Stay the Course? [2024 Recap//2025 Goals]

 

Hello, everyone! 2024 has officially ended, and 2025 is here. As always, that means it's time to look back at the past year and at my 2024 goals to see what I've done (and what I didn't quite manage to do), and it's also time to look ahead at the new year and think about what I might want to accomplish in 2025. 2024 wasn't a perfect year, but it was a sight better than 2023, and it included a lot of good things — excellent stories, lessons learned, time spent with friends and family, and a few milestones I didn't expect to hit quite so soon. I'm hopeful that 2025 will be more of the same.

One thing that I know will be different in 2025, though, is that I have decided to officially retire my Dreams & Dragons blog once I finish my 2024 close-out posts (those being this post, December 2024 Doings, and my 2024 End of Year Book Celebration). This is not something I'm doing lightly, as this blog has been a part of my life since 2011. It was one of my first opportunities to share my thoughts and stories online, and I've grown a great deal in the process of maintaining it. However, the Blogger platform is getting steadily more frustrating to work with, and the overall look and content of the blog is outdated enough that it either needs to be majorly overhauled or retired . . . and I am choosing the latter. To be clear, the blog and the posts on it will remain online for people to read! However, I will not be posting there anymore, and I will probably turn off comments on that site and put a note on it that it's no longer active. If you currently follow me on Dreams & Dragons, I encourage you to subscribe to my Wordpress blog, Light & Shadows, instead! On the other hand, if you mostly follow me on Light & Shadows, you'll see very little change except that my biannual Best Of reading lists will be replaced with longer Book Celebrations, which are more fun for me to write and allow me to highlight more noteworthy books, and my seasonal releases lists may expand past five more frequently. Hopefully, no one will be too disappointed by those changes — if you are, I apologize, but I do believe this is the best choice.

And now, with that announcement out of the way, let's take a look back at the past year and what happened in it.

2024 Recap // 2025 Goals

2024 Recap

Year of Staying the Course? (Not Quite . . .)

• My theme for 2024 was "staying the course" — in general, my goals were supposed to be about consistency, about continuing with what I was doing even when it was hard, unless I received a clear indication that doing so was the wrong choice.
• I do feel like I did a pretty decent job of sticking with that theme for the first several months of the year. I kept up with the vast majority of my commitments, whether those were writing, work, grad school, or social things.
• Unfortunately, I also was getting so stressed about all those things that I wasn't sleeping well and was making myself physically sick. Those things, plus reminders from multiple sources on the importance of rest and not over-committing or trying to do too much, seemed to be a pretty strong signal that I needed to make some adjustments.
• So, I did not accomplish all of my goals this year, and my theme kind of had a midyear switch to something more like "Rethink" or "Rest" — but I do not regret that as much as I might have otherwise.

Writing

• Once again, my goal for 2024 was to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months in the year. I would say I largely accomplished this — I had specific writing goals every month of 2024 except July — although I only really succeeded in those goals eight months out of twelve. I was writing very consistently! Just not always on the projects I intended to prioritize.
• My total wordcount for the year was 312,374 words, about 30,000 words more than last year. That doesn't include edits on Illusion's Reign, which would put the actual count even higher. All in all, a very satisfactory number — especially since I mostly did a much better job at keeping up with deadlines and not leaving things until the last minute! That allowed me to have a much less stressful release for Illusion's Reign, and it gave me some nice rest periods here and there when I could either take a break from writing or work primarily on just-for-fun projects.
• Of course, my biggest win of 2024 was when Song of the Selkies won Book of the Year at the Realm Awards! That's the kind of accomplishment that wasn't even on my radar as a possibility, and I am still in awe that it actually, y'know, happened.
• I also made it to two other book selling events, specifically a craft fair in spring and Eat Local, Read Local in October. Those both went fairly well. I didn't make it to Doxacon, but given everything else I had going on around that time, that's probably for the best.
• Regarding specific project goals:
  • I wrote, edited, and published Illusion's Reign, the second Daughters of Atirse book, with the 2024 Aristal Challenge Project. I did not finish drafting it by the end of March, but I did wrap it up in June, which isn't bad at all given how long it ended up being and how much mental energy grad school took up.
    
  • I also wrote and submitted a story for the first DOSA Files anthology. I wanted to write a sequel for the second anthology, but I ran out of time (partially because I deluded myself into thinking I'd have time around the holidays). Still, I'm pleased I managed the first one!
    
  • I started the planning process on a new story, Project Kingfisher. This wasn't in my original goal list for 2024, but I realized that it had an actual deadline, and I came up with an idea that I liked, so I decided to start it with the intent of having a longer planning period. Hopefully that'll make the actual book a little easier to write; we'll see if that works.
  • I did not write Bastian Dennel, PI #4. I apologize to those who were looking forward to it; it's still going to happen, but Project Kingfisher knocked it down a slot in the priority list. I also didn't get to another Daughters of Atirse book, though that was a long shot anyway.
    
  • I mostly kept up with my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. Things got a little iffy in the last couple months, when my players caught up with my plot slightly faster than expected, but otherwise I mostly stayed ahead of what I needed to get done.
• As far as backlog posts and keeping up with my blogging/social media schedule . . . Well, I posted some of my backlog, but not all. And I mostly kept up with blogging, though I did take a few breaks here and there. I did less well with keeping up with social media, but honestly, I am not stressing out about that. I still do my weekly goal posts, and I am not going to fail as an author just because I miss posting Wednesdays several weeks in a row.

Reading (and Other Stories)

• As usual, I'll discuss my 2024 reading goals in my Best of/End-of-Year Book Celebration posts. If you want an early look, you can check out my tracking form results.
• In summary, though: I read 94 books, plus a few that I didn't record because they were beta reads, just making my goal of 93 books. I didn't quite hit most of my other goals (though I did make progress towards them), and I mostly did well with tracking what I was reading . . . until around the end of July, when I apparently forgot that I was supposed to be adding stuff to my Google Form? (And then I had to go back and put everything in this past week to make this post. Good grief, past me.)
• Thankfully, I kept up much better on tracking what I was watching and playing, again using Google forms. I watched far less stuff in 2024 than I did in 2023 — about 41 distinct movies, episodes, or videos. Roughly 66% of those were episodes of a TV or streaming show. And between Christmas movies and watching Yona of the Dawn, about half of what I watched happened in October, November, and December.
• The reason for that drop in what I watched was absolutely because I got into gaming instead — or, more specifically, I got into Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact because a couple of my friends kept talking about certain characters and I was Intrigued. This was, I believe, an excellent decision; I've had a grand time, and it has largely helped me lower my stress level and spend less time procrastinating on YouTube.

Life

• I did three grad school classes this year, which is one fewer than I originally intended. I decided to take half of the fall semester off so I wouldn't have grad school work when I was busy with publishing Illusion's Reign. I think that was the right choice, especially since two of those three classes were rather frustrating (though for different reasons).
• Work continues to go well. We had some excitement this year in the form of our associate pastor being transferred to a new church and the kids' ministry director stepping into the associate pastor position, but that transition was pretty smooth.
• I kept up with learning German on Duolingo. Irish, not so much — I was getting confused by the grammar, so I kind of just dropped it. However, Duolingo introduced a music course, and I've been doing that! I think that's going well — I definitely feel like I'm learning something.
• I returned to Realm Makers, which was super fun and exciting even outside of the Realm Awards. I loved getting to see friends and spend time with fellow authors, and the speakers were all very helpful. In addition, one of my not-too-far-away friends and I have been a lot more deliberate about planning get-togethers, including visits to Longwood Gardens, the zoo, an escape room, and our annual Ren Faire trip.
• On the flip side, I ended my monthly board game Connect Group. Since about 2021, I've been running a monthly connect group/life group that mostly just meets to play board games. However, in the last year or so, it had become a source of more stress than blessing, especially as I frequently ended up with a lot of uncertainty around whether or not anyone else would show up. So, I made the decision to end it, and that decision was affirmed from several directions (which I appreciated).
• I successfully weeded and reorganized my bookshelves. Well, a lot of the organization remained the same, but some stuff has been moved around. And I did get rid of a whole box and a half of books. A lot of that was just deciding that I could give up my Wheel of Time books because I didn't think I was actually going to read them, but that's still progress, and it substantially decreased the number of books I owned but hadn't read.
• My D&D group completed the campaign we started back in college. It took us until September or so, but the villain has been defeated, and everyone got a good ending. We also had a mini-campaign run by one of the other players (giving our DM a chance to play), and now we've started a new campaign! We've only had two sessions of that so far, but it's been really fun.
• I made approximately one Baking Yesteryear recipe per month. There were a few months in which I didn't make anything, but I also had a few months in which I made multiple things, so I think those evened out. Also in the field of making things, I gave bookbinding and tablet weaving a try. Both are things I'd like to do more in future, though not as regularly as crochet, embroidery, and knitting — they are, unfortunately, somewhat less portable.
• As for my goal of finding a way to exercise once a week . . . that didn't really happen. I tried walking on the treadmill during D&D for a while, but then I needed that time for working on other things, and it just kind of fell apart. Ah well.

All in all, while this year wasn't quite what I planned, it was still a pretty good year, and I'm generally happy with what I accomplished. Now it's time to look forward to 2025 and think about what it might hold . . .

2025 Goals

Year of Adjust and Assess

• In setting my theme for 2025, I mainly want to carry over what I've already started doing in the second half of 2024: looking for things in my life that aren't working well or that could be working better and finding ways to improve them, especially in regards to balancing work and rest. While I think I'm in a healthier place now than I was at the start of 2024, I am aware that I may have swung the pendulum a touch too far in the other direction. So, I want to use this year to try to get back to a good balance between the two.
• To that end, the theme I'm using to set my 2025 goals is Adjust and Assess: make adjustments, see what's working, keep what's going well and fix or drop what isn't. In my head, this looks like a combination of the scientific method and the agile development methods I learned in college, but applied to habits and actions. In practice . . . we'll see how things go.

