Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. We’re ending out another quarter, so it’s time for another goals recap post.
If you remember from last time, I set some goals at the beginning of Q4. As a refresher, they looked like this.
Now, my Trello board looks like this.
Let’s go over it in more detail.
Writing – 9/44 Goals Completed – 20%
I have a few things in this writing category so let me explain them. First up, Fate of the World is the fringe project I’ve been talking about that is what I’ve been working on. I am kind of a hybrid “plantser” where I don’t really plan all my scenes in advance nor do I completely pants my novels–I do something in-between where I plan some scenes as I’m going along. So at the beginning of the quarter I had 16 scenes planned, but that has and will continue to expand as I keep working on the novel.
The other thing I am working on here is making connections in the worldbuilding umbrella projects. I threw a wrench in it when I realized my angels and demons series could and should be included in the worldbuilding projects and now I need to know how they all go together. I had some of it already figured out and I still need to figure other parts of it out, so this was the rest of what I wanted to work on in the writing category this quarter.
Business – 0/0 Goals Completed – 0%
I still have a hard time calling my writing a business when I don’t make any money at it. Yes I have a few books online, but I pay more in website hosting and marketing fees than I make. Still, I want to keep this as a category, for future goals to be put into here.
Marketing – 33/33 Goals Completed – 100%
To maybe no one’s surprise, one of the few things I kept up with was both the weekly blog and weekly podcast. I’ve got the last two of the year marked off because I already have both the blogs and the podcasts basically ready to publish, so look for those to come out on schedule.
I also found time and energy to add in changes to my website. These were on another list from forever ago and which I didn’t have the know-how or really the energy at all to deal with until apparently this quarter when I came back across a book I had read and things made more sense the second time around.
Travel, Training, Meetings – 0/3 Goals Completed – 0%
I knew that I wasn’t likely to make these three meetings when I set this goal, due to staffing issues at my actual day job, and as it happened, I only just got someone new hired this week. I am hopeful that I will be able to go to meetings in the future with my local writing group, but it simply wasn’t possible this quarter.
Quarter 4 Overall – 42/80 Goals Completed – 53%
This actually isn’t my worst quarter ever. I have stats for that and my worst quarter ever comes in at a very rough 44% back in Q2 of this year. I tried to participate in NaNoWriMo but it just squashed whatever good, slow, procedure I was starting to figure out, and it was a mistake. Failure is hard, emotionally, no matter how many times you’ve failed, so I shouldn’t have even tried to convince myself that I wasn’t trying to win.
I have kept up with the blog, consistently, every week for about two years straight. I won’t say that it has always been easy. Producing content has always been a struggle for me because I don’t always know what to say or how to get the point across. I know there is so much more than the blog and my TikTok that I could or should be doing. I’m supposed to be crossposting, and making each post into double or triple the content by using snippets and grabs all throughout the week. Bringing people back to the blog, getting them to sign up for an email list with every post I write.
I know that’s how crazy successful social media marketers and strategists and people with teams operate. They draw you in, get you onto their list and then sell sell sell!
I barely have the energy to keep up with what I’m already doing most weeks, because it’s literally just me behind the keys typing away. I have to find time for the blog, for making the graphics, for narrating the podcast, for creating camera-worthy content on TikTok, and I have to also find time to write and keep my house clean, and take care of myself too, on top of my day job.
I only managed about half my goals this quarter which is a bummer, but I am proud of myself for not dropping the podcast and blog. I’m proud of myself for getting some work done earlier in the quarter on my novel, even though I haven’t been able to come back to it in what feels like too long because life is too stressful right now to create something meaningful and to put creating on my plate on top of everything else. I am so darn glad I finally found whatever it was that I needed to make the changes I’ve been wanting to make to my website for who even knows how long.
Overall, not great, but I managed myself and my energy better, and for once, instead of just pushing through and just getting a ton of stuff done and letting myself burn right out, I allowed myself the time and grace and slowed down. I’m finally learning energy management and pacing, though it took me all year to even start to figure it out. And for once, I might not end this year bone dead exhausted like I do every other year. So that’s definitely something worth being proud of.
Discussion Questions
- How often do you set goals and how often do you check in with them?
- How was your quarter?
- How many goals did you set and how many of them were you able to accomplish?
