pretty much where they were a few months ago. I’m still working on my car, still dealing with student loans. I had to stop payments on both while I was figuring out some financial issues. Then with the job change, I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get back into making payments. If this job goes the way I hope it will, then I might still be on track to get out of debt by mid-2023.

Something that has been going really well for me is that I’m writing daily. Getting into that habit is probably my biggest goal for 2022. I am very much a feast or famine kind of writer. I get into a mood and can write 10,000 words in one sitting. Then I don’t write for weeks or even months. I’ve never liked that habit in myself so I really wanted to work to change that this year. So far I’ve only missed a few days each month and am very much on track to my goal of writing at least 200 out of 365 days for the year. I’m still behind on blogs but I’m working on it. I’ll get there. I’m just so happy to see how I’ve been able to keep up a daily habit, no matter how small.

Which kind of transitions into the fact that I published a writing prompt book! It was somewhat anticlimactic but still fun. Right now, it is available exclusively on Blurb, where you can purchase a paperback for about $16. I’m not sure how many I’ll sell over time but I’ve pretty proud of it and I’m glad to have my good friend Tiffany Bumgardner who made the cover for me. I’d love to write more prompt books in addition to maybe finally getting a novel out there.

I have a lot of projects in the works right now. Nothing is sneaking around the corner to be published yet but I’m getting there. I think the job change is really going to help me out on that front. I don’t blame my last job for my poor time management, but it took up a lot of my time for sure. I didn’t realize just how long my commute really was until I didn’t have it anymore. I gained back an extra hour-two hours almost everyday.

The last couple months, but especially the last couple weeks, were a bit of a whirlwind. It wasn’t necessarily that a crazy amount of stuff was going on, it was just a few big things happening at once. I’m so glad to be done with the bookstore. It was getting so toxic by the end of my stay there. Very sad to see it go downhill the way it did. But I have a new beginning at a new job. I’m looking on the bright side of things for now. I know God has plans for me and I’m excited to see what will happen next.

Time in Fantasy Fiction: When Is the Deadline Again?

A friend and I have been watching through the Lord of the Rings movies and I noticed that you have to really pay attention to catch the amount of time passing. I find that fantasy genres are most guilty of this problem. I’ve read my fair share of fantasy fiction and it most often takes place over a relatively long period of time ranging from a few years to literal decades. This is often necessary just because of how much information needs to be shared, how much travel time there is, and how much the characters need to grow/learn before the finale. A lot of fantasy stories take an average farmhand and expect them to battle a thousand year old dark wizard by the end so it’s not like they can just hand him a sword and knock on the lair the next day.

Last year I read a high fantasy novel with my friend Charlotte and I had a lot of problems with the timeline. I didn’t know how they were fitting everything together in the timeframe given and when we did finally learn the time between both sides of the story (it was told from both past and future perspectives of the main character) we both thought it was too little time. The two parts of the story were only a few years apart, which meant that it was hard to tell which timeline we were in (because the character was not visibly or emotionally that different) and also it made it a much lower stakes story. But beyond that, it made several parts quite unbelievable. I know it’s fantasy and I can accept that an average farmhand can learn how to fight trained soldiers but I cannot accept that he learned to be the best swordsman anyone has ever seen in just a couple months.

I wish that there had been a timeline included in the back of the book. It’s not a very normal thing to include, usually there are maps or family trees or pronunciation guide, but I’d love timelines. Between thinking over the fantasy books I’ve read and watching Lord of the Rings again, I find I have more problems than the average reader complains about when it comes to timelines.

Every once in a while, a writer needs to step back and think about how many days have passed in the story. Or how many months, which could show what time of year it is/has moved to. You don’t have to write in a way that accounts for every second of every day, but you should step back occasionally to figure out how long it’s been in your story. Are you moving too slowly or too quickly? Are your characters covering a lot of ground in a short period of time? How long have they gone without seeing some of your other characters?

This is especially good to be aware of when your story has a lot of travel or time jumps in general. It might be helpful for you to have a calendar for yourself, just to make sure you’re not jumping too far, too fast. It’s also helpful for when characters are waiting for something to happen. If there’s a deadline for an event then it needs to be very clear how close that is. I know I’ve read books where there’s a tight deadline but then it’s not clear how much time they have (when they know, or have been told) then suddenly they reveal the world is ending in 2 days. It’s an incredibly frustrating position to be put in as a reader.