Writing Goals

• My overall writing goal for the past few years has worked well, so I'm keeping it with some tweaks: I want to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals in at least nine of the twelve months of 2024. As per usual, these can be wordcount goals or project goals depending on what best serves what I need to get done. I am making one change here, though, and dropping the number of months with specific writing goals from ten to nine. My thought is that I can then take July and December (my two busiest months) as months in which I'm not focusing my energy on a specific writing goal, plus I'll have one extra rest month to use when I need it.
• Additionally, I want to test a few new things in my writing process, namely taking a longer planning period on new projects, allowing myself to write story-related things that aren't in the story, and having two or three active (non-D&D) projects at once, possibly in staggered stages of the writing process. Technically, I'm already testing these with Project Kingfisher and a just-for-fun personal project, but I'm making it official here. I usually have a very short planning period, stay very focused on the actual project while it's active, and try to stick to one project at a time, but I want to see if making some changes helps (by allowing more flexibility, especially when I'm tired) or hinders (by allowing more opportunities for distraction). Now seems like a good time to do it, since I don't have as tight a deadline as I normally do.
• As for specific project goals:
  • I want to plan, draft, and probably do a first edit on Project Kingfisher. This is already partially in progress, and it's supposed to be fairly short, so I'm hoping to have it finished by Easter. (Famous last words, I know.)
  • I want to plan, draft, and maybe publish Bastian Dennel, PI #4. This is a repeat goal from last year that I didn't accomplish, but BDPI is top priority after Project Kingfisher. I may try to work on it concurrently with Project Kingfisher, in accordance with my goal of testing some new things in my writing process.
  • I want to rewrite/edit Once Upon a Dream and prep it for publication. I've been meaning to get around to this for a long while, and I think 2025 might be the year. It's already a pretty strong story, if I recall correctly; I just need to expand and adjust a few things. My hope is that I can publish either BDPI #4 or Once Upon a Dream in October or November of this year.
  • I want to write some short stories for anthologies/writing challenges. If there's another DOSA Files anthology, I'll aim to put something out in that — I still have my story for the second anthology that I didn't quite finish, after all. Additionally, there's a yearly short story challenge in October that I've done the last three years, and I'd like to do it again if it runs in 2025. If other opportunities pop up that seem interesting, I may try those too!
  • I want to allow myself to work on just-for-fun writing projects more. This is something I started doing while I was in a break month in the last half of 2024, and I think it's been helpful to have something to work on that doesn't have a deadline, publication plans, or so on — something that's just for me to have fun with. Of course, writing about Bastian Dennel, Ceana and her family, and the Project Kingfisher cast is also fun, and I love working on those stories . . . but it's also nice to have something that's just for me and a friend or two, something that I know doesn't have to be perfect (and that I can work on at times when I might not feel comfortable working on an Official Project).
  • Finally, I want to keep up with my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. I also want to do some less-complicated plots . . . the last few have all ended up being far more complex than I intended them or needed to make them, and with one exception, I'm not sure if it was worth it. But in any case, I need to get back to the place where working on D&D is actually fun again — it's my main opportunity to see these friends, and I don't want to burn out on it.
• I am not making specific goals about attending author events this year; while I think it was helpful last year, it's not something I'm going to prioritize in 2025. That's not to say it won't happen — at minimum, I hope to do Eat Local, Read Local again — but I'm not making it a major goal.

Reading Goals

• My 2025 reading goal is 93 books. This was a good number for 2024, so I'm going to stick with it.
• I always set a goal about reading a certain number of older books and non-speculative fiction books, and this year is no exception, but I am doing something a little different. For 2025, my goal is to either read 12 books written before 1975, at least nine of which were originally aimed at adults, OR give the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries a fair trial, read at least one Chesterton novel, and read the Brother Cadfael books I currently own and have not previously read. For purposes of being specific, "a fair trial" is here defined as "getting far enough in the series to meet Harriet Vane." While my alternate goal will mean I read a lower number of pre-1975 books than I otherwise would (particularly because Brother Cadfael was written post-1975), I think it will accomplish a similar end result while also clearing some things off my to-read list.
• (I would normally set a goal here about the number of non-speculative-fiction books I want to read; I'm not going to do that this year. I think I am sufficiently in the habit of at least considering non-spec-fic books that I can let it go.)
• Finally, in 2025, I want to either to catch up with Sanderson's Cosmere and Secret Project releases OR try books in three new non-Sanderson epic fantasy series. I intended to catch up on Sanderson in 2024, and it didn't happen, though I did read some. Whichever version of this goal I go for, this would come out to reading either three or four epic-length fantasy books, which I think is reasonable. If I could accomplish both, that would be better still, but we'll see.
• I want to keep tracking what I read, watch, and play. Tracking what I watch has gone fairly well. I may experiment with StoryGraph for tracking what I read in more detail than Goodreads allows, but at least for the first month or two, I'll also be keeping up with a Google form (though I may streamline that form a bit). And I hope to improve my gaming form to provide more useful statistics about what I actually do.

Life Goals

• I need to finish another three grad school classes. I am planning to repeat what I did in 2024 and only doing half a semester in fall, since that's often busy with both book releases and holidays; hopefully that works out well. (I also still need to register for spring classes, oops . . .)
• I want to keep up with learning German and music on Duolingo. This is pretty achievable, and I'll probably do it whether or not I include it on this list, but the same can be said of my goal of reading a certain number of books by the end of the year.
• I want to return to Realm Makers and continue making a point of planning offline get-togethers with friends. These were highlights of 2024 for me, and I want to do more of them. Sometimes the planning part can be frustrating, especially when ideal visit time overlaps with a busy season . . . but getting to see friends in person, not just online, is worth it, and I need to remember that. (Also, I need something that will make me Go Places and Do Things instead of just spending all my time in the same places, doing the same things.)
• I want to try one new recipe, craft/craft technique, or design/photography technique per month. I set a similar goal last year (with my Baking Yesteryear recipes) and in 2022 (when I aimed to learn three new skills in various areas over the course of the year). I think this will give me some good motivation to (once again) try new things while allowing flexibility for months in which I don't have a lot of time to bake but I do have time to craft, or so on.

What were your 2024 highlights? What goals, themes, or resolutions do you have for 2025? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

Onward and Upward [2023 Recap//2024 Goals]

 

Back when I wrote my 2023 Goals post, I described 2022 as straightforward, busy, and "pleasantly predictable." And here, at the end of 2023, I just have to say . . . I miss pleasantly predictable. Pleasantly predictable was nice. So was straightforward. 2023 has been neither of those things, unfortunately. It's been rather challenging. Not entirely — 2024 also contained many good things, some that were "We wish this hadn't had to happen, but under the circumstances, it could have been MUCH worse" and some that were indisputably excellent. Still, I suspect I will look back on this year with very mixed feelings.

I confess that, as a result of, well, everything, I kind of forgot about most of my goals about halfway through the year. Still, we'll recap and see what I managed, and then we can get on with setting some new goals for 2024. But first, don't forget that my New Year's Eve short story posted last night, and y'all should read it! Also, if you're watching for the second half of my 2023 Reading Celebration/Best of 2023 list, I'll post those on Friday. I read a lot of good books in 2023, so I'm going to have to make some tough decisions there . . . but that's a problem for the me who's already finished writing this post. Let's stick with one thing at a time.

(Before I go on, though, one more quick sidenote: Through a Shattered Glass is free on Kindle through January 4 because it was chosen as the Fellowship of Fantasy book of the month for January! So, if you haven't read it yet, now's the time to get a copy.)

2023 Recap // 2024 Goals

2023 Recap

Year of Water and Grow

• My theme for 2023 was "water and grow" — maintaining what I've achieved and growing myself and my skills in various ways.
• In theory, these themes (based on CGP Grey's "Year of . . ." theme method) are supposed to guide the whole year, but I just kind of use them to set goals and then assess at the end of the year.
• I would say that I had . . . mixed success with that theme. In some areas, I definitely achieved both watering and growth. In other areas, I was doing well if I just managed the watering bit.

Writing

• My goal for 2023 was roughly the same as the one I've set the last several years: to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals at least ten out of the twelve months in the year. And I can say without hesitation that I have done that! In fact, I spent all twelve months actively working towards specific writing goals! Did I meet every monthly goal? No, because "finish Bastian Dennel, PI #4" was one of my goals in multiple months, and I just accomplished it a week ago. But that's ok!
• My total wordcount for the year was 286,032 words. That's lower than last year, but I also worked on fewer projects this year, and I had other tasks taking me away from my writing more. It's still a good 100,000 words higher than 2021, and it's only about 50,000 lower than 2020, so I'm more than satisfied.
• I also achieved another general writing goal/dream when Through a Shattered Glass won the 2023 Realm Award for Novellas. I'm still a little astonished at this, actually — I expected that I'd be dreaming of this award for quite a few years yet. But I'm also delighted, and winning the Realm Award was one of the highlights of my year.
• Additionally, I attended two events to sell my books: Eat Local, Read Local and Doxacon. I can't say that I attended solo because the lovely Heather Halverstadt shared my table and gave me some great direction at both, and L. Jagi Lamplighter was also at our Doxacon table. Still, these feel like pretty significant milestones!
• Regarding specific project goals:
  • I wrote, submitted, edited, and published Song of the Selkies with the Stolen Songs Arista Challenge. Last year, I described the idea that became Song of the Selkies as "shorter and faster to write [than my BDPI Little Mermaid story]." Past me, you sweet summer child, you had no idea. I worked on this right up until release day, with only a few brief pauses. Still, it's out in the world, I'm happy with it, and other people have enthusiastically told me how much they like it, so, hey, I'm not complaining.
    
  • I released a short story with the Wags, Woofs, and Wonders anthology. "Grim Guardian" was fun to write, and I'm so glad that it was accepted into the anthology! I didn't get to do as much with the release as I intended, but I'm still pleased.
  • I finished drafting Bastian Dennel, PI #4. I originally thought I'd be done with this back in February. That's hilarious. But, y'know, I made progress! I also decided that it's going to require a hefty rewrite and will probably become book five in the series, but that's ok. In that sense, I sort of accomplished my goal of drafting BDPI #5 . . . but I didn't write the story I originally thought would be BDPI #5 (which will now be BDPI #4, so I'm not giving myself too much credit there).
  • I know what I'm doing for the 2024 Arista Challenge (tentatively). I intend to start writing it today or tomorrow, in fact. The only reason that "tentatively" is in there is because I have learned my lesson.
  • I have kept up with my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. We spent a bit over half the year in Middle Earth, which was good because it meant I knew where things were going, but also got a little unsatisfying to write after a while. And now we're back in Serys, working through an adventure I've had in mind for a while, and that's been fun.
• I've mostly kept up with blogging and author socials. I took a few more blogging hiatuses this year than in some past years, and I definitely missed more Wednesday Instagram/Facebook posts than I intended. Still, I think I did ok under the circumstances.

