Goal-Setting

I don't really make New Years Resolutions, as I mentioned before. I do keep a bullet journal and will build the occasional tracker in it for a short-period of time tracking of a "thing" kind of use. I have loose ideas of things I want to accomplish in 2020 though. Although currently, I'd currently like a redo on the first seven days of the year, they've been really, really crappy.

So here's some loose plans I've got floating around right now for 2020:

WORK
It sucks right now. I love what I do and my new manager is great as is the rest of my team. But upper management does not understand our team, nor do they seem interested in learning about or supporting us. Year end reviews should come in February and I do not expect a raise or any sort of increase for me or anyone on my team (who all deserve them). I think my new manager (who's only been there five months now) has her hands tied on any leverage to get more for us. So if we don't start bleeding worthy, experienced employees in the first quarter, I expect by year end we will lose two or three people to other, better jobs.

I'm kind of waiting right now to see how year end shakes out for myself and my team before making any big decisions. However, I've already taken a call with a recruiter (who sought me out) and told him to call me in the second quarter to see how I was feeling about things. If I want to take a step-up at all (and I do), I know it's probably not going to happen where I am. So I want to have that at least in motion by mid-year.

WRITING
Overall I've pledged at getyourwordsout 150k words for this year, for a variety of projects.

I want to finish "Gravestones" which is my project title for my NaNo novel. I'm setting it into Scrivener and setting up edits for this first quarter with the idea to continue writing (maybe finish the first full draft) in April's Camp NaNo. By 4th Street in June, I want to have a chapter (or three) feeling good enough to take to the critique workshop there.

I also have an idea for two smaller romance novellas, so I want to pick one of those and flesh out the ideas and figure out which one (if not both) to finish this year.

Who knows which project I'll have going in the fall, but if it's not Gravestones, I'd like to have something else ready enough to start writing something new in November for another NaNoWriMo.

FANDOM
I'm planning to combine a bingo card with Femslash February.

I would like to finish a longstanding Dragon Age story I've been dragging out for too long.

I've started putting together some old Dragon Ave Aveline/Isabela fics and tentatively my idea is to take those six individual fics and string them together into a real plot - tentative word goal is 30k for that project. It's at about 11k now, so I think that's doable.

Definiely Yuletide again, and if Critmas runs, I'll do that again too. Based on where my other projects are, I'd love to pick up other new stuff as the muse strikes too. I was thinking about Chocolate Box this year, but I know I don't have it in me right now, so I'll have to watch and enjoy from afar.

I think that's about it.



I don't know if this makes a ton of sense at the moment. About halfway through this post I got the call from my dad letting me know that my grandfather passed away this evening about 10:30pm. He was struggling with lung and heart issues and after a recent bout against pneumonia didn't recover fully. I'm a little -- out of sorts and I came back to this post after dealing with a few phone calls and other messages.

I know that's a bummer to end on. But I think it's a reminder to me that I also need to make sure I'm setting goals this year that don't overwhelm me, that let me work at my own pace and let me stay happy and healthy both mentally and physically. It's one of the reasons I reset again and again throughout the year if something isn't working for me. Don't wait for the first of the year to make the change, just do it tomorrow.