Basically, just keep the timeline in your mind. If your story is taking place over several years then this is doubly important. But even if your story is only told over a couple months or even days, you, as the author, should know the timeline.

Snapshot of My Life #12

I used to do these little snapshots every 4-5 months but I just looked back and my last one was at the beginning of 2021. So it’s been a minute. I like to have these posts to see how I’m doing on a more personal level. It’s nice to have a little summary of every few months to see how I’m progressing on projects and goals.

Let’s see, I’m still working at the bookstore, still working on paying off debt, and still working on writing. I bought a new car (new to me) last September and so far haven’t had any major issues with it! I am getting closer to paying off my student loans but I now have to also pay off my car. So in some ways it feels like I’m right back at the beginning. I know that my loans are lower than they’ve ever been, but adding a car back into the mix wasn’t ideal (is it ever?) and it is discouraging to deal with.

There’s a possibility (Lord willing) that I could pay off my student loans by mid-2023. I’m really hoping to reach that goal. It’ll be such a load off my shoulders to finally have them gone. I’ve been very grateful to have all payments stopped for such a long period of time. It was incredibly helpful to be able to pause them without major consequences when I needed to save for my car. But I need to get back on track with them. Even just a little bit at a time is better than nothing.

Money stuff aside, I’ve been working with my church’s youth group a lot which has been super fun. I have never been the person to volunteer for dealing with teens or children. But I surprised myself by accepting the role of Sunday School teacher and I haven’t regretted it. We don’t have any particular study that we’re going through, which I think has been really great. I liked going through different studies when I was a teen but at the same time, I wished that we could just talk about things and let topics come up naturally as well. I didn’t always feel like I could ask questions if they were “off topic” and if someone did ask something, it was brushed aside to get through the lesson material. Which is fine, it’s important to stick with something so everyone understands it. It’s one way to teach.

I’ve spent a lot more time with friends in the last year. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with people and I hope that this year will open up more opportunities to do the same.

As far as writing goes, I’ve been writing. I was proud of myself for getting ahead on blogs. I am now not ahead at all and so it’s been a bit of a struggle. But writing daily has been a reasonable goal so far and I have several projects in the works for this year.

I guess that’s my life update. A bit of a mixed bag of stuff since it’s been so long since my last one. I’m hoping to get really on track with a lot of things this year and writing more regular life updates is one of them!

Unskilled

For the last couple months I was very prepared with my blog posts. I had everything written up and set out in advance because November and December are busy months. I didn’t want to be waiting until the last second to write posts like I sometimes do.

But I just ran out of my prepared posts last week and now I realize I should’ve made an effort to get back in the groove before now. I forget (very easily, it seems) that maintaining this blog is not something that I can turn off and on at the drop of a hat. It takes time to sit down and make the content. I come up with ideas and often start posts then discard them over time. I don’t just throw anything out into the world. I want my posts to be good and well thought out.

I haven’t written a new post in a couple months now and it’s showing today. I have started and stopped a couple posts now and it doesn’t look like I’ll get one finished that isn’t related to this problem.

It reminds me that it takes time and energy to be creative. It’s a skill, not a one time thing. I’ve been writing my whole life and I’ve practiced a lot. But like anything you have to practice, you can lose the skill if you’re not working on it. It’s not like I’ll completely forget how to write anything, that’s not what I mean. It’s more so that it gets harder. When I’m out of practice, I can’t get things done as efficiently as I used to be able to. I have to spend significantly more time on a post than I used to be able to. I have to consider more ideas because if I’m not fostering that skill then I may come up with AS MANY ideas but most will not be AS GOOD. My brain needs to be able to focus and think about the details and relearn how to determine a good idea vs. a bad one. Which means I end up wasting time on things I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t let my skill slip.

One of my big goals this year is to get into better writing habits by writing daily (or at least 200/365 days this year). So far, I’ve done this 11 out of the last 14 days of this new year. What’s wild is that I can already see how it’s working for me. I feel more creative. I can write more easily. I am already experiencing the benefits. Well, the benefits of writing fiction, since that’s mostly what I’ve focused on. Writing this blog is essay/nonfiction (mostly) so it’s been a little weird trying to get back into the saddle.

Eventually, I’ll figure this all out again. I think it’s a combination this week of a few things but the biggest is that feeling that I’ve lost some skill level. I essentially took a break from writing and it’s hurt me a bit to do that. But it’s a new year still and I’m looking forward to writing lots of posts here and hopefully getting a book done (finally)!