Reading

• As per the usual, I'll cover my reading goals in my Best of/End-of-Year Book Celebration posts. For an early look at my stats, you can check out my tracking form results.
• By way of a brief summary: I shot way past my overall reading goal (101 books) with a total of 155 books read. I also did pretty well with tracking my reads in detail, and I think the new version of my Google form worked well. However, I didn't succeed at most of my more specific reading goals because I decided to go with mood-reads instead.
• I also did a much better job of tracking what I watched! This was actually easier than tracking my reading, as I could usually enter the details of what I was watching while I watched it. I ended up using a Google form based on the one I have for tracking my reading, and that worked well. A few statistics, in case anyone is interested:
  • I watched 72 distinct movies, episodes, or videos.
  • The majority of those (79%) were episodes of TV shows.
  • The shows I watched the most were Over the Garden Wall (1o episodes), Leverage (9 episodes), Fairy Tail (6 episodes), and Hogan's Heroes (6 episodes).
  • I did most of my watching in May, June, and October, which makes sense — in May and June, I was watching a lot of shows with my sister, and in October, I rewatched Over the Garden Wall.

Life

• I started online grad school. This was my unspoken job-related goal in last year's goal post, and . . . well, I'm a third of the way through a Master's in Professional Writing! I'm doing it! I did spend a lot of the time second-guessing my decision, but I haven't thrown in the towel yet!
• My job is still going well. This year's work has involved slightly fewer new things, though there have still been some interesting challenges: we changed printing companies (which meant I had to find our new company), we ran into new and exciting troubles with the livestream and internet (cue many groans), and we finally managed to pull off an EDDM (neighborhood-based) mailing (after a false start and a failed attempt — the catalyst for our change in printing companies).
• I'm still practicing German . . . and I went back to learning Irish. For once, I surpassed past me's expectations on a goal! I said I wasn't adding a second language . . . but a few of my friends were talking about learning Irish, and I happened across an explanation of some concepts that befuddled me on my first attempt, so now I'm doing both German and Irish on Duolingo. It seems to be going ok so far.
• I did not figure out a consistent exercise method. I did pretty ok for the first eight weeks or so, when I could usually spend some time on the treadmill a couple times a week while working on grad school assignments. However, that didn't work super well with my second class, nor was it ideal for my novel writing, and then the summer happened, so . . . yes.
• My whole family had a weird, stressful summer and fall. Go back and read my May 2023 Doings post if you want more detail as to why, but long story short for those who missed it (or for future me, looking back): my grandpa fell and broke a few vertebrae shortly after my sister's graduation. The injury was far, far less serious than it could've been (thank God for protecting him), but it still meant my mom was up at his house most of the summer — the first weekend of May through Labor Day weekend, minus about three weeks in July — while my dad, my sister, and I stayed in Virginia and took fairly frequent weekend trips up to see them both. Then, about a month and a half after my mom was able to come home, my grandpa's health went downhill again, and he had to have open heart surgery . . . which went well, but was also scary. Praise God, he's doing much better at this point, and I am praying so hard that 2024 is better for him. So, yes. There were many miracles over the course of everything, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard for everyone (my mom especially).
• However, this summer did still include some fun things! Namely:
  • I drove all the way to Ohio to attend a book signing featuring W.R. Gingell and Suzannah Rowntree! This was absolutely awesome — and not just because meeting some of my favorite authors was absolutely awesome. My sister drove up with me, which meant we got to spend lots of time together, and we stayed with a very good friend of mine (my former roommate) who I was delighted to see again in person.
  • I attended Realm Makers for a second year! This was my first year at the St. Louis location, which I'd heard a ton about. It was much less overwhelming than Atlantic City, though also much more cramped. This was also my first time flying solo, which ended up being much less stressful than I expected — in fact, it was actually pretty fun! Of course, the highlights of the trip were the Realm Awards ceremony and getting to see my friends (especially Kendra E. Ardnek and Wyn Estelle Owens) in person again.
  • My family went back to White Sulphur Springs for a joint retreat between our Bible study and another Bible study in Ohio. White Sulphur Springs is one of my favorite places in the world, so this was a very good time.
  • I got a lot better at and more comfortable with cooking as a result of having to do more of it this summer while my mom was away. I'm still not great at juggling a lot of tasks at once, but I can make several of my favorites, and I can improvise on certain types of foods! So that's a win.
• My D&D group defeated one of our major nemeses (twice) and found out we're pretty close to finishing the campaign. This is notable mostly because we all hate the now-defeated nemesis more than the actual BBEG of the campaign, and also we made his final defeat on the last session of the year, which was kind of satisfying.

Well, that wraps up my Year of Water and Grow. Again, it's not really what I expected or hoped, but I know God was working in all of it. And now it's time to lay out my 2024 theme and goals to hopefully start the New Year well.

2024 Goals

Year of Staying the Course

• I thought about dropping the whole "Year of" themes because I forget about them well before I forget my actual goals.
• But then I realized during church yesterday (while praying about my goals and themes) that there was a theme that would work well for this year . . .
• And that theme is Staying the Course. With writing, with grad school, with work — the key is, as always, consistency. And I know from last year that I'm going to have challenges in some of those areas. That I'm going to wonder if I can do the thing I've said I'm going to do. But I want to stay the course, to keep going, unless I receive a clear indication that doing so is the wrong choice.

Writing Goals

• Not much new here. I'm repeating my overall goal from last year: I want to actively and regularly work towards specific writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months of 2024. Again, these can be wordcount goals, or they can be project goals like "Write this much of [book/story] by the X date." I'll probably switch back and forth depending on what best suits what I need to get done.
• I am deliberately not increasing the number of months in that last goal because my other overall goal for the year is to keep up better with deadlines so I can build in time to rest between projects and I'm not working on things until the last minute. In 2023, pretty much the only times I took a creative writing break of more than a couple days was when I was either sick or working on a big grad school assignment that took up all my time, and I was terrifyingly close to the wire on some projects. While everything worked out, and while I think I had some pretty extenuating circumstances, I don't want to repeat that in 2024. I want to make sure I have some proper time to rest and refuel between projects, and I want to go back to finishing things well ahead of my deadlines so I have wiggle room if anything goes wrong.
• Of course, we also have some specific project goals:
  • I want to write, edit, and publish Daughters of Atirse #2, which is also my 2024 Arista Challenge project. I aim to have it drafted by the end of March, which will mean lots of writing in the next three months . . . but will also give me plenty of time to have beta readers take a look before I edit, polish, and format so it's ready for a September release without having to scramble.
  • I want to write, edit, and maybe publish the new Bastian Dennel, PI #4. As I mentioned earlier, the BDPI #4 novel I worked on the last few years is being pushed back to book 5, and what was book 5 is now book 4. This should be a much shorter book (given that it's a less complicated plot with fewer POVs). My hope is to have it ready to go either around the end of 2024 or early in 2025.
  • I want to write and submit a story for H.L. Burke's DOSA Files anthology. I love the SVR universe, and I'm super excited for a chance to write in it! This has a wordcount cap of 10K words, so if I can block off a week or so, I should be able to get it done. The trick is just picking that week.
  • If I manage to hit all three of those goals and still have time to spare without denying myself rest, I want to either edit BDPI #5 (formerly #4) or draft at least half of Daughters of Atirse #3 or #5. Again, this is only if I hit my other goals and can pick up another project without overdoing it. And, yes, I said either #3 or #5 of the Daughters of Atirse series because I'm really excited for #5, and it's a direct sequel to Song of the Selkies, as opposed to a prequel or spinoff-sequel like a lot of others I have planned. Since the series order is a little looser, I can probably afford to write some of them out of order if I really want to. It'll just mean sitting on the draft longer.
  • Finally, repeating a goal from last year, I want to keep up with writing my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. This is an essential project, but since my group tends to have short sessions, it's not an overwhelming one. I anticipate I'll need to write two or so adventures for this, and I know what the next one is. As long as I don't get bogged down in making three million NPCs, I shouldn't have any trouble.
• Moving on to some writing-related, but not novel-related goals, I want to keep up my current blogging and social media schedule (and be better about not missing weeks on social media). As a reminder for myself, that's a blog post and one to two Facebook/Instagram posts per week, three weeks out of every month.
• On a related note, I want to finally post some of the backlog posts I've been sitting on from earlier in the year, particularly the results of my music and focus study. I just need to rework it from what I submitted for the class, and that's not something I've wanted to do when I have current classwork.
• Last but not least, I want to attend as least three author events to sell my books in-person. I hope to repeat two from last year, and then I just need to add one more.

Reading Goals

• My reading goal for this year is 93 books. Yes, I'm dropping my goal from 2023 even though I surpassed it, and you'll see why in a few bullet points.
• I'm reattempting last year's read-more-old-books goal, aiming for 12 books published (or written) before 1975, at least nine of which were originally aimed at adults. I know why I failed at this one last year: I got stressed and switched to exclusively mood reads and ARCs. I know I can do it, though, if I'm a little more deliberate about finding older books that I'm excited to read.
• I'm also reattempting last year's genre goal of reading 15 non-speculative fiction books in 2024. Again, I know this is something I can do; I just have to not get distracted by mood reads.
• This is a little vague, but I want to decrease the number of physical books I own but haven't read. Which is to mostly say that I want to read more of the books that are on my shelf but I haven't read yet. I'd like to be more specific — get down to fewer than some number of unread-but-owned books — but doing so requires figuring out how many books are in the category in the first place. This ties in with a goal in the life section as well, as you'll see.
• My last reading goal for 2024 is to catch up with H.L. Burke's SVR-verse books and Sanderson's Cosmere and Secret Project releases. I'm behind on both of these, though for different reasons. In the case of the SVR books, I started off behind, and Heidi tends to release new books while I'm not looking. (To be clear, I know they're coming. I just don't realize they're actually out.) In the case of Sanderson's books . . . at first, I didn't want that much of a distraction from what I needed to do. Then, I was stressed (as I've said before), and anything longer than about 500 pages felt like Too Big a Commitment. But I love both of these authors, and I know I'll love all the books I haven't read, so I really want to get up-to-date with them.
• I want to keep tracking what I read and watch. I've done pretty well with this the last couple years, so I'm not sure I still need to set it as a goal, but we'll go one more year before I decide it's enough of a habit that I don't need to specify.

