Fandom Snowflake Challenge #4

[spiralicious]

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

I really have been spending too much time on Subeta. I read that as “They can be fannish or edible, public or private.”

Weirdly, I take goal setting very seriously. If you make a goal, but haven't thought out the steps to get there and broken it down into achievable components, all you've done is made a wish. There's nothing wrong with that. It just feels like people confuse them.

That pet peeve aside, I've done some goal setting a few places.

At 12mowrimo, I pledged to write at least 100 words a day this month. This is likely to be my pledge every month, unless there is a month I know I won't be able to check in at all, even with amnesty.

At ushobwri, we were asked if we wanted to share our “wrisolutions.” I feel comfortable enough sharing mine here:
Since the last few years my writing goals have been to hack away at my insane wip list and making little progress with that and only frustrating myself, I am changing things up this year.

Write more posts for the DIY blog. I've had the thing for a few years now and it looks abandoned. Three posts a week might be too ambitious, but one a week might be doable. (It's sort of fic, I tell the story of how the thing was made and where it all horribly went wrong, lol.)

Finish the guide for madrona_project. We've been trying to make it more user friendly for new members/writers for two years now with little luck. Right now, we are having some major technical difficulties (thank you Photobucket >.>), but the biggest problem is a lack of written rules and guidelines, and guide to the shared universe members write in there. This was fine when everyone in there had been active there for ten years, but we need new people and its hard to jump in as it is.

Finish How You Ruin Me. The fic, not the series. I have been working on it since 2013 and it spends long periods of time in limbo and I feel horrible about it. I mean, it has a sequel already started, a series of drabbles in its universe, a cookbook series, and a spin-off series. I think it's time.

Other than that, while I want to participate more in general, I don't want to hold myself to doing any challenge in particular because of the guilt I will feel if I don't do it.

At Good Reads, I joined the reading challenge again. This year, I pledged 15 books, since 20 has just not been doable the last couple years, but book club is still going strong and the local library is doing another reading bingo, so I will likely exceed that.

The big sort of grandish goals this year are:
find stable income
pay off debts
send more snail mail
get Peanut's presents mailed to him closer to the occasion they're for
build support network
check in with someone weekly (this is worded badly, make a point to catch up/stay in touch with a friend at least once a week is closer)
monthly ritual
journal in book weekly
make a habitable and comfortable living environment
walk and/or stretch 5 days a week
get eye exam
get dental cleaning

I don't have a central goal yet this year. The last few years, its been “declutter like I'm moving to Seattle,” but that seems to no longer be serving me.

Of course I have shorter term, less grand goals, and these ones will probably change as the year goes on, but those are on my weekly “clutter buddy” update posts. I'm behind on those because despite doing them for almost 10 years now, I am still trying to find a format that works in the right now. The old formats no longer make sense and what I did last year was good, but had issues.

I have a theme/word for the year, but I am still having trouble articulating it. Last year, my theme/word was self-care/comfort, which I didn't talk about much because every time it got brought up, I got a lot of flack for it. I think it was because people didn't really understand what I mean by it. For the last few years, I've been in an especially bad place and getting worse. Last year, I decided to make a point to take care of myself because I was tired for constantly feeling brittle. So, self-care and comfort were more about things like making sure I had dry shampoo on hand and when I was sick to curl up on the couch with my assortment of beverages instead of forcing myself to try and plow through it and make things worse.

This year I feel... better is not the right word. I feel less like I am going to break at any moment and more able to handle, possibly even attack, what comes my way and I am still trying to come up with a theme/word that expresses that.

Major kudos to anyone who made it this far.

Why couldn't I just make a simple list?

Comments

[kitty_fic]

Good luck with all your goals!

I like/agree with your idea that it's important to think about how to break goals down into steps! That's a really valid idea!

[spiralicious]

Thank you! x2

[madeline_gwydion]

"If you make a goal, but haven't thought out the steps to get there and broken it down into achievable components, all you've done is made a wish."

That is a really good way to look at it. :-) As you said, there's nothing wrong with making a wish, but making this distinction sounds really helpful with what I sometimes struggle with.

And why ever would anyone criticize you for choosing to focus on comfort and self-care? There is nothing wrong with focusing on that And it seems to have been effective, too, from what you say about feeling better. :-)

[spiralicious]

Thanks. After I graduated from college, I did a very serious deep dive into researching goals and self-help and it's the biggest distinction I could find between wanting to do something and actually making it happen. It's been a helpful thing to remind myself when I'm having trouble in the years since.

The criticism seems to come from people hearing the buzz words of "comfort" and "self-care" and immediately jumping to the most self-indulgent, frivolous, and lazy interpretation possible; instead of trying to understand what I was doing.

And yes, it seems to have been effective. ^_^

[vexed_wench]

You know I am here to support your plans. Maybe this year we can call optimistic? Maybe?

[spiralicious]

*hug* Thank you. I know. You know I'm here to support you too. Maybe? Neither of us do optimism well. We can try.

[gwenhwyfar1984]

Good luck with your goals!

[spiralicious]

Thank you!

[fadedwings]

Good luck with your goals ♥

I'm sorry no one understood last year's word/theme of self-care/comfort :(
I understand being in a bad place all too well. At this point, my anxiety is bad enough that I really only leave the apartment once a week.
I'm glad you are feeling less like you're going to break...and hope that feeling continues and things get even better for you in the coming year ♥