2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 2: Two Out of Three

Last week was the first full week of 2025, and therefore the first chance to really test my goals for the year.  The first partial week was still during a semi-vacation mindset, plus the energy of having just made my goals, so I did expect my energy to diminish a little this past week.

Without further ado, here is the rundown from last week:

Writing

Well, I said I wanted to aim for writing six days a week, and that is exactly what I did last week.  One of those days was only a couple hundred words, but that still counts, right?  I also got one post up on my author Instagram account last week.  I had a second prepped and ready to go, but never posted it, so I think I'm going to try to get two up this week.

Decluttering and Organization

This was my big fail last week.  I did not work on any of my planned projects at all.

Dolls

I was fairly productive last week, and started working on two different doll projects.  One is going to be a long term project as there are several things about it that won't be resolved quickly.  The other was expected to be a fast project (an eye swap), but ended up being much harder than expected, so I'm somewhat stalled on it.  I blistered my thumb trying to get the new eyes in, so now I have to wait for my thumb to heal before I can try again.  I've also been recording with the intention of producing some more content, but as the projects aren't finished yet, neither is the content.

Lessons Learned

I was expecting my momentum to slow a little this week, so that wasn't really a "lesson learned."  Two things stood out about this week, however.  First of all, other than the writing goals, most of this was accomplished over the weekend, so I'm really going to need to be more proactive this week about getting started on doll and organization projects before the end of the week.  Second, I need to stop being so hard on myself in my perceptions of how successful I am.  I thought I'd totally failed to meet my writing goals until I checked the stats and realized that I did, in fact, work on my novel six out of seven days.

This week I'm hoping to make more progress on doll and organization projects while still maintaining my writing goals.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 1: Hit the Ground Running

In my New Year's resolutions post I talked about my plans for 2025.  Now that I know I can maintain a weekly posting habit, I decided to set goals for the year and track progress every week.  To review, my goals for the year are:

Each week, I'm going to review what I accomplished toward each goal the previous week, and what I intend to do in coming week.  I'm hoping this accountability will help to keep me on track and moving toward my ultimate goals, which are to publish in 2025, declutter and finish my organization projects, and build out my doll business in 2025.

Last week was a partial week, but I still feel like I accomplished a ton.  I'm sure I'm partially full of New Year, new resolutions energy, but I'm hoping to maintain the motivation and momentum as long as possible — and I'm hoping these weekly posts will help.

Here's the rundown from last week:

Writing

I didn't write every day last week.  In fact, I missed three days in a row, which is more than I have missed in a while.  I did, however, get a post up on my author Instagram, which I need to start posting to regularly.

As for the gaps in writing progress, I'm going to chalk it up to difficulties establishing a routine, and see how this week goes.  In general, my goal is to write six days a week, which will put me comfortably above the 80% success rate I had in December.

Decluttering and Organization

I did well with this last week.  Rather than just getting the minimum of one project done, I accomplished two: On Wednesday I went through, repacked, and put away some childhood and family things that have been sitting out for far too long, and last night I mounted some shelves and started organizing them.  I'm counting these as "projects" even though they're smaller pieces of a larger project, which is to finish organizing my bedroom and both of our closets.  Each small piece gets us closer to the finish.

The next projects are to put up another set of shelves, put up curtains in the bedroom, and work on cleaning and organizing the bedroom itself — I have far too many piles in there that need to be gone through and put away.  We'll see how much of that I can get done this week, but the goal of course is to get at least one of those things done.

Dolls

I actually did get a spur-of-the-moment project done, and replaced eyes on a doll that has been waiting for repair for quite some time.  I also started a repair and removed eyes from another doll so I could measure them and order the right size replacement.  As for the content goal, I got a post up on Instagram about the completed eye swap, and filmed the eye removal to make a video once that swap is completed.

Lessons Learned

If there's anything I've learned in the past partial week, it's that I need to stop putting so much pressure on myself for completing certain things first.  Yes, there are things that are bigger priorities than others.  But if I try to make myself do those things when I'm not feeling it, the end result is that I procrastinate and do nothing.  So instead, I am going to try an approach of doing things as I am interested and motivated to do them, and use that momentum to tackle the higher priority things once I'm already in motion.

2025 New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year!  With today being the first day of 2025, it seemed appropriate to write a resolutions post today.  My 2024 year in review post went up late last night.

I haven't written a real, structured New Year's resolutions post in a long time.  For a while I decided I didn't like doing them and stressing myself out about what I wanted to accomplish during the year, then making myself feel bad when I didn't do it.  But for the last few years, I've started setting loose goals for the year.  For example, last year I had a rough goal to finish Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box — which of course didn't happen, since I started working on Amnesia instead (though I don't think that was a fail, since I finished both Amnesia and the sequel).