Life Goals

• This should go without saying, but I want to finish another four grad school classes, which comes out to one part-time year. I've registered for the first two of those; the other two will happen in the fall.
• I want to keep up with learning German and Irish. I have a system worked out pretty well, fueled by bonus XP boosts and my desire not to lose my streak, so hopefully it'll keep working!
• Once again taking a shot at a goal I repeatedly fail: I want to figure out a method of exercise (or at least physical activity) that I can enjoy enough to do once week. I am pretty sure that the bar is on the ground at this point, but y'know. Gotta start somewhere. (I did discover a month or two ago that I can walk on the treadmill and play D&D at the same time, though, as long as my character sheet app works and I don't set the speed high, so that may help.)
• I want to return to Realm Makers. I've actually already started making plans for this, and I'm watching the Realm Makers site like a hawk for when conference registration opens up. I'm so excited.
• This is a bit smaller than some of the other goals on my list, but I need to weed and reorganize my bookshelves. This has been on my to-do list for most of 2023, but I keep putting it off. I know I have a lot of books that I'm not likely to read or reread, but I'm holding onto them for various reasons — because I think I should read or at least own them, because I bought them new, because they're pretty, because they make my shelves look better, and so on — and I need to fix that, if only so I have more space for books I genuinely love. 
• I want to make one recipe per month from my new Baking Yesteryear cookbook. I got this for Christmas, and I'm very excited to try some of the recipes. I think one recipe per month is doable, but I may dial it back to one every two months if necessary.

What were your 2023 highlights? What goals, themes, or resolutions do you have for 2024? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

It's New Year's Eve Somewhere [A New Year's Eve Short Story]

It's that time again — time for my annual New Year's Eve short story and the latest glimpse into the adventures of Carrie, Tamison, and their party. (Of course, as usual, this story should stand fine alone as well as in the context of the full series.) I hope you enjoy it and that you have a very happy New Year!

 

It's New Year's Eve Somewhere

This was supposed to be his night off.

 

The patrol alarm went off with an extended beep that echoed off the concrete and metal walls of the office. Tarvin grumbled to himself as he stood, stretched, and picked up the heavy metal stunlight from his desk. With one hand, he slid the weapon into its holster on his belt; with the other, he smacked the alarm to turn it off.

 

Still grumbling, he headed for the door into the ring of cells. He'd barely had time to sit down since his last patrol! Ordinarily, he'd only have to check on the prisoners once every few hours. Maybe once an hour if he were feeling especially motivated — Karoti would go every hour, but that man did everything by the book, and he was enthusiastic about it, madman that he was. As far as Tarvin and most of his squadmates were concerned, given that the cells' usual occupants were drunks or dust-heads and the occasional political demonstrator, a walk every two or three hours to make sure everyone was still breathing was more than sufficient. Most of the prisoners had enough problems of their own without guards breathing down their necks.

 

But tonight was different. Tonight required a patrol every thirty minutes, maybe forty-five if he had a good reason to stretch it, and an all-clear report at least once an hour. Tarvin didn't see the point; it wasn't as if the prisoners could go anywhere. Not as if they could escape without walking right past his desk. But the captain had laid out the consequences for him and his team if any of them failed to do things by the book tonight. If he were lucky, he'd spend a year cleaning orbital debris from Mahideri Station's path. If he wasn't lucky . . .

 

Tarvin unlocked the door with a finger pressed to the scanner. He carefully shut the door again behind him and waited until he heard the click as it relocked itself. Then, for variety's sake, he turned to the right. He'd mostly been walking counterclockwise, starting with the occupied cells and ending with the empty ones, but if he didn't switch things up occasionally, he'd go mad.

 

He swept through the curved hall of empty cells quickly, glancing into each. By all rights, the whole holding facility should be as empty as these were. The activists and demonstrators all tended to slow down their activities around this time of year; they knew it was an unlucky time, and any change was doomed to failure. Besides that, the university was between semesters, and that meant that everyone but essential personnel, two security units, and a few especially dedicated scholars and student-mages had left, fled either to their homes or to more hospitable locations. There weren't enough people here to make trouble, which meant anyone scheduled for guard duty here should've had that time off. Tarvin should've had tonight off. But then there'd been two arrests of the ordinary kind, and then another two that sent all the higher-ups into a frothing frenzy of panic and finger-pointing, and so here he was.

 

Tarvin reached the door at the end of the hall. He pressed his hand to the metal plate beside it and winced as tiny needles pricked the skin of his palm, taking the requisite DNA samples and confirming that he was allowed to access the high-security section of the facility. Before tonight, he'd never seen this door locked — what lay beyond had never been necessary, not as long as he'd worked here. But this night was an exception in multiple ways.

 

A moment later, the door slid open. Beyond, the temperature dropped by nearly ten degrees, maybe even fifteen. Tarvin shivered and set off again at a quick pace as the door shut and locked behind him, almost soundlessly. To either side of him, circular platforms filled with spirals of inscribed code-runes sat dark and empty, their magic inactive. On the ceiling above each platform was a similar circle of code-runes, also unlit and lifeless.

 

Midway along the hall, however, he reached two active platforms, their runes glowing the same blue as the stasis field projected above them. Here, the temperature seemed even colder. Magic drew in heat, Tarvin knew, though he couldn't remember where he'd learned that. Mostly you'd never notice it, the difference was so small, but with such powerful spellwork as this . . .

 

Frost glittered on the skin and clothes of the figures contained in the stasis fields, though they'd only been in there a few hours. The stasis effect would protect them from actually getting frostbite, but they'd still be cold as the back end of the galaxy when they were freed — if they were freed. Sure, this facility was only meant for short-term imprisonment — holding people a day or two, maybe four or five at most, until they'd paid off a light crime or could be transferred elsewhere for a longer sentence. But it wasn't like this section was used much, and Tarvin had heard of some prisoners kept in stasis for decades, covered in so many layers of frost that you couldn't even make out their features. The charges for these two were the same as for those prisoners: unauthorized magic use and espionage against the Coriolion Empire.

 

Tarvin paused long enough to study the pair. The stasis fields and frost obscured them, but he could still make out some details. The one on the right side of the hall was a woman, dark-skinned and curly-haired like Tarvin himself. She wore a strange green dress — more like a robe, really — and held her hands out as if reaching for someone, or perhaps readying a spell. Her eyes were open wide, and behind the frost, her face held mingled anger and . . . fear? No, not quite. Tarvin had seen plenty of people afraid for themselves. This woman's concern was turned entirely outwards.

 

Towards the other prisoner, maybe? Tarvin turned to study him next. He didn't look like much, just a man of average build, dressed in robes, with dark hair — messy, but in a way that suggested it had been neatly styled until some kind of scuffle forced it out of place. He'd had the sense to close his eyes, at least, and his head was slightly ducked. He held his arms up, forearms crossed, but his hands were open, the fingers spread. Tarvin had seen this casting position too, when a pair of student mages were debating defensive stances in a local bar. They'd said it was good for shields and not much else.

 

Neither one looked especially dangerous. If they'd been wearing anything but robes, Tarvin would've taken them for upper-level student-mages at the university. For a moment, he almost wished he could thaw one of them, or maybe both of them, out and ask what had happened and what they'd done. They were the reason he was here, walking patrols every half-hour, after all. Didn't he have a right to know why?

 

Looking at them, Tarvin had a nasty suspicion that they hadn't done anything. That they were from outside the empire and they'd had a teleportation spell go badly wrong. That would explain what he'd heard about them appearing unexpectedly in a restricted area. And he wouldn't put it past the higher-ups to claim malicious intent no matter what their prisoners said.

 

But even if he really wanted to talk to one of them, he couldn't. It took a mage and a guard together to release a stasis field, and not just any mage, but one of the Highstars, the highest-ranking mages on the station. No one else had the authority to use so much magic at once. There was only one Highstar here tonight, Meridus, and he'd been the one to activate the stasis field in the first place. He'd never release it for so small a reason as confirming potentially misplaced guilt, not when it was easier to just leave it until it became someone else's problem.

 

Nor would he have much patience for a lowly guard questioning his decisions. Tarvin turned away from the stasis-held prisoners and continued along his patrol. The rest of the platforms were empty, and the far door let him out in exchange for another DNA sample. Now that he was back among normal cells, the temperature rose again, and he no longer shivered. Still, he kept a brisk pace until he reached the sole occupied cell. He'd been told the two women within were political demonstrators who'd chosen a night in lockup over paying the usual fine. The palm-shaped bruises visible on the thin cheeks of one of the women more or less confirmed as much. Most of the security force wouldn't be gentle with someone who chose to make trouble with a sober mind and full control of their faculties. It was a lot easier to be patient with someone who you thought didn't know any better.

 

He paused by the cell and looked inside. The clear forcefield across the entrance let him see the prisoners clearly. The bruised woman sat closer to the entrance, her eyes shut, though Tarvin didn't think she was actually asleep. She'd swept her long hair into a high bun since the last time he actually looked into the cell; how it was staying in place, he couldn't tell. The other woman sat in a back corner, bending over . . . was that a notebook and pen? Tarvin cleared his throat and knocked against the wall between cells to get her attention. "Who gave you permission to have personal items in there?"

 

The woman glanced up for only the briefest moment. "I brought it in with me. Your captain didn't tell me to give it up."

 

Huh. That was unlike him. Still, Tarvin hadn't seen anyone come in, and he knew whoever brought them in would've searched them. The captain must've been feeling unusually merciful. "Well, fine, then. Just behave yourself with it."

 

The woman didn't respond; she just kept scribbling in the book. The other spoke up, her voice hoarse. "Do you think it's right that we're in here?"

 

"You broke the law, ma'am." Tarvin shrugged. "I don't know what else you expected."

 

"We made a few comments about the nature of truth and justice and freedom." The bruised woman opened her eyes and looked sideways at him. "We said magic should be free to all, not just to the elite, as it is in other worlds. Should that be against the law?"

 

Tarvin shifted uncomfortably. He'd learned long ago not to entertain that line of thought. "I'm just a guard, ma'am. It's not my job to decide what the law should be, just to uphold it."

 

He started to walk away, but her voice stopped him before he could get far. "Your name is Tarvin Aboti. You've worked as Mahideri Station security for seven years. Before that, you came from Asarvis. You were born after the Coriolion Empire took over, but your parents remember when the land and the magic were free, and they told you stories about those days when no one else was listening."

 

Tarvin turned on his heel, reaching for his stunlight. "What — Who are you? How do you know all that?" He'd never introduced himself to these two. And he'd never told anyone on the station about his parents' stories . . .

 

"My name is Willow. My friend is Laelia." The bruised woman met his eyes. "Would you believe me if I said that I'm from another world, that I come from the long past, and that I've visited the future?"

 

"That's —" Impossible. That would mean time travel, and even the Highstars couldn't do that. Or could they? Was this a setup?

 

"No one's listening, Mr. Aboti." Willow smiled at him, weary and determined. "You're the only one on duty here, and no one would bother with patrols if there were another way to watch the cells. So, what do you say? Is the way it is the way it should be? I don't think you think it is. If you help us, we can fix that."

 

He should leave. He should leave and report this. But instead, he stayed where he was, stunlight still firmly in his hand. "Help you how?"