Give me some ideas for posts in the comments! Maybe it’ll help me for next week!

How My 2021 Resolutions Went

Last week I posted about my new year resolutions and I realized that I never actually said how my goals for 2021 went! It’s important to me to have some level of accountability with my goals (which is a big reason I post them to begin with). I want to share these things because I want to keep myself on track, have a written account of what happened (and where I could do better), and show that life is usually good but not all sunshine and rainbows. I’d like to present myself here in a realistic way.

So I think my goals for 2021 went… okay… ish… okayish. Which isn’t the worst. So this is my original list that I posted last year:

1. Memorize a book of the Bible (probably Romans but idk)
2. Grow my blog
3. Finish a novel
4. Paint more
5. Save money
6. Grow my church’s facebook page
7. Do more photography
8. Write regularly
9. Grow my author page on Facebook
10. Do a monthly podcast with Charlotte (of charlattessippablestories)
11. Read at least 12 books

It’s a decent list. I wrote it down and put it up on my wall by my desk so I’d keep it at the front of my mind all year. I put checkmarks on it when I accomplished parts of it so it was cool to see my actual progress as I went. When I handed this list to the internet, I mentioned it is vague. It doesn’t have many SMART goals on it. I did put some numbers on my hand written list (for example I put “get 1200 views for 2021” after the vague “Grow my blog”) but it doesn’t seem like it helped me that much. So here are the things I accomplished from this list:

Grow my blog (I said I wanted 1200 views and I blew that out of the water for the year!! Fully accomplished although next year I’d like to focus on gaining followers since I only have 12 new followers for 2021)

Painted more (no specifics added, but I put 4 check marks so I did it)

Saved money (I had $25 a month as a goal and I know I saved more than that each month, but also I bought a car so that wiped out what I had)

Started and maintained a podcast on Youtube (we managed to release ten podcasts and since we had planned ahead knowing we’d be skipping January and probably December, it worked out just fine and I consider this a success. We don’t plan on focusing on getting subscribers as of right now, we’re just having fun doing it)

Read at least 12 books (my Goodreads goal was 24 and my personal goal was 30 I hit my Goodreads goal in November and didn’t reach my personal goal)

Did more photography (No specifics for this one but I have 6 checkmarks next to it so I think I did alright)

I did not finish a novel, grow my church’s facebook page (I think on a technicality I could say I did because it gained a few likes but the goal was definitely more), grow my author page, or memorize a book of the Bible, or write regularly (again, on a technicality I could probably count this one since I kept up on this blog and started a couple big projects but I’m not going to do that because I think I could’ve done a lot more).

Overall, I don’t think it was a bad year. When I started writing this post I thought it would be much worse. But it’s not bad at all. I accomplished just over half the list and if I was nicer to myself I could put a few more items in the accomplished category.

My biggest win was photography and blog views. I feel like those were the ones that went wildly beyond expectations and are also somewhat linked. Because I took more pictures, I started posting them on here from time to time. I got way more views on my photography posts than my other posts. So hitting my photography goal is what enabled me to hit my blog goal. I like that a lot. It reminds me that even when my goals seem completely unrelated, they are still linked and can help me build good habits and be stepping stones for other goals.

This year, as every year previous, has taught me more about myself and what obstacles get in my way when I try to accomplish things. This year it’s mostly been my job. I have a variable schedule and one of my managers has had a lot of health issues so my work has been all over the place. It’s hard to find time to get things done when I never know for sure what time I’ll have. But there have been other obstacles as well and while work is sort of out of my hands, other things are not. Sometimes I’m simply tired. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough time to myself, so (ironically) I steal that time from my future self, using it up so that later I panic. I’m starting to be better about writing my blog posts at a decent pace so I’m not blindsided by the weekend sometimes.

I often feel that my growth is too slow. And in so many ways, it absolutely is. I know that I self-sabotage. I know that I make bad decisions. I know I often lack time-management when I need it the most. I know that I fear success almost as much as I fear failure. But I also know that I am making progress. I look back at this blog and see my resolutions of years past and see how much I’ve changed over that time. I can see that I’ve learned a lot about self-control and I can see that the thing I most neglect is my spiritual health.

Will 2022 finally be my year? I mean, probably not. But I am moving forward and moving on and going ahead with my life. I have a strange roadmap of the last six years that, if I can continue to learn from, will help me navigate the future. It’s all in God’s hands and I can’t wait to see what’s next.