My long-term goals

It occurred to me after my last post, about weeding unnecessary and unhelpful things from my life, that I should probably ask myself the question, What ARE my long-term goals?

Of course, as I'm sure is the case with everyone, that's not a simple question -- nor does it have a simple answer.  But I'll take a crack at answering it, because I think it'll help me do more weeding.

1. Freelance full time.

This one is a biggie.  I'd like to get back to freelancing full-time.  If I'm completely honest with myself, this means I need to slowly let my families go, and focus more time on my freelancing.  Based on that goal, I might turn down a new family that is asking for weekday, after school hours -- basically just like the part-time nanny job I said goodbye to in January.

It also means I need to quit letting myself get distracted by things like Facebook.  My focus has gotten a lot worse over the years, and if I think back, it has happened as my time on Facebook has ballooned.  I need to quit letting it suck me in, but in order to break the Facebook addiction, I might need a little help.  More thoughts on that later.

2. Publish my novels.

I almost chickened out and downgraded to "work on my novels," but no -- if I'm completely honest with myself (again), what I want is actually get them out in the world.  That's a lot more work than just "work on my novels," because in addition to writing and revising, it also involves completing, formatting, publishing, and marketing (my goal all along has been to self-publish).  So if I'm going to achieve this goal, I need to be clear about what it actually is, and it's more than just to "work on my novels."

This, of course, means that I need to start making daily time to work on them... which is going to require better time management.

3. Explore other writing projects of my own.

I have had some ideas for nonfiction ebooks and some other writing projects of my own, but no time in which to explore them.  Again, achieving this goal is going to take some mad time management.

4. Blog daily.

Once upon a time, I blogged daily, and my blogs were a steady source of revenue.  Not a huge source, mind you, but a steady and reliable one.  I'd like to get back to that.

Again... time management.

5. Make more time for hobbies.

This is my writing blog, so I don't want to divert a lot of discussion to my varied and time-consuming hobbies, but that's something else I'd like to make more time for.  I want to ride more, read more, cook and garden more, and play the piano more.  I've already eliminated a lot of TV time in my life, primarily because there are so many things I'd rather do in my free time, but I also need to learn to be more discerning about other time traps (coughFacebookcough).

Of course, the theme running through all of this is that I need better time management.  I suppose this is probably an issue for a majority of people, and especially work-from-home people, but I feel like I struggle with it more than I should.  It's been a recurring theme on my blog, too.

Stay tuned to find out what I'm going to do about it...