Work in Progress #14: Self-Improvement!

The last couple of weeks, I’ve talked about the ways that last year wasn’t quite up to snuff.  I talked about how, due to the craziness of 2023, I fell short of multiple personal goals.  I talked about sagging mental health and physical fitness, lack of time, being stressed out, and how I didn’t want that to be the case anymore.

What I haven’t talked about is what I’m going to do about it.

I can have all the pretty goals I want—lose weight, write more, publish, etc.—but without structure, it makes 2024 no different than any other year.  I can’t have that, not again.  I’ve spent so much time trying to make things happen without a plan, a metric of success, or even a definable goal, that it feels like I’m driving uphill on an icy cobblestone road.  So, if I may have a moment of indulgence, allow me to talk about how I’m getting to where I want to go.

Writing.  I fell short of a goal I had last year: finishing Underground Rhapsody.  If I’m going to be honest about it, there are several writing goals I fell short of, but let’s focus on this one.  The simple solution is to write the damn book.  Easy, right?  Well, not so much.  The thing that will help is a deadline, and that one is June 30th.  That means that 157 days from today, I want to have a complete first draft in my hands.  And if I can commit one hour a day toward writing this, I think I can push through to the finish line.

Editing.  I do have a couple of complete drafts available for other stories.  Most notably, I completed the first draft of a story called Empire Towers a little over a year ago.  By the time summer begins, I want to have gone through it twice and have it ready for beta reads by people I don’t know personally.  I might even put up a request or two here for anyone who might be interested.

Health and Wellness.  For the last ten years or so, I’ve not taken the best care of myself.  There are reasons for that, of course, and the primary one is a failure on my part to make the time to do so.  This is the year I do that.  I want to lose some weight, so I’m making more of the meals and committing myself to 4-5 exercise days every week.  I want to feel less isolated, so I’m making the effort to reach out to friends and family more frequently.  I want to feel less stressed, so I’m going to do more of the things I like to do, like writing and sports.  And I want to remind myself that writing—especially writing—is something I enjoy doing.  It doesn’t always have to be about writing to sell something, so I’m going to remind myself that not everything I write is for everyone’s eyes.

I have other goals, of course.  There is a laundry list of things that I can improve about life in general.  But this is what I’m sharing with you, for now.  And now that I’m putting this out into the ether, I have everyone who sees this keeping me accountable.

No pressure, though.  We got this.