 

Laelia's pen stilled, and she responded instead of Willow. "According to the history books, tonight, a guard releases five prisoners. When he does, he starts a chain of changes that ends with the fall of the Coriolion Empire, freedom for the people it's conquered, and access to magic for everyone."

 

"That guard could be your relief," Willow said, her voice soft. "Or it could be you. I think it's you. What do you think, Mr. Aboti?"

 

"I could release the two of you," Tarvin said, slowly. He shouldn't listen, he knew. But they knew too much for him to ignore them. At least if he kept talking, he could learn something. He was gathering intelligence; that was all. His captain couldn't fault him for that. "But if the two in high security are included in that group, I can't get them out. I'd need a mage for that."

 

"I am a mage." Willow put a hand against the force field. Rather than burning her, it dimmed where she touched it. A glow appeared around her other hand, dancing blue and green like the auroras on Asarvis. "Our friends, the other prisoners, are under stasis spells, aren't they? I can undo them safely if you just unlock what needs unlocked."

 

Was she using the energy from the forcefield to power separate magic? If she could do that — if she could undo the stasis fields — did she even need him to let her and her friend out? More importantly, if she were that skilled or that powerful, then she had to be at least on the same level as the Highstars. Under those circumstances, no one could blame him if he chose to help, could they? Still, a thought occurred to him. "You said five prisoners. There's only four here.

 

Willow's smile brightened, and she leaned closer to the force field. "The last prisoner isn't a person. We're going to release the magic. Make sure anyone on the station can use it, whatever authorizations they have, just like it used to be."

 

Like it used to be. Like the world his parents had known. Surely anyone who wanted to do that couldn't be so bad? "What do you get out of this? You said you're from another world. What do you care about here?"

 

"We want to do what's right." Willow shook her head. "We want to make things how they should be."

 

"And you have a copy of the Xenoth Archives here," Laelia added, her tone matter-of-fact. "It's under guard, but we might be able to get to it in all the confusion."

 

Willow gave Laelia an exasperated look. Laelia frowned. "It's the truth. That's why we came here in the first place. We were going to get here during the aftermath, but our timeport went wrong. Then Willow and I realized that was because we had to be here for there to be an aftermath."

 

That settled it. No one would make up such a ridiculous story as a lie, not if they seriously wanted to convince someone. They had to be telling the truth. All the same . . . "It's bad luck to start any big changes mid-year. You have to wait until the new year if you want anything to work."

 

Willow faced Tarvin again, her smile returning. "It's always the new year somewhere, Mr. Aboti. If not in this world, then another."

 

"Tonight's New Year's Eve on Earth and Fuila," Laelia added helpfully. "Worlds 1-3 and 1-5. It's also in the middle of the turning of the year for some cultures in Andauthea, world 3-7."

 

"See, Mr. Aboti? It's a new year." Willow looked hopefully at him. "So, will you help us?"

 

Tarvin took a deep breath and put his stunlight back in his pocket. "You'll release magic — will you teach me how to use it?"

 

"We'll show you the basics," Willow replied. "And we'll leave you information on where to go from there. Does that mean you'll help?"

 

"Well, your histories say someone does." Tarvin reached for his keys. "Do I let you out now, or later? Do your history books say?"

 

"Get the supplies you confiscated from us first. There's some tools we need in there." Willow stood. "Then let us out, as soon as possible."

 

"Right." Tarvin nodded. "I'll be back in a minute, then."

 

He hurried back down the hall, towards the main office and the lockers of prisoners' possessions. The thrill of what he was doing thrummed in his chest. If he were caught, it would mean death or worse.

 

But if he wasn't caught, it would mean he'd done something meaningful. Something important. Surely that was worth the risk. After all, it was the new year somewhere — and the new year meant it was time for a change.

 

Onward and Upward [2022 Recap//2023 Goals]

 

Well, we made it to 2023! After all the chaos and stress of 2020 and all the New Stuff in 2021, it's been nice to have a pretty straightforward, albeit busy, year in 2022. While I did have some awesome new adventures and a few more stressful challenges, there was nothing as big or scary as in some past years, and most of my year was pleasantly predictable (which is something I never thought I'd say, but HERE WE ARE).

Of course, with the start of the new year comes a time to look back at what I've accomplished and how I did on my goals for the past year and to set some new ones for the coming year. So, let's get to it! Before I do that, though, I just want to remind y'all that this year's New Year's Eve short story was posted, y'know, on New Year's Eve. And if you're eagerly watching for my 2022 reading recaps, those will go up next Friday, assuming I get them written in time.

2022 Recap // 2023 Goals

2022 Recap

Year of Onward and Upward

• In case you've forgotten (entirely justified), for the last couple years, I've been combining my usual goal-setting with CGP Grey's "Year of . . ." theme method. My theme for 2022 was "Onward and Upward," which is to say that I wanted to keep doing the things I was doing well and to improve or expand upon those things when I could.
• Overall, I think I've largely succeeded at this theme. I'll get into specifics in particular sections, but I've certainly managed onward, and I think I've also gone upward in some key areas. Not all the areas I intended, but . . . I did my best.
• As far as the themes go, I think I'm going to continue using this method to some degree. Even if I forget the theme by partway through the year, it helps me think about what kind of goals I want to set, and it gets me going in the right direction.

Writing

• My overall goal for the year was to set and actively work towards monthly or multi-monthly writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months of 2022. I can certainly say that I did that, although they were pretty much all "Get this much book done this month" rather than actual wordcount goals. Did I meet all those monthly goals? Ehhhhh . . . not so much. But I met enough of them.
• I did still keep track of wordcounts, though! My combined writing and editing total for the year was 333,144 words, which is about twice as high as it was last year. That's spread over several different projects, including three novels, two short stories, and one D&D campaign.
• It's actually kind of astonishing to compare this year's writing to last year's — I've been so frustrated lately with not being where I want to be with BDPI #4 that I forgot just how much I actually did this year. But the last time I got this much done was 2020 — you know, when I spent most of the year stuck inside, jobless, with nothing to do besides write.
• Regarding specific project goals:
  • I wrote, edited, and published two books. Mask of Scarlet released back in April — I wrote most of this book back in 2021, but finished it in 2022. The third book in a series is always going to be less accessible than the first book or a standalone, but it still was well-received by fans of the series, and at least one person has said it's their favorite BDPI book. Then, Through a Shattered Glass (formerly known as the Super Secret Mystery Project) released in December, just a few weeks ago, with the second-fastest turnaround of any of my books — The Midnight Show was the only book so far that's had less time between start-of-draft and publication. Nonetheless, everything I've seen so far suggests that people are enjoying it quite a lot!
  • I drafted about 60–70% of Bastian Dennel, PI #4, roughly 22 chapters (plus eight or nine that I scrapped). I genuinely hoped it would be done by now, since I started it back in June (JUNE!) and these books usually don't take that long to write. Of course, having to redo the first version of the first eight chapters did set things back a bit.
  • I actually came up with two different ideas for the 2023 Arista Challenge. One of them is actually pretty well planned (via extensive brainstorming conversations with a friend); the other is a bit more nebulous but seems like it would be fun. Neither one is written yet, but . . . that's not a new problem, honestly.
  • My Defenders of Serys D&D campaign is still going strong. The party has been hopping from one world to another and derailing The Lord of the Rings, and it's been an exciting time. We have had a lot more scheduling interruptions than we used to, but on the upside, that makes it easier to keep up with prep.
• Blogging and author socials have stayed fairly consistent. I only took one blogging hiatus all year, and that wasn't even a full hiatus, just a partial one. I didn't really end up prewriting blog posts as much as I intended, but I still managed to get stuff up on time. The fact that I hopped on a bunch of blog tours and street teams definitely helped. I also didn't do as much take-batches-of-pictures-for-IG as I intended, though I definitely did some, and I didn't miss too many weeks.

Reading

• As usual, this'll be covered in my Best of/End-of-Year Book Celebration posts, so I don't want to get into detail here.
• That said, if you want to get an early look at my stats, you can click here.
• The brief summary: I surpassed or did acceptably at my total reading goal and most of my specific book goals, and I failed miserably at one particular specific book goal.
• I also borrowed Kendra E. Ardnek's method of using a Google Form to do detailed tracking of what I read, and that worked pretty well. I'll most likely continue doing that next year, though I'll make some adjustments to the questions on said form.

Life

• My job continues to go well. I'm a few days off from having worked here for two years, which is great. In last year's post, I said that I wasn't sure what an upward might look like for my job goals, but God seemed to have had one in mind, as this year has been full of new types of projects: large-scale banners, signage, and more. I've also learned quite a bit about working with outside companies for things like having signage made, which was interesting. Thankfully, it's all turned out well, and I've enjoyed working with my new supervisor, who took over around February/March.
• I've kept up with my German. Scripture and poetry memorization? Not so much. I ended up upgrading to the paid version of Duolingo, and I think that was a good investment — no ads and being able to do however much or little I want at a time are both very helpful. On the other hand, I kind of dropped off of my Scripture and poetry memorization midway through the year. I think the problem was that I was too focused on only memorizing full chapters or passages, plus I was picking a lot of selections because I felt like I should learn those particular things, not because I wanted to. That probably could've been fixed, but at the time, I didn't want to take the time to rework my entire plan for the rest of the year, so I just . . . dropped it.
• I did not find a consistent exercise method. We did buy a treadmill towards the start of the year, which helped for a while . . . until I ran up against the problem that if I don't have time to watch a show, saying I can walk at the same time does not mean I'm going to suddenly make more time. I also tried learning some line dances off of YouTube videos in preparation for a friend's wedding, but once her wedding was over, my motivation for that went way down.
• I attended Realm Makers for the first time this year! It was kind of stressful at times, but still an amazing experience. I learned so much from the various speakers, and getting to meet my writer friends in person and spend a weekend around my people? So good. I also got to meet up with one of those friends at a local Ren Faire, which was super fun, and earlier in the year, my sister and I attended a Viking Fest (which is rather like a very specific small Ren Faire).
• I had a bit of a scare just after the conference when my car abruptly stopped working properly. Thankfully, I was able to find a good mechanic to take a look at it, and it turned out to just be an issue with a spark plugs. It was still a very stressful few days, though. On the upside, now I know what to do if and when I have car trouble again!
• I upgraded my computer setup! I've been thinking of switching my primary device from a laptop to a desktop with a secondary external monitor for a while, especially since my laptop had essentially been functioning as a desktop for quite a while. This year, I finally took the leap and ordered a desktop computer tower and accessories, and let me tell you, that was a stellar decision. Not only am I not stressed about storage space for the first time since 2019, I can actually use my laptop as a laptop again! It's glorious.
• Last year, I said that I wanted to do some combination of expanding existing skills, revisiting old skills, or trying to learn a new skill in three different areas. I definitely expanded my baking skills in 2022 into baking cakes as well as bread. Not all of the cakes turned out perfectly, but most of them were quite tasty, especially the coconut cake I made at Easter. I also learned embroidery over the summer for a cosplay, which I hope to keep doing in 2023 in between knitting and crochet projects. And finally, I maintained a small potted herb garden this year, which I think counts even though I didn't put a ton of effort into it.