This year I think I'm ready to make some real resolutions and track progress throughout the year.  So today I'll set some resolutions, things I want to accomplish throughout the year.  The weekly challenge part will be similar to my weekly goals post in 2024, except that every week I'll be posting progress on my goals for the year.  My goals are all things that will need to be worked on regularly, so ideally each week will see some progress.

1) Work toward publishing in 2025

I want to get something revised, completed, and published in 2025.  Amnesia and the yet-to-be-named sequel are both drafted, but need extensive revisions, so that will be a major project if I want to get them published later this year.  I've planned out a writing, revising, and publishing schedule, and while I may not be able to follow it exactly, the point is that I need to be moving my writing career forward.

• Write almost every day in 2025
  
  This is more of a sub-goal, but it needs to be a part of my goals for 2025 if I want to be ready to publish: I want to keep writing almost every day.  It doesn't have to be every single day, as things happen that make that difficult, but at least nearly every day. 
  
  Thanks to my TrackBear goals, I know that I wrote 80 percent of days in December.  I'm hoping for at least that in 2025.
  
  
• Post to social media once a week
  
  I actually have an author Instagram account that is virtually unused.  I want to start posting to that and building a presence in 2025, which will help when I start publishing.  Eventually I'll need to post more frequently, but for now we'll start with a goal of once a week.

2) Declutter and finish my household organization projects

My house has been non-presentable for several years.  It got bad when Panama was sick in 2022 and I have been treading water ever since, never fully reducing the amount of clutter.  We've gotten a few projects done here and there, but there is still a lot to do.  I want to stay more focused on finishing these outstanding projects in 2025, and do some decluttering and deep cleaning as well.  Ultimately I want to feel like I can use my spaces more comfortably — I'm tired of always having crap in the way of what I want to do.

• Do one project every week
  
  Like with my writing goals, I think I need a regularly actionable sub-goal if I'm going to make this happen.  Working on it daily is a little tougher, so I'm going to make a goal of completing a project every week.  For larger projects, I'll split them into more easily achievable sub-projects.

3) Build out my doll business in 2025

During the events of the year, I've ended up neglecting my doll business, but I want to get back to working on it.  I have a doll show in April and possibly another show in August, and I have a lot of planning, organization, and rehab that will need to happen before then.  To meet that deadline, I will need to be working on doll-related things at least every week until mid-April.

• Do at least one project every week
  
  Once again, I need an actionable way to ensure I'm making progress throughout the year.  Some weeks I anticipate completing more than one project, especially as I'm getting ready for the doll show in April.  But even after that, I want to be sure I'm making progress every week.  That might be rehabbing a doll, or it might be completing a new video.
  
  
• Post video content and blog posts at least once a month
  
  My doll Instagram account is more healthy than my writer one, but I have been slacking about getting videos and other content posted.  In 2025 I'd like to contribute to my blog and my YouTube channel at least once a month to start, more often if I can manage it.

I think these are my main three areas of focus for the coming year, so I'll report on them each Monday when I write my weekly challenge post.  With any luck, the weekly challenge will help me stay on track and accomplish everything I am hoping to in 2025.

Happy New Year! 2024 in Review

Ever since writing last week's weekly goals post, I've been thinking about what I want to do in 2025.  I think as a bit of a twist on the weekly goals posts, this year I want to make actual New Year's resolutions for the first time in years.  And instead of writing weekly goals posts with new short-term goals each week, I'll do a 52-week challenge, tracking my progress on my goals each week.

It's not that the weekly goals posts weren't helpful in 2024.  They actually were, for several reasons.  First and most importantly, I stuck with the habit the entire year, which was kinda like a trial of sorts, and gave me confidence that I could do something a little more challenging in 2025.  Also, it gave me a chance to see what I did well — and what I didn't.

I'm easily distractible and chase interests like rabbits, so the result is that I take on too much and don't focus enough on the things I want most.  (Izzy's care being an obvious exception; nothing is more important to me than my animals, and I will gladly drop everything else to take care of them.)  I'm proud of all the things I do — the time I volunteer, my writing, the people I help on Facebook — but I also need to learn to both prioritize and focus.

I'll post again soon with my goals for 2025, but for now I'm off to celebrate New Years the grown-up way: cuddled up on the couch with a glass of spiked eggnog, a book, and possibly an episode of a favorite TV show (in this case, Dexter).

Weekly Goals, Week 52: Moving Forward

The holiday week has been a blur, and as a result I didn't get this posted on Monday, but it's been very much on my mind.

