'22 Ideals and Goals

 

Hello, my friends! 

Welcome to the New Year. I had intended to write a post about looking back on the previous year in reading here, and then a "2022 Indie Releases" post over on NoQu, but the holidays interfered as they so often do in the ways which we all know and love despite what we say. 

That is to say, I never did write that post on looking back at the year. I did touch on it in my anniversary post, but not in any great depth. So I do still hope to write and release that post, it will just come on a little later. 

I don't actually have any goals for this year. There's a few factors that are making it very uncertain and so I don't really have any clue where things will be headed and where my time will be most needed.

I have a tentative goal of reading sixty books that are either currently on my physical list of books to read, on my list of indie books to read (I have to buy all of those), or a combination of the two.

I won't be counting books that I began last year and am finishing this year as part of that challenge, but they will somewhat be "bonus points." What those points will add up to, I don't know. I was thinking of making a sort of reward system, where for every certain amount of points I can [fill in the blank], but I have no idea what that reward would be. If you have any ideas, please do share them. 

Other than that, I have no goals. However, I do have some ideals, things which I'd like to do and will try to do but that are not things to complete and the like. These are more things that are to keep up good habits or to start good habits, things that don't need to be completed in order to be good.  

My On-Topic Ideals For The Year:

Consistently support Indies and bloggers as much as I reasonably can 

I've been over how important this is to me in the past, and now I want to really invest in more small-time writers. I've been finding the new bloggers I've interacted with lately to be so... alive, for a lack of better words. They're so ambitious and excited - so are many new authors - and I want to fan that flame as much as I can. 

I really want them to know how valuable their work is and can be. And if I can show that by being a consistent participant on their posts, or by buying and reviewing their books as soon after their release as I can, or even just dropping them a note of encouragement every now and then, I want to. 

And I don't wish to do this with the approach of a writer. I don't want to seem condescending or anything of the sort. I just want to be one of the audience members that cheers them on. So that will be my approach to them and to their work.

Stay in practice with audiobook narrating 

I have dropped this since around October, and I really don't want to lose the good progress I was making. So I want to start narrating free-domain works in hopes of maintaining the habits and the like. I'm considering volunteering on Librivox for this reason.

If I do this well, I may even share samples here on Bleeding Ink.

Make serious progress on one of my main writing projects

I'm notoriously bad at intentionally doing this, but I would really like to nonetheless. Likely, this would be on The Rising, which I believe I mentioned before, as I don't think I'm ready to return to Roslyn yet (though I might be doing so by February or March; I'm still not sure). 

I haven't really been feeling much like a writer lately, and that's because I haven't been one. After all, you have to write to be writer. I would really like to change that, and to stay productive even though my leading project is halted.

The difficult part of this is that I'm not drafting The Rising, I'm plotting it. And that goes much slower than drafting does for me, for the most part (I usually plot a story as I draft it, but given the nature of The Rising I haven't been able to do that).

Actively look for part-time/freelance writing jobs

I love the job I have, but it isn't bringing in enough income for me to actively pursue the things which I intend to, so picking up an at-home job would be lovely. 

In addition to that, I think having a writing job would help me stay focused on writing.

So that's something I'd like to look into.

Begin the office renovation

This will be costly, which is why I want to begin it and not do it. I'm not just painting and decorating; I'm actually intending on making holes in the wall and whatnot for my purposes.

But I want to get started, because getting this room done as soon as I can is a priority for me. Once that is done, I may be able to start doing videos and the like, and I definetly will be able to do audiobook narration far easier.

And that's about it. I've been doing a lot of introspecting lately, learning more about different aspects of myself and my processes, my ultimate goals and my temporary dreams. This is one of the reasons why I want to keep my goals loose, but still have a general direction to wander in. 

If you want more details on what Bleeding Ink is going to look like in times to come, I recommend reading my anniversary post from December; it has many more details. I generally do my "yearly wrap up" and "yearly goal" things in that post instead of in separate posts. 

Thank you for reading, and have a happy New Year.

- E.P.