So, there we have my Year of Onward and Upward. Overall, I'd say it was pretty much a success. I'm hopeful for more of the same in 2023, which brings me to my 2023 theme and goals. Even though I may not remember all of what I write down here in a few months, I still find it beneficial to lay it all out. It helps me get things straight in my mind, and it also gives me a little bit of motivation and momentum. I am a great believer in momentum!

2023 Goals

Year of  . . .

• I spent way too much time debating if I could just reuse last year's theme because, to be honest, it fit very well with what I was thinking this year's goals would look like. And then I decided (after getting a second opinion) that it is, in fact, my life, and if I decide to extend my theme for another year because it set me in a direction that I want to maintain, I can do that.
• That said, I don't want to use the same wording, and there is a more accurate way to say what I want to do, so my 2023 theme (in keeping with my 2022 foray into plant-keeping) is water and grow. Watering refers to maintaining what I've achieved so far, and that maintenance allows my skills and me to grow in various ways.

Writing Goals

• My writing has been going pretty well the last few years, and most of my goals in this area are more about maintaining than growing, except in the sense of increasing the number of things I've written and published. While I want to continue to improve in my craft, I don't have concrete areas that I plan to work on, and I know that I'll continue to learn if I keep on with my current course.
• To that point, as in the last couple years, I want to be actively and regularly working towards specific writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months of 2023. I'm phrasing this a little differently than I have in the past because most of my goals for the last year or two haven't been based on wordcount or on days written in a week (except for when I do the 100-4-100 challenge). They're based on "I need to get [book] drafted/edited/formatted by X date." Ideally, I'll be actively working on writing every month, but this past year, I did end up taking a bit of a break from in April, and I want to leave space for rest when I need it.
• So, what are the specific project goals I hope to accomplish this year?
  • I need to finish, edit, and publish BDPI#4. As already mentioned, I'm currently on Chapter 22, and I think I'm probably close to 70% done, so I should be able to have a draft done by the end of February — maybe the end of January, but I have other projects coming up this month as well.
  • I need to write and submit my project for the Stolen Songs Arista Challenge. My original plan for this Arista Challenge is getting delayed because it's in the BDPI series and there's no way I can get all the preceding books finished in time. That said, I've come up with another idea that will hopefully be shorter and faster to write, assuming it works out. It'll be another standalone, though I may try to fit in an established storyworld if I can.
  • I want to write something for the Magical Dogs Fellowship of Fantasy anthology. I have an idea that I was originally going to use for a different writing challenge and hope to repurpose for this instead. It's a little unconventional, so I'm not sure if it'll get in or not, but I also think it'll be fun.
  • I need to decide what I'm doing for the 2024 Arista Challenge (if I'm doing something). Kendra just announced that the next fairy tale after Little Mermaid will be The Goose Girl. While I do have a version of this fairy tale planned for the Bastian Dennel series, again, I'm not sure how well timing will work. There's a chance it will be fine, but no guarantees. I do have an alternative idea that I could do, though — another combination fairy tale — and so I may decide to do that. It'll depend how much time other projects take. Speaking of which . . .
  • I want to draft BDPI #5. This will probably be very short, unless it proves to have much more to it than I expect, so I have high hopes of being able to actually get it done in 2023. Ideally, I'll also manage to edit it so I can publish it in early 2024, but we'll see what happens.
  • I need to keep up with writing my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. As with last year, this is an essential project simply because D&D nights are an opportunity to hang out with some of my closest friends and I don't want to lose that. I suspect that we'll be in Middle Earth for a large swath of the year, so that'll help keep this from becoming overwhelming when combined with my other projects.
• Finally, as with last year, I want to keep up with my blogging and author socials, posting once a week on blogs and one or two times a week on socials three weeks out of every month. Giving myself leeway to miss a week here and there is pretty helpful for keeping my stress level down and making sure I don't run out of ideas, so I'm going to continue doing that. But I do want to stay as consistent as possible.

Reading Goals

• My reading goal for this year is 101 books. That's only two books more than last year, so I'm confident that I'll have no trouble reaching it — it's just a number I like slightly better, and I didn't want to use the same number as last year.
• I'm sticking with my goal for reading older books, aiming for 12 books published (or written) before 1975, but I'm also adding the restriction that only three of these books can be children's books. A lot of the older books I read tend to be rereads of childrens' classics, which is fine, but also feels a bit like cheating. I'm also going to say right now — I'm currently reading Moby Dick via email subscription. I will not finish it this year. It still counts as a classic book that I have read this year because it is storming long.
• As for genre goals, I'm sticking with last year's goal of reading 15 non-speculative fiction books in 2023. This feels like a good number: high enough to ensure some variety, but not so high as to mess with my ability to enjoy mood reads and keep up with books I need to read for street teams and tours.
• Another goal I added this year, which will overlap with the non-spec-fic goal: a few days ago, I asked people on social media (specifically Facebook and Instagram) to recommend me some books to read in 2023. My goal is to read at least 90% of these recommended books this year. I'm leaving the number at 90% because someone suggested a duology, and if I don't enjoy the first book, I don't want to force myself to read the second as well. For those curious, I've collected all the recommendations into a Goodreads list, which you can check out here.
• I want to keep tracking my reads in detail and improve how I track them. The Google form method worked well last year, but I do want to change some questions — remove some that aren't terribly helpful (like the start/finish dates, which aren't even accurate for all the books), add some that will allow me to check goal progress more easily, and adjust the format of some so the results are easier to read. I also want to track rereads versus new-to-me reads because I feel like that statistic will be interesting. But despite my initial misgivings, tracking my reading beyond just what I can do in Goodreads has been helpful, and I want to keep it up!
• On a related note — this doesn't precisely fit in this category, but I'm not sure where else to put it: I want to more carefully track what I watch as well. I haven't precisely decided what information I'm going to record or how I'm going to record it, but I think it would be useful. I'll probably end up using a Google form like I do for reading, since neither of the websites I thought might work are really ideal, but we'll see.

Life Goals

• Job-wise, I want to maintain what I'm doing well. That should go without saying, but sometimes it's useful to write out even the obvious. I actually have a growing goal for career stuff too . . . but I'm not listing it because sometimes I like keeping things secret until after I'm in the middle of them. I'm weird. Suffice it to say that I'm planning to try something that I've been thinking about and people have been encouraging me to pursue for a while, and we'll see how it goes.
• As with last year, I want to keep practicing German. I'm not adding a second language; one is plenty. But I've been doing very well this past year, and I don't want to slack off in 2023.
• I'm also taking another shot at one of my failed goals from last year: I want to figure out a method for exercising regularly that I'll enjoy enough to stick with. Low as this bar is, I have a lot of trouble clearing it. I know part of my issue is just that the problems that come from not exercising appear a lot more subtly and seem a lot less immediately pressing than the problems that are solved by not excising (those mostly being "I am tired, and exercise takes time that I could be using to write"). And the problems that are somewhat more pressing are ones that will take a longer time to solve and, to be frank, tend to send me into spirals of fatalistic grumpiness, so I try not to dwell on them. I have a couple of ideas of how I could possibly mitigate some of the obstacles that keep me from getting in more movement,
• This is less a goal and more a hope or a dream, but I really want to go back to Realm Makers. It will be a little more difficult this year, since it's back out in St. Louis, which means plane tickets and extra expenses. But last year was such a good experience, and I want to have it again. But if it doesn't work out, I'd still like to figure out a way to go see other friends at some point.
• This is a really short list of life goals, but my unspoken thing is a big one, and I also have a lot going on in the writing area, so I'm going to leave this as-is. It's enough to give me a good start to the year, and that's what matters.

What were your 2022 highlights? What goals, themes, or resolutions do you have for 2023? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

A Reason to Be Here [A New Year's Eve Short Story]

'Tis time for my annual New Year's Eve short story, and y'all, I actually finished this one well BEFORE midnight. In fact, it's 3:30 when I'm scheduling this, though it won't go up until the evening. As usual, this story should work on its own, but it's also a continuation of what we've seen in my previous New Year's Eve stories. Enjoy!

A Reason to Be Here

Why had he ever agreed to this?

Tamison sat with his back to a crumbling plaster wall, watching the doorway and listening as the coughing from the room behind this one mixed with the furor of shouts and shots and occasional crackling spells from the streets outside. Had they gotten louder in the last half-hour? Or was it just the squeezing pain in his head that made him think so?

He glanced across the room at Laelia, the one person in their group who hadn’t ended up sick within hours of stepping into this world. “Are you sure this place is safe?” The words scratched in his throat like sandpaper, and he wished for a drink — but the plumbing up here didn’t seem to work, and if he went downstairs to find a working pump or facet, he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to make it back, assuming that he didn’t get killed by an errant shot or spell while he was there. Better to conserve what he and Laelia had managed to bring up earlier — better to save as much of it as possible for Carrie and Willow, both of whom were too sick even to sit up.

Laelia took several moments to respond, but at last her pen — scratching in her notebook like it always did whenever they had a few minutes to spare — stilled. She nodded once. “I told you already, I’m almost certain it’s the one I read about. It looks just like the pictures.”

Almost certain was not the reassurance Tamison had looked for, but he suspected it was the best he was going to get. To think that their entire safety relied on one fragile memory! The same fragile memory that had gotten them stuck here, for that matter.

Though, then again, that wasn’t entirely fair. True, it had been Laelia’s suggestion to come to this world, Cotirus. She’d recalled that it had been one of the last worlds to end trade and travel relations with Darachan. And from that memory had come the thought that it might hold information on what had caused the destruction of Darachan’s capital — a question that could have been solved with simple time portals except that no one wanted to get caught up in the event itself — and what had become of Xenoth’s Archive, a record of magical experiments and discoveries by a particularly long-lived and inventive, but secretive, wizard that Carrie wanted for research purposes. She’d even been the one to work out when the best time to find that information might be.

So, all this had been Laelia’s idea. But Carrie had been the one who decided to jump worlds and times in one portal instead of making two separate jumps like Tamison had wanted. She’d insisted that adjusting for two sets of coordinates would be no more difficult than one would be. She’d argued that one complex portal would be more magic-efficient than two simple ones, and hadn’t Tamison and Willow been harassing her about overdoing it?

