Slightly Elderly Year's Resolutions
Jan. 31st, 2016 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanSomewhat belatedly, my New Year's Resolutions. Posting them for accountability even if I wrote them a while ago :)
1. Write 500 words a day.
Nope. I got to ~ 54 000 words in 2015, which works out to 150 a day. Being unemployed was not fruitful word-wise, which is a shame, but then stress.
2. Read 50 books, including 5 non-fiction ones.
Nooo. Only 25, with 2 non-fiction ones.
3. Write a fic a month (>1000 words).
On one hand, very much no. On the other hand, I wrote two >20k fics. I'm giving myself a Partly.
4. Try to keep up with my flist. Don’t be neurotic if that doesn’t work.
Yep.
5. Finish and post 3 old (non-posted) WIPs.
Fail. I only did this with one.
6. Pay off 20% of my personal debt.
Somewhat astonishingly, given I spent three months unemployed and another three very underemployed – yes. It’s not clear exactly what the numbers are yet, because of some tax/lack-of-payslip stuff, but it's pretty certain I did this.
7. Write 20 letters to my Grandpa.
UTTER FAIL, which I feel v guilty about, because he’s lonely – he’s very deaf and he lives by himself. Will do better this year though.
8. Look into secondary teacher training, or the DELTA, or something else. Don’t be static professionally.
Errrrm. Well, I made progress, and definitely looked further into the process of those other qualifications, and I worked for two of the UK’s top ESOL schools in the summer. So that’s a win even if I spent at least six months underemployed to different degrees.
9. Look into learning Spanish.
I’m counting this as a yes, because I have learnt zero Spanish but have made a decent dent in Duolingo for Italian (37% fluent, it tells me, looool) and I’m definitely understanding bits and pieces as I go around. Which, you know, pretty Romance language with practical use, so near enough :P
10. Give myself time and mental space to work on original stuff the way I used to.
Hmmmm. Well, I wrote very little original stuff, certainly compared to how much I used to, so this is a no? Although I did give myself some time and mental space, in large part what I found was, “because I want to write an adventure yarn set in fantasy!medieval Arabia and there seem to be basically no credible anthropological texts in English on even the modern-day Bedouin…” Am working on something else for now.
Four yeses and one partly. That is WAY less disastrous than I thought at a glance. Go me!
My resolutions for 2016 are:
1. Improve my Italian significantly.
2. Write 500 words a day.
3. Read 50 books, including 5 non-fiction ones.
4. Don’t be static professionally, whether that means qualifying as a Cambridge examiner while in Sardinia (fingers crossed, but might not be possible in six months) or whatever I decide to do in September.
5. Write 20 letters/postcards to Grandpa.
6. Keep up with friends in the UK via Skyping/texting/emailing etc.
7. Reduce my personal debt by 25%.
8. Practice some swimming, hiking and photography while in Sardinia, since it’s the perfect place and I bought the equipment.
9. Write 10k of original fiction. (Keeping it achievable.)
10. Finish and post 3 old WIPs. (SO MANY WORDS MOULDERING ON MY HARD DRIVE OMFG.)
Did you guys make any resolutions? How are they going so far?
1. Write 500 words a day.
Nope. I got to ~ 54 000 words in 2015, which works out to 150 a day. Being unemployed was not fruitful word-wise, which is a shame, but then stress.
2. Read 50 books, including 5 non-fiction ones.
Nooo. Only 25, with 2 non-fiction ones.
3. Write a fic a month (>1000 words).
On one hand, very much no. On the other hand, I wrote two >20k fics. I'm giving myself a Partly.
4. Try to keep up with my flist. Don’t be neurotic if that doesn’t work.
Yep.
5. Finish and post 3 old (non-posted) WIPs.
Fail. I only did this with one.
6. Pay off 20% of my personal debt.
Somewhat astonishingly, given I spent three months unemployed and another three very underemployed – yes. It’s not clear exactly what the numbers are yet, because of some tax/lack-of-payslip stuff, but it's pretty certain I did this.
7. Write 20 letters to my Grandpa.
UTTER FAIL, which I feel v guilty about, because he’s lonely – he’s very deaf and he lives by himself. Will do better this year though.
8. Look into secondary teacher training, or the DELTA, or something else. Don’t be static professionally.
Errrrm. Well, I made progress, and definitely looked further into the process of those other qualifications, and I worked for two of the UK’s top ESOL schools in the summer. So that’s a win even if I spent at least six months underemployed to different degrees.
9. Look into learning Spanish.
I’m counting this as a yes, because I have learnt zero Spanish but have made a decent dent in Duolingo for Italian (37% fluent, it tells me, looool) and I’m definitely understanding bits and pieces as I go around. Which, you know, pretty Romance language with practical use, so near enough :P
10. Give myself time and mental space to work on original stuff the way I used to.
Hmmmm. Well, I wrote very little original stuff, certainly compared to how much I used to, so this is a no? Although I did give myself some time and mental space, in large part what I found was, “because I want to write an adventure yarn set in fantasy!medieval Arabia and there seem to be basically no credible anthropological texts in English on even the modern-day Bedouin…” Am working on something else for now.
Four yeses and one partly. That is WAY less disastrous than I thought at a glance. Go me!
My resolutions for 2016 are:
1. Improve my Italian significantly.
2. Write 500 words a day.
3. Read 50 books, including 5 non-fiction ones.
4. Don’t be static professionally, whether that means qualifying as a Cambridge examiner while in Sardinia (fingers crossed, but might not be possible in six months) or whatever I decide to do in September.
5. Write 20 letters/postcards to Grandpa.
6. Keep up with friends in the UK via Skyping/texting/emailing etc.
7. Reduce my personal debt by 25%.
8. Practice some swimming, hiking and photography while in Sardinia, since it’s the perfect place and I bought the equipment.
9. Write 10k of original fiction. (Keeping it achievable.)
10. Finish and post 3 old WIPs. (SO MANY WORDS MOULDERING ON MY HARD DRIVE OMFG.)
Did you guys make any resolutions? How are they going so far?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-01 11:02 am (UTC)Are you counting words posted towards your goal per day, or just anything you write down? How are you keeping track of randomly adding words to WIPs? Are words getting lost? I MUST KNOW THIS.
(It's been a cranky day. I may be too invested in minor details. Sorry.)
no subject
Date: 2016-02-02 10:49 pm (UTC)So basically every time I hit another 100 words it counts, because round numbers are easier. So if I open a WIP on a particular day and it has 6340 words, f'rinstance, I might make a note at the top of the doc or something - 6300 - and if when I finish I'm at 7523 then that counts as 1200 words.
I AM NEUROTIC ENOUGH TO ENJOY SHARING MY SYSTEM :D