2018 New Year Resolutions

Where has the year gone? It feels like I was just writing last year's post and here we are again. Even worse January is over before I got around to doing this write-up.

Weekly Updates

The weekly posts were an interesting experiment and have served at least partially their purpose motivating me to push a little bit harder. Especially on some days where it would have been all to easy to do nothing after an exhausting day with the baby or at work.

But at the same time I don't think the public format is working anymore. The links are on Facebook for my friends anyway, and so are the #dailyBaby photos...

The weekly posts also made me blog less. So I will try and do a proper post once a week from now on.

Reading

GoodReads 2017 Book Challange 33 out of 52 is still not a bad result, she said. Thanks to the baby taking up most of my time I've learned to embrace audio-books which definitely helped keep the count up.

It's been good to read more stories again (and not just research). Hoping to do even better this year.

The Obligatory Fitness New Year's Resolution

It wouldn't be January if I didn't try to get back on the wagon yet again. The first try lasted a week, then the diet killed the exercise and then I got sick which killed the diet. Ha ha ha. Well need to try a bit harder before January ends. Maybe it's time to bring out the kettle-bells from the garage...

Last year I was goaded into Whole30, which isn't really my thing, so this year it's back to lchf which, although hard to stick to at times, has always produced best results for me (not just in terms of weight loss but general well-being - the ghost of gestational diabetes ever present).

Productivity

I let myself go a bit in January. Outside of a few bits and pieces for clients I haven't really had a major project to focus on. Possibly due to the marathon of photo album creation through most of December (it was worth it in the end, but still...) a bit of passive tv entertainment was much needed (I will not get into my slight mobile game addiction here).

But as the month is drawing to an end and I'm settling back into a routine at the day job it's time to procrastinate a bit less in the evenings. The Valentine's Day book won't edit itself after all.

Last Year's Goals

This is the part were things get less rosy. Time to own up to a few shortcomings...

I haven't finished rewriting Dragon Scorned, writing Feral 2 or editing the romance stories lying in the drawer. I did publish 4 stories and a boxset though and a fifth story went into a shared boxset with other authors. So not a completely lost year. However with those numbers it's hard to speak of any momentum.

The Dragons vs Zombies project is still on hold at the moment. And a lot depends on how things turn out at work, so until I get a reply about my part time application it's hard to predict when this might finally see the light of day.

I did make some progress on WriterPA (formerly knows as Plot In Motion). With better focus I did get a start on the framework for the project, but unfortunately not being able to get several hours straight of free time has been cramping my style. Editing and writing is a lot easier than coding in short bursts of 30-90 minutes at random points in the day (read: baby nap).

The Plan for 2018

drumroll

In some ways I'm hoping for more-of-the-same, but will be adding some new challanges:

join the GoodReads book challenge again, 52 book goal like last year
note down daily events/achievements, but moving to pen & paper
cook more from scratch
exercise besides walking places
edit and publish The Valentine's Day romance
launch WriterPA
re-write & re-publish Dragon Scorned
finish writing & publish Feral 2
writer & publish Hellena: Origins
design at least one pre-made cover per week
write one blog post per week