And now here they were: in Cotirus, as intended, but half a century earlier than intended, at what Laelia thought was the tail end of a revolution so dramatic that a whole world changed their calendars over it, declaring the day after it ended the first day of a new year and new era. To make matters worse, there seemed to be a minor plague running rampant, one that primarily seemed to affect wizards, which made Tamison suspect that it was less a real plague and more a biological attack by one side of the revolution or the other. It had been sheer luck that they’d managed to find shelter here, in a house Laelia identified as having stood long enough to make it into history books as a monument. She’d said something about someone important having almost died and miraculously survived here, but Tamison had been too miserable to listen closely.

The clamor outside was definitely getting louder, and that meant the fighting was getting closer. Tamison groaned and pulled his knees up so he could rest his extended arms on them with his fingers held ready for a shielding spell. Assuming he could summon enough magic to do more than a bit of fizzing lights, that was. This sickness seemed to affect his magical reserves worse than any other part of him, which explained why Carrie and Willow — who’d been managing most of their travel — were so much sicker than he was. How any other wizards in this world had enough magic to do anything as dramatic as what he could hear outside was beyond him. Maybe they’d figured out how to store power outside themselves like the Chanian inventors did.

He glanced over at Laelia again. She’d gone back to writing in her notebook, scribbling as if the world would end if she didn’t write down every detail of everything that she’d seen and encountered since she joined their group. Sheer misery provided enough motivation to force words up his throat, “Why are you here?”

Her pen stopped faster this time. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you come?” Tamison let his head sink onto his arms, trusting his ears to give him enough warning if he needed to shield anything. “You didn’t have to. Willow didn’t have to. You had good lives back when and where you were. Why’d you leave?”

Laelia looked back down at her notebook. “I want to discover things. I want to do or find something that’ll matter. Why are you here?”

Good question. Why was he here? Why had he even accepted the assignment that led him to meet Carrie in the first place? He should have asked for anything else. Tentacle beasts from the Lost Realm would’ve been less difficult to deal with than all these years of getting dragged into her adventures. Even bears would’ve been preferable. Bears didn’t have revolutions, and they didn’t timeport you so the tower you were standing inside of suddenly became rubble some fifty feet down. It wasn’t as if he’d done anything particularly useful all this time, just argued with Carrie in an attempt to hold back some of her madness.

But on the other hand . . . he knew why he was here, and there was a photo in his pocket that told him why. He sighed, then coughed several times before answering, “I thought it would matter. Now I just think I’m fated to be caught up in all the trouble Carrie gets into.”

Further conversation was forestalled by the sound of raised voices and running footsteps downstairs, with a few shots here and there. Tamison tensed and raised his head, trying to make out words. He wished he still had Myrd with him; the pocket dragon was stealthy enough to do excellent reconnaissance even when they were in a world that didn’t naturally have dragons. But Myrd had elected to leave the adventuring life after a particularly harrowing brush with a flock of Netherpests early in Tamison’s acquaintance with Carrie, and now he lived comfortably with Tamison’s sister, her husband, and their children. Lucky dragon.

So, Tamison strained his ears and wished he could see through walls as the footsteps moved up the stairs and into the hall outside. A moment later, a figure in a knee-length blue coat and red cap burst into the room. The gold trim on his coat suggested he had been someone important, perhaps still was, but the dirt, gunsmoke, and blood smattering his face and clothes told a far clearer story.

The man glanced back where he’d come, where more footsteps and angry shouts still sounded. Then he looked frantically from Tamison to Laelia. “Are either of you wizards?”

Laelia blinked and shook her head, gaping at the man as if she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Tamison kept his mouth shut, trying to think strategically through the pain squeezing his mind, wishing he knew how to tell friend from foe.

“Please —” The man took a step further inside. “I need to live. I’ve lost my weapon. If you can protect me, I’ll make it worth your while —”

The footsteps were getting closer. So were voices, most of them yelling about how the man should come out so they could kill him. Blast it! Tamison groaned. “Not sure I can help — I’m mostly drained.”

“Here.” The man was across the room before Tamison could warn him that he was sick. He thrust something into Tamison’s hand: a metal cylinder, like the flashlights that Darachan had occasionally imported from Earth, but with glass on both ends and what looked like dozens of tiny crystals behind the glass, all glowing faintly. “I took this from — from a friend of mine, after he died. He was a wizard; he said this held power. Can you use it?”

Could he? Tamison focused on the cylinder, feeling along its length. His fingers found a series of indents along the side, and as his fingertips settled into them, he felt the magic welling up within the device. Could he pull from it?

Lights sparkled above his hand as he discovered that he could. But there was no time to wonder how. Figures appeared in the doorway, guns in hand. One let out a shout as he spotted the stranger and aimed his weapon.

Tamison focused, flicking his fingers to summon a shield. It flashed over the door just in time to send the first bullets bouncing back at those who’d shot them. Then, with a practiced twist of his wrist, he multiplied the energy of the shield and sent it bursting down the hall and through the rest of the house. The attackers fell to the ground unmoving in its wake.

Tamison heaved a sigh and let his head drop back onto his arms. “They should be dead,” he mumbled. “The house is clear.” He extended the magic-holding device back towards the man. “Here.”

The floorboards creaked as the man stood. “Keep it. I can’t use it, and it’s fair payment for saving my life. Use it to try to get out of here, if you can.”

Could he? Tamison turned to blink up at the man. “What about you?”

“I still have work to do here.” It was the sort of line you’d hear from a hero in a play, but the man sounded like he meant what he’d said.  “Go. And thank you for your help.”

He headed back out the door before Tamison could protest. A few minutes after he’d gone, Laelia finally found her voice. “Do you know who that was?”

“No. How would I? We’re still in my future, even if it’s your past.” Technically speaking, Tamison was fairly certain he was long dead in his own world right now. Assuming he was going to survive long enough to make it back there.

“He’s going to end this revolution,” Laelia said. “In a month, this city gets renamed after him. Because you just saved his life.”

“Good for him.” At least something beneficial had come of this whole ordeal. Tamison looked again at the magic-holding device in his hand and then forced himself to his feet. “Come on.”

Laelia stood, tucking notebook and pen into an oversized jacket pocket. “What are you doing?”

“I may not be Carrie, but I can manage a portal. I’m taking us back to Darachan.” The words felt good in Tamison’s mouth, though they hurt coming up. “We’ll find somewhere there to recover, and then, if you and Carrie want, we can come back to this world — the right way.”

The Year is Going; Let It Go [2021 Recap//2022 Goals]

 

Here's the good news, y'all: no bad puns in this year's post! Probably. There's no actual guarantee, but I can say with confidence that if any show up, they'll be a surprise to both of us.

Anyway, 2022! It exists! We made it! Huzzah! On the whole, 2021 wasn't . . . well, for me, it wasn't as bad as it could've been, and in hindsight, it doesn't feel as bad as it probably should. There were a few objectively non-great things that happened — one in particular — but they were outweighed by all the good that happened. Thank you, God, for that.

So, what made 2021 an actually-pretty-solid-except-for-that-one-bit year? What are my goals for 2022, and how many of them will I forget by February? It's time to get some answers . . . to the first two, at least. Obviously we'll have to wait until February or March for the answer to the third.

(Oh, and as a note in case anyone missed it, my New Year's Eve short story went up . . . well, on New Year's Eve, and I'll post my 2021 reading recaps later this week. They'll probably go up on Friday, but it's hard to say. I may post them early.)

2021 Recap // 2022 Goals

2021 Recap

Year of Finally?

• You may remember that at the start of 2021, I said that I was going to try to combine CGP Grey's "Year of . . . " or "theme" method with my usual goal-setting. You may also recall that I picked "Year of Finally" as my theme.
• Did it work out? It's hard to say. I did accomplish some things that I've been meaning to get to for a while, but I largely did them long after I'd forgotten about setting the theme. Maybe I was still thinking about it subconsciously? But I'm not confident in that assessment.
• Overall, I think that while the themes are a nice idea, they aren't any more useful than the goals I normally set. Will I set a "Year of . . ." theme for 2022 to give it another try? We'll figure that out sometime between now and when I get to the Goals section of this post.

Writing

• So, I said once again that I was going to set and actively work towards monthly writing goals . . . and I genuinely do not know if I can say I accomplished it or not? On one hand, I didn't have specific month-by-month wordcount goals to work for. On the other hand, I did have projects that I was actively working on the whole year with deadlines for those projects that often meant I was saying "I want to get this much done by the end of the month.) So, even if I didn't succeed in the letter of the goal, I definitely achieved the spirit of the goal.
• As far as how much writing I did, I have a combined writing and editing total of 174,077 words spread over three main projects. I'm not going to try to separate out the two because the first rewrite of Gilded in Ice involved a lot of overlap — there were a lot of chapters that I either wrote new for that draft or essentially rewrote from the ground up. That's a little less than half of what I wrote and edited last year, but given that I spent most of last year at home with not much to do besides write and apply for jobs, while this year I was working full time, I feel like I did pretty well.
• As far as specific project goals go:
  • I finished drafting Gilded in Ice, edited it, and published it. This was my big goal for the year, and I'm quite happy with the final product. There were some setbacks along the way (including but not limited to: having to essentially rewrite the book, getting sick the month before it was going to come out, and generally having less writing time than I have in the past), but it's out, and the release was probably the smoothest I've ever had.
  • I kept up with writing my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. We've moved into the fourth "season" of the campaign, after spending a good year dealing with pirates and dragon hunters. From that, I've learned a fair bit about how I want to run adventures in the future — namely, keep the number of significant NPCs present at any given time fairly low and move back towards shorter adventures.
  • I did not start my Shattered Mirrors Arista Challenge story, though I did come up with an idea for it that I really liked. And I very much want to write it because it would give me a little bit of a break from the storyworlds I've been working in. We'll see what happens there.
  • I also did not rewrite Blood in the Earth or rewrite or edit any backlog projects. Gilded and Bastian Dennel #3 both have taken up a lot of time, plus I lost several weeks in August, and it just didn't happen.
• I stayed fairly consistent with blogging. I did take more breaks than I have in the past, but I allowed for that in last year's goal. I was less consistent with my author socials, but I still managed to hit more weeks than I missed, so I'm not beating myself up about that. I also introduced a new blog post series, On the Taleweaver's Desk, that gives the big-sized picture of what's going on with my writing throughout the year, and I think that's going to be helpful both for me and for y'all.

Reading

• I'll cover most of this in my Best of/End-of-Year Book Celebration posts, which will be up later this week, so I'm not going into a lot of detail here.
• In summary: I surpassed my goal of how many books I wanted to read in general, but I either didn't quite succeed at or just barely succeeded at most of my more specific goals.
• I did successfully keep a book-tracking spreadsheet for more than a month, and I think it was helpful in tracking what I've read and accomplished.

