At the start of the year, I talked about how I was reviving my program of—let’s be honest, they’re not really New Year’s resolutions. That’s not how I’m using them, and for good reason. But anyway, in order to try to improve my writing discipline and other efforts in my life, I will set personal goals for what I want to achieve, and I evaluate and revise them every three months. This seems to be the right amount of time to settle into the routines that do work without getting stuck in ones that don’t.
Well, we’re three months into 2022 now, and I wanted to update you on how I did in January through March. Here the a summary of my goals for 2022 so far:
Write for at least 30 minutes every day. Completion rate: 69%.
Write at least 365,000 words in 2022. Completion rate: 80%.
Exercise at least 30 minutes per day, 4 days per week. Completion rate: 71%.
Clear my entire backlog of books, TV, and movies I want to see from the past 2 years in 2022. Completion rate: not much. I’m working on making a more rigorous schedule, though, as part of it will contribute to Season 2 of my podcast.
Publishing: not set. I’m still considering my options.
Social Media (blog, videos, etc.): not set. I’m still toying with new ideas, and I’ll have more worked out once Season 2 starts.
Conlanging: not a formal goal yet. I nominally got 66% completion on my “stress test.” However, after seeing how these three months went, I think I should fold it into “social media” as a more general category of “visual arts” for any stuff I’m doing outside of writing.
So, those numbers are decent, especially considering how most people tend to do on their New Years’ resolutions. But they’re not great. I was hoping for something more like 90%. What happened? Well, things were going pretty well at first, but then, several things happened in March that threw me off my game pretty badly. I won’t go into that, but suffice to say, I’ve been struggling to get back on track—although I’ve still got more uncertainty coming up in the next couple months. As such, I’m not really changing much right now—just resetting the clock from April 1 to see if I can do better in the next three months. However there is one adjustment I need to make:
Exercise at least 30 minutes per day, 4 days per week, except while traveling.
That was a provision I had included in past years, but it hasn’t been relevant during the pandemic. This year, I’m actually going to conferences again, so I needed to clarify that.
Also, as mentioned above, I need to consolidate two of the other points:
“Social media” goal: removed.
“Conlanging” goal: removed.
“Visual arts” goal: pending.
I’m counting things like non-podcast videos, conlanging, and potential illustrations or diagrams for stories down the road as “visual arts.” I’m not setting a goal for this yet. Instead, I’m going to “stress test” this again to see if I can make steadier progress. And with luck, I’ll have something more solid going by July 1.
Science Meets Fiction 