2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 5: Strugglebus

Last week was another dismal one.  I'm still very distracted by current events, although to be fair, there has been a lot happening.  I think last week might have been even worse than the week before, which was bad enough.

Without further discussion, I'm going to jump straight to last week's accomplishments (or lack thereof):

Writing

I only managed to work on my novel two days last week.  I did get a social media post up on my author Instagram account.

Decluttering and Organization

Nope.

Dolls

Nada.

Lessons Learned

I fear we're in a brave new world where I'm going to have to learn to balance my awareness of current events with the things I have to get done.  I'm going to start trying to build back a little bit this week, rehabbing my brain if you will, with a soft goal of writing 4 days and getting either a decluttering/organization project or a doll project done.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 4: Distractions

Last week was something of a disaster, which I suspected it would be when I wrote my week 3 post.  Current events had me pretty distracted most of the week, and then I was swept up into finding alternatives for Amazon.  I'll write more about that later.

What I did accomplish last week isn't pretty, but I'll give the rundown anyway:

Writing

I managed to work on my novel four days out of seven, which isn't as much as I'd wanted but it's something.  I also posted to my author Instagram.

Decluttering and Organization

I... thought about it?

Dolls

I thought about this too!

Lessons Learned

Honestly, I'm not going to give myself a hard time for being distracted by current events or for giving into my impulsivity and spending several days researching ways to live up to my moral compass.  I am, however, considering shifting my schedule to reflect my priorities and writing first every day, before the day gets away from me.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 3: Mid-January Slump

Last week wasn't great, and I'm wondering if it has to do with the mid-January slump, the point at which people struggle with their New Year's resolutions.  It's too bad, because I was actually hoping to improve upon the previous week, but instead I fared a little worse.

Of course, it could just be that I was much busier than usual last week, between appointments during the week and the weather over the weekend -- it was very cold all weekend, causing us a lot of extra work at the barn.

Unfortunately, I anticipate that this week won't be much better, distracted as I am by current events at the moment.

Here's how last week fared:

Writing

I wish I could say again that writing was the one area in which I did well, but it's not true of last week.  I did put in a lot of time through Thursday, but Friday through this Monday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which I was kinda counting as part of the weekend and therefore part of last week) I didn't write at all.  So my daily habit was an epic fail last week, despite the big writing days early in the week.

I did post to my author Instagram last week, but I didn't get the second post up like I'd wanted to.

Decluttering and Organization

I had good intentions, but never quite got around to cleaning or decluttering or organizing anything.

Dolls

Instead of working on doll projects, I added to them, doing several pickups.  I worked a little on video content but didn't get anything finished or posted.

Lessons Learned

I suppose if there is a lesson to be learned here, it's that I need to make sure I don't let other things encroach on my time to pursue my goals for the year -- or at least find a better balance between my goals and the other things that need to be done.  For example, one of the things that sucked my time was how much time I spent at the barn each day when it was close to and below zero over the weekend.  Those kinds of temperatures make everything take longer, because we have to feed my horses mashes (to get ahead of refusals to drink) and take the time to break the ice out of the water tanks and buckets.  This week has some other demands on it as well, but hopefully nothing quite as bad.

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).