As we come to the final quarter of 2024, I find myself getting reflective about next year’s goals. Soon, I’ll be rereading journals and setting my expectations and plans for the coming year. (I’m going to be teaching a class about this process in December!) In the meantime, I still need to try to reach some of my remaining 2024 goals. After all, even though the pace of the year slows in winter, there are still three more months to accomplish a few more things.
I’ve purchased a new stack of planners for the quarter and the coming year. I’ve even branched out and tried to use different brands of planners! (But they just don’t work as well for me).
So, here we go with the accountability check-in, and any adjustments I need to make in the coming quarter to finish 2024 nice and strong.
How I’m doing against my Q3 2024 goals:
- Grow my platform to 10K people – I have fewer than 900 more followers to grow across my channels. I still haven’t gotten Patreon to 40 subscribers, and I think that’s the most important channel to build. If you’re reading this blog, please consider signing up as a free subscriber on my Patreon. It would help me out a lot, and you’d get far more frequent updates about my projects. If I want to monetize any of my social media content, I still need to grow YouTube and Instagram to 1,000 followers each.
- Get two paid courses live on Thinkific – I completed and published one, so this goal is halfway met. I didn’t press onward into the second one, because I haven’t broken even on the first one, yet. I have been learning marketing techniques, and I’ve been doing some work to get sales over there. But they really just aren’t there yet. And certainly not enough to justify the huge amount of time and effort it would take to create another course.
- Have Morbid Anatomy classes scheduled once a month through the end of the year. Check! I’ve done that. I have the Monstrous Feminine course going on now, then a fairy tale retelling course. Finally, I have a Mythopoeic Midwinter course in December! (I keep this page up to date with all my classes as they are scheduled.)
- Take a class on Morbid Anatomy – check! I’ve done this one. I’ve also signed up for more in the new year. In addition, I’m taking courses through other platforms to see what other people are doing and how they are structuring classes similar to mine.
- Advanced Unicorn Theory – write my three chapters and a draft introduction for the book. Support authors over the finish line and get edits back to them as quickly as possible. This is very much on track. The current deadline to move into peer review is still Nov 1, and that still feels realistic. I did only write two chapters, rather than three. This is partially because I don’t need the wordcount for the final volume, it is also partially because the topic for the third chapter was so far outside my wheelhouse it felt like the research would be unnecessarily daunting.
- Send out queries and proposals for the non-fiction book based on the dissertation findings. I didn’t do this. I took a course on proposals and have a few things to tweak in the proposal document itself. I also haven’t finished the three sample chapters to my own satisfaction yet.
- Get two more print acceptances to get to 6 new entries on the “proud of myself” shelf by the end of the year. If all three of the volumes currently in peer review were to be published, I’d have my six. As it stands right now, I’ve got four for the year, and I’m not certain I have enough time for new submissions to go to print.
- Marketing the 2 anthologies coming out this summer – Both Medusa and the Jethro Tull books have my stories included. But neither came out during the summer! The Tull book got pushed out to September, and Medusa comes out October 29th.
- Attend the National Storytelling Network’s conference zoom in July- Did this!
- Take trips – take a trip with Josh, take a trip with Sara – did both of these!
- Tending garden and ongoing yard work – I’ve had just enough zucchinis, beans and tomatoes throughout the season. In celebration of the autumnal equinox, I have canned and pickled carrots, beets, and radishes.
- Complete at least one novella and get it in the submission process. I have done this. I’m not sure if the Romantasy dragon novella will sell to a publisher – there are very few places accepting novellas. But it is out there!
- Establish financial security into 2025 – Done. I know, it’s wild. But I have savings and investments through next year.
- Attend a live music performance – ehhhhh no. This didn’t happen.
- Read 10 books this quarter – I struggle with reading – both for research and for fun. I don’t have the brainspace for it. According to Storygraph, I’ve read 1 book for fun this quarter. Now, I have read a number of books for research, but the thing about non fiction is that you rarely read it from cover to cover. You flip to the section you need and skip the rest.
Things that surprised me in Q3
I am not sure I have much in terms of big surprises this quarter. In many ways it was an effort of staying the course and hitting the milestones. Some of the surprises were
- I had a huge turnout for my Unicorn and Monstrous Feminine free lecture. At peak attendance, there were 95 people there! (I only spotted it after it tapered off toward the end at 55 attendees.)
- I am getting more return students at Morbid Anatomy than I expected. My Monstrous Feminine class has about 40% return students, and 60% new students on the roster.
- I am a little surprised that no one has purchased the Thinkific Burnout course. I’ve been slowly working on marketing and positioning for the class, but it’s still a little discouraging. I need to make 6 sales for the course to break even on the amount of money I put into it. I’m pretty wary about sinking more cash into it while I figure this out.
- Much of this quarter has been spent going to doctors, tests, and follow-ups. I had some deferred maintenance – a ton of referrals that I was putting off asking my primary care about. And that resulted in so many doctor appointments. It’s made worse by the fact that some of the tests were all the way in Albuquerque, and most of the specialists are at least in Santa Fe. Entire days were spent doing this. I’m fine, and have been dropped back down to “see me in six months” across the board. But whew, was that a lot of time.
- Car repairs and home stuff were also high on the list of things that took extra time and attention over the course of this quarter. This was the latter half of the six-month agreement with my roommate, and I have been very ready to have my space back for a while.
I’m actually really proud of the work that I’ve done internally regarding sharing my home and space. I think the workaway visitors were not here long enough for me to really learn the lessons that I needed to learn. They weren’t here long enough to create enough friction. The roommate, however, was here for a solid six months, and that was enough friction to really generate some good healing and inner processing. The net of that is that I no longer feel like I “should” share my space or like my home is too big for “just me.” While I’ll still enjoy hosting guests, and I’ll still have workawayers visit (mostly for pet sitting!), I probably won’t rent out a room again anytime soon.
Goals for Q4 2024
In addition to resetting and reclaiming my home space, the thing I really want to allow time for in October, November and December is to get cozy and still. We humans are energetically prone to hibernation during winter, and I want my workload to allow for that.
- Grow my platform to 10K people – this is happening slowly but surely. 817 more to go.
- Maintain a regular Patreon Schedule, and grow to 40 subscribers (I just posted a Monthly Preview for October, to give you an idea of just how much effort I’m referring to here.) I’ve also got a number of mail drops to my top tier subscribers to handle in Q4.
- Have Morbid Anatomy classes scheduled once a month through April 2025; re-record the Monstrous Feminine course so it can be completed on-demand like the Unicorn one.
- Take a class – I’m already enrolled in Joanna’s Memento Mori course, as well as the solstice writing course on Morbid Anatomy.
- Advanced Unicorn Theory – Get the edits, contracts, and image permissions in place for Peer review on November 1.
- Present a paper at the American Folklore Society conference (and geek out at the conference), also sending out abstracts to pitch to two conferences coming in 2025
- Send out queries and proposals for the non-fiction book based on the dissertation findings (including the AFS paper as one of the sample chapters).
- Take a road trip with Josh in October
- Tending garden and ongoing yard work – Get the yard winter-ready. Extend the growing season as much as I can. Get firewood started.
- Home Projects – Finish my kitchen painting and refresh project, set up a maker space for crafts and sewing projects.
I don’t think I want to add a reading goal for the quarter. It feels like a lot of pressure and I’ve been failing at doing those. I also don’t want to add anything specific to the holidays to this list. I’m certain to create the hubbub and kerfluffle without making a goal of it. Mostly, I want to set 2025-me up for success and allow Fall and Winter-me to relax and enjoy the quiet and calm.