I want to focus on this new year with a positive eye and with positive goals in mind. It's important that I look after myself and my mental health.
Anyways, without further ado, here are my resolutions:
- Read at least 100 books
My goal last year was to read 200 books, and I barely made it. The only reason I actually broke my goal was because I'd read a whole bunch of short story/novella ebooks to bump up my book count. It was stressful to try to reach my goal, and I really don't want to go through that again. 100 seems like a nice, safe number. Very doable, and high enough that it'll make me feel good about myself.
- Write at least one complete novel
As a writer, I need to constantly be writing. Duh.
Notice that the word complete is in there. Last year, I'd written one complete novel, and two novels that were a bit more than half done, but I'd kind of lost myself and abandoned it. I don't want to keep doing that.
- Get passing grades at uni
Uni is very hard for me. Because of my mental health problems, I sometimes don't have the will to get out of bed, let alone travel all the way into the city to be surrounded by hundreds or thousands of people. I struggled last year, because I skipped so many classes and lectures because of my depression/anxiety (also, I was pretty sick at one point). So, my goal this year isn't to not skip classes, because that won't help my mental health, but instead to try to do better at my coursework. If I skip a class, then I have to get ahead: do all the readings and assignments well ahead of time to make up for the lost classes.
- Keep a reading journal
I got this idea from bettielee from Far Seeing Fairy Tales, to keep a journal of all the books I've read this year, and to write short tidbits of how I felt, notable quotes, and other such stuff. It's sort of like reviewing, I guess, except that this will be a project for myself. When I reviewed books, it got to the point where I wasn't doing it for myself any more, but for my readers and for publishers, and for my GR followers. And that wasn't fun. It felt like a chore, a job. But maybe, if I do this reading journal thing, it'll open me up a bit, and get me back on track to writing a review every now and then. We'll see.
I already have a gorgeous notebook all ready and waiting for my first entry. I'm sort of excited. :)
- Be more social
Because of my mental health problems, it's very hard to make friends, or to keep them. I have severe social anxiety that makes me keep to myself, and ignore people, because that's how I feel safest. But, in order to make and keep friends, I have to open up a bit. Just a bit. This will be a continual work in progress, and who knows, it might be one that I have to keep working at for years.
Speaking of which...
- Work on bettering my mental health
From the amount of times I've mentioned it in this post, by now you've guessed that my mental health is a bad thing. It consumes me, in the simplest sense.
Last year, I already took the first steps towards bettering myself by getting myself to a psychologist and getting on antidepressants to help me somewhat. The goal for this year is to find a psychiatrist that works well with me and my specific problems, and to find ways to control my compulsive habits. Like the previous goal, this is something that I need to work on in baby steps, and it may take several years to work towards.
- Finish editing FG
FG is my precious main project. It's the novel I want to get published more than anything. Problem is, I need to finish editing it.
I'm very slow and lazy when it comes to editing. But this year, I'm going to discipline myself. I need to get better at editing on a deadline, otherwise, no agent nor publisher would want to work with me.
Also, I'm fairly sure that my CPs are getting really annoyed at me for making them wait so long, haha. You'll get it soon, guys, I promise!
So yeah, these are my new years resolutions. In a years time, we'll see if I've kept them.
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