This year has seen a lot of changes.  Last year I lost my last freelance client when the platform I was writing for started paying late; I demanded payment and got paid, but that was the end of my relationship with them.  At the time I was feeling very burnt out on freelancing, so I took it as a sign to spend some time on my own projects.

Ever since, I have been focusing on two main things: working on my doll business, and working on writing projects that I hope to eventually self-publish.  Splitting my attention between the two has perhaps meant that not as much got done on either, though.  And I feel like I haven't been taking either goal as seriously as I should have been.

Then Izzy got sick, and that was all I could think about.

Now that Izzy is gone and I have more time to work, I've been thinking about what I want to spend that time on.  And I realized I want to be more focused on both goals than I have been, but especially on the goal of publishing my work.

This will be the last weekly post of 2024, even though there's still another partial week left.  I feel like it's been a boring year of posts, but at the same time, it has helped me more than I expected.  Now, at the end of the year, I'm realizing how much I get dragged into the minutia of every week.  In 2025, I want to be more focused on the big picture.

More on that to come!

Weekly Goals, Week 51: Grieving

I'm not expecting too much of myself right now.  Izzy passed away Wednesday morning last week, so I took the rest of the week to grieve and recover.  As a result, I didn't accomplish all of my goals for the week.

It's easier now, but I still don't feel back to normal.  My motivation is completely shot.

We've done a few things we hadn't been able to in the last couple of months while we were taking care of Izzy, like going to a movie, or having a drink in the evening.  (We didn't dare drink much while we were taking care of Izzy because we had to feed her late at night, and we couldn't afford to be tipsy while feeding her.)  It's been nice, but also sad, because I never wanted those things enough that I would have chosen to lose her.

The one thing I have been more or less successful at is writing nearly every day.  In some ways it's become my retreat from reality.

I'm going to still go easy on myself, but I'm also going to try to start getting back into a schedule again.

1. Write every day
2. Get caught up on cleaning

I don't think I'm going to try to accomplish more than that.  I think that's enough.

In Memory of Izzy

My cat Izzy, whom I've been taking care of for the last couple months, died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday morning.  She'd been at the vet the previous afternoon, where we found her kidney values had remained fairly stable since her last visit three weeks previous.  The vet was having us change up some medications to help keep her more comfortable, and overall, she seemed to be doing better than she had over the weekend.  She was fine yesterday morning a little after 6am after I gave her fluids, and at 8:30am Zac found her gasping for breath.  He woke me up and I made it in time for her to die in my lap.

I don't think I'll be very productive for the rest of the week.

Next week I'm going to try to return to my old schedule and try to get some things done.  After I deleted all of Izzy's feedings, fluids, and other meds reminders from my calendar, I realized how much time I spent taking care of her.  I'll have a lot more time now, not to mention a lot more sleep.

Not that I ever second guessed giving up all of that to take care of her.

Izzy was such an integral part of our lives, it's hard to imagine what life will be like without her in it.  I brought her home just over 12 years ago; she'd been dumped at the barn with another littermate.  After her sibling was stepped on by a horse and had to be put to sleep (I took him to the vet to see if he could be saved), I decided I was not going to watch another kitten die.  I trapped Izzy and took her home.

She was a feisty little thing from the very beginning.  I don't know if it was "tortitude" (she was a tortie tabby), or the fact that she'd spent three formative weeks of her kittenhood at the barn, but she was a troublemaker.  She broke a lot of things that I cared about, chased my old lady kitty, and attacked our feet under the bedsheets until she was a good four years old.  She also absolutely adored our other young cat, Ivan, who was three when we brought her home.  I nearly lost them both when I separated from my husband in 2014, but ultimately he decided he didn't want the cats (I think he'd been using them to try to make me come back), and I got them back in late 2015, a year and a half after I'd left.

It will always make me sad that Ivan never came around to Izzy after she came back from the hospital.  He'd always hissed at her when she came back from the vet, and it would take him days to be willing to snuggle again.  She loved him all of her life, and would often sleep with him or go to him for snuggles and grooming, and I know she wanted that so much when she came back from the hospital.  The closest they got was about a month ago, when he let her sleep on the couch near him for a little while (she kept inching closer, and was right next to him by the time he got fed up and left), and about a week before she died, when he looked in the bathroom at her (he might have been wanting to steal her food, but it was the closest he'd come to her without hissing in a long time).

I'm glad though that we were able to be with her when she died.  She took her last breath in my lap.  I am grateful that she died knowing she was home and we were there.

I'm going to take the rest of the week easy.  There will be plenty of time to get back to a schedule next week.