Life

• I've worked at my job doing graphic design for a local church for almost a year. It'll be a full year on the fifth, which is pretty exciting. I'm still enjoying it, and I feel like I have a nice rhythm and routine, but not so strict of a routine that I'm getting bored. The work occupies that lovely space between varied and challenging enough that I can't lose interest but not so difficult that I'm constantly discouraged and frustrated, and the people are lovely.
• I've kept up with German. I had a very nice streak going until sometime in August when I got sick and had to take a break. But I got back into it as soon as I was feeling better, and I've even managed to get pretty high on their leaderboards for how many lessons and stories you complete per week.
• I've started doing some photography again. I went through with rejoining the photo club, and even though I don't always feel like attending the lecture nights, the photo contests are definitely worth it for both the critiques and the motivation. I've gotten to do a few "photo expeditions" to different places, which has been fun. And I've also discovered that my phone takes decent enough quality photos that I can do "artsy" stuff on it when I encounter something worth photographing — for example, really nice light through the stained glass windows at the church where I work!
• I started memorizing Scripture and poetry again. I used to do Scripture memory weekly for AWANA before we moved and I went to college, and I've meant to pick it back up ever since I graduated — even a bit before that, really. I wanted to be able to reliably and accurately recall relevant passages when I needed them . . . and I also feel like being able to pull poetry out of my back pocket when I want it would be . . . well, handy isn't the right word, really. Cool, maybe? Fun? It's something, anyway.
• I went through my church's membership class and started a Connect Group! Kinda. Currently it meets once a month for Bible study and board games. There have been several hiccups, and I keep second-guessing everything and stressing out because I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I know I probably just need to give it time, but . . . it's stressful.
• I found out what having pneumonia feels like. This was absolutely not a goal I wanted to achieve, but . . . it is useful for story research? Maybe? For those curious: it's not terribly exciting, but is rather tiring (because of the whole not-being-able-to-breath-deeply thing). It's also possible to have it and not realize it, so take note of that for potential drama-making.
• As far as craft goals go, I did start a project with one of my special yarns, though I haven't finished it. (It's a scarf, and it's knitted, and it's not on really big needles, so I work on it for a while and then get bored and want to do something else. It'll be done eventually.) I didn't do anything with my cloak, unfortunately, but I did give latchhooking another go. That was pretty fun.
• I ventured into new areas of bread-making with making naan/flatbread and bagels, settling on a reliable sourdough reciple, and adding things to my sourdough loaves. Naan, by the way, is delicious, and I need to make it again sometime soon. As far as bagels go, sourdough bagels seem to turn out the best, with the White Sulphur Springs recipe being a pretty solid second. As far as sourdough goes, I combined two recipes to produce a loaf that I reliably like and settled on that around the start of the year. In terms of add-ins, I actually haven't been that adventurous (I'm mostly just adding some herbs for extra flavor), but it has opened up a new world of potential, so it feels significant.
• I attempted to learn video editing and then decided that it is not my jam. It's finicky, and I just . . . don't enjoy it. If it becomes necessary, I'll give it another try, but for the moment, I'll happily leave it to others.

All in all, as you can probably tell, 2021 wasn't a bad year. Could it have been better? Sure. But the same thing can be said of most years. And now that it's over, it's time to move on to . . .

2022 Goals

Year of  . . .

• I said earlier in the post that I'd decide when I got to this point if I'm going to give the themes another try. And I have made that decision — mostly because I realized a lot of the goals I want to set follow a theme anyway.
• What theme? Onward and upward. It's not a single word, but it's concise enough to work, and basically what I'm saying is: what I'm already doing well, I want to keep doing (onward), and I want to improve or expand it where I reasonably can (upward).
• Now that I've written this, a part of me is saying that maybe it's a silly theme — after all, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Keep doing better at things? But I'm going with it anyway because it works. Anyway, with that theme in mind, let's get on to the specific goals.

Writing Goals

• In the vein of onward, I again want to set and actively work towards monthly or multi-monthly writing goals in at least ten of the twelve months of 2022. I'm saying now for planning purposes: if I set a goal in, say, April, that I want to start drafting a novel in May and have it finished by the end of June, that's fine. Or if I have a goal of I need to write and edit this book by X date and x is four months away, that's fine too. The point is consistent, purposeful writing.
  • For January, my number one goal is to finish writing Bastian Dennel, PI #3. I need it done, and I need it done soon because of how the timing will work out for both when I want to publish it and other projects I need to work on. As I said in my last Doings! post, though, the end is in sight; I just have to keep my momentum.
• The upward part of my writing goals for this year? I would love to put out more than one book in 2022. If things work out the way I want them to with finishing BDPI#3 and working on other projects I have in mind, this should be doable. We'll see.
• To that point, there are, of course, some specific writing projects I want to tackle this year.
  • This goes without saying, but I need to finish, edit, and publish BDPI#3. I also need to name the thing, but I have two ideas floating in my head, firm enough that I think I should be able to do a title review relatively soon.
  • I need to decide if I'm writing my Super Secret Mystery Project and, if so, write and edit that. This project would involve a very fast turnaround time, but I really like the concept and it would be a nice break from Bastian Dennel books (which I love, but which I'll probably be writing for quite a while because I have so many ideas), so I may very well go for it.
  • I want to start work on BDPI#4. I have the concept/premise more or less figured out, though I still need to work out more details before I start writing. It's going to be fun, let me tell you.
  • I want to figure out what I'm going to do about the next Arista Challenge. This refers to the one for release in 2023; Kendra just announced that it'll be The Little Mermaid. I have an idea that I like, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it written in time, which might mean pushing said idea back . . . or rearranging some story order stuff, but we'll see.
  • I want to keep up with writing my Defenders of Serys D&D campaign. This is a pretty necessary goal if I want to keep my group going, since no one else has shown any indication that they want to DM and some people have said very definitively that they don't want to DM. That said, I'm not going to put any other D&D writing on the table as a goal — upward doesn't apply here; only onward. I don't think I'll have time for more.
• Finally, I'm maintaining my goal from last year of keeping up with my blogging and author socials as much as I can. Specifically, I'd like to be better about prewriting blog posts when I have ideas and time, and I want to be more deliberate about taking pictures for IG/FB in batches so I'm not scrambling at the last minute on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. But I am also once again giving myself permission to skip one blog post and one social post per month as necessary (though I'd prefer not to skip both in the same week if I can avoid it).

Reading Goals

• My reading goal for this year is 99 books. I feel pretty confident about my ability to reach that, since I've held steady at around 120 books a year for the last few years. That said, some of my more specific reading goals will mean I'm reading longer books, so I don't want to aim too high.
• I'm repeating my goal of 12 books published (or written) before 1975. I thought about relaxing it, but . . . it's one book a month, and I know it should be doable. The trick is just finding the right books.
• I've done pretty well with non-speculative-fiction reading goals in the past couple years, so we're amping that goal up to 15 non-speculative fiction books over the course of 2022. I've achieved this number before, so I know it's doable. Again, it's just a matter of finding the right books.
• Carrying on something I started last year: I want to catch up with the Tor.com Wheel of Time reading series and stay caught up with it. They're currently on Lord of Chaos, which is where I got stuck when I originally read the series. Based on how long the series has taken per book in the past, that probably means reading about four and a half books. That feels doable, especially if I get out the books as ebooks so I can more easily read when I'm out and about rather than just when I'm at home.
• And a new goal: I want to read more poetry. I realized while figuring out what poetry to memorize that I've never spent that much time interacting with poetry outside of homework? And I feel like I should fix that. I think my goal at the moment is to spent some time reading poetry once a week — which, yes, is a low bar, but I have no idea what's reasonable and what's not, and I don't want to take too much time away from fiction.
• Finally, I want to keep tracking my reads in detail. I think I'm going to switch to using a Google form, but I'm not 100% certain; I'll try it for a month and see how things go. I do know that I want to track a few more things this year (like physical vs. ebooks, owned vs. library vs. KU books, and whether or not specific elements are included), which means a form might be easier, but we'll see.

Life Goals

• My first general-life goal for 2022 is to keep doing well at my job — I'd like to add an upward here, but I'm not quite sure what that looks like right now, and I think I'd have to talk to some other people to figure it out. Plus, with my current supervisor retiring and a new one coming in around the end of January, keep doing well and being reliable and taking things as they come without getting frustrated (in a time when many things are uncertain) may be enough on its own.
• I want to keep practicing German. I'm debating adding a second language as well, in keeping with the upward part of my theme? But at the same time, I don't want to overdo it, and last time I tried learning a language with just Duolingo, I ended up confused about grammar and how verb endings work, so it didn't work out too well. We'll see.
• I want to keep up with my Scripture and poetry memorization. I've already laid out what Scripture passages I'm memorizing through the end of the year. For the most part, I'm going for shorter sections than I did in 2021 — but some of what I attempted last year was a bit overambitious, especially for prose sections.
• This is a bit cliche, but I want to find an exercise method that works for my current situation that I'll enjoy enough to do regularly. Ok, yes, that's setting the bar low. I'm trying to be realistic here, though. I know that I should exercise more than I do (also a low bar), but I also know that I won't do it if I don't enjoy it, health benefits or not.
• On the more personal side, I need to stop catastrophizing so readily. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but if I'm upset about something, I can very easily jump to the worst non-impossible outcome of doing that thing. I know it's not a good habit, and I don't like to do it. I just sometimes don't know how to not do it — but I should probably figure it out.
• Moving back to the doing-things goals: I want to attend at least one convention this year. Realm Makers is on the table because it's in a location I could drive rather than fly to, and I'd love to go at least once. Also, there's a board game convention that I'm also eying prospectively — though that one is dependent on how certain things work out in the friend group.
• Finally — and this is a little bit of a stretch goal only because I don't know where it'll fit in — I want to do some combination of expanding existing skills, revisiting old skills, or trying to learn a new skill so it comes out to a total of doing three different things in one of these areas. It doesn't have to be big; if I learn a new baking technique or learn to bake or cook something with significant differences from things I already know how to make, that counts. And I don't have to stick with it; if I decide I want to learn another coding language but discover I hate it after a few weeks, I can leave it and it still counts. That said (and this is a note for future Sarah), the point is to either go upward with an existing skill or onward with learning new skills — so if I learn three new baking techniques over the next year, that's awesome, but it still only counts as one for purposes of this goal.

What were the highlights of your 2020? What goals, themes, or resolutions do you have for the new year? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!