As I prepare to teach a whole class on goal-setting, I’m also working through my own processes. The first step that I will be assigning the class is to review the year prior. This post is my own completion of that homework. I want to look at what I set out to do, what I actually did, and what surprised me along the way that may have caused some of those goals and achievements to shift over time.
What I Set Out To Do in 2024
My North Stars have not changed drastically from last year to this. I want to see a book in the wild. I want to have a healthy body to support my success, and I want to have financial stability so I’m able to relax and create. I was beginning a journey of exploration in early 2024, learning what my career would look like.
Starting with my Q1 goals, I am going to layer in each quarter in this review. Q2 added more about teaching at Morbid Anatomy. Q3 and Q4 goals got a little more specific.
- Grow my social media platform reach to 10K people – This goal was one I set in Q1, and it got nudged onto each subsequent quarter’s list. I’m pleased to announce that on Dec 11, I finally reached this goal! In my Q4 goals, I shifted this only slightly to ensure that my consistent schedule on Patreon was prioritized.
- Gain teaching experience on my resume – This was a Q1 goal that actually came to fruition in Q2 (I started my first class on April 15). But now I’ve got a whole series of classes that I’ve taught or am teaching! In Q2 I wanted to get 2 or 3 more classes on the books. By the middle of the year, I was solidly working on my 1-class-per-month cadence that I now work at. In Q3 I added the Thinkific classes to the list.
- Take some classes – I realized as I started teaching that seeing how other people teach would be valuable, so in Q2 I added this to the list. I’ve got classes through the Spring on my own books now.
- Audition for performances of some sort – This was a Q1 goal that was partially met via monthly storycrafters zooms with the Santa Fe Storytelling group. I also took a course in play writing in Q2. I look for this one to shift a bit in 2025
- Submit book proposals to publishers for non-fiction books – I’ve been submitting the Burnout book to publishers since Q1, and I’m waiting to hear back from the last of these in January.
- In Q2 I added the goal “Get at least one book onto a publisher’s 2025 calendar and sign the papers“- which I did with the unicorn book!! I successfully submitted Advanced Unicorn Theory to McFarland, and we’ll see that book go live in Q2 of 2025. (This also included sub-bullets of writing and editing a bunch of chapters, and shepherding the manuscript into peer review.)
- Also in Q2, I got really specific about the dissertation. “Reimagine and reenvision the dissertation as a book, complete its book proposal packet, and start submitting by June 30” – While I completed the re-envisioning and the proposal packet, I haven’t begun submitting the book yet, but that’s going to be a 2025 goal for sure. I need to complete the three sample chapters to my own satisfaction, and I want to apply some lessons learned to the proposal before I start sending it out.
- Complete longer-form fiction to query publishers – I completed a collection of fairy tale retellings and a novella in 2024, and have been steadily querying publishers with this work. I have gotten good feedback, but no nibbles. I am considering self-publishing a few of these in 2025. In Q2, I had added “Complete at least one novella and get it in the submission process” after the fairy tale collection was complete. I feel like I satisfied these goals.
- Also in terms of fiction, in Q2 I added Re-read all editor’s notes on the novel revision, and begin the rewrite process – I have been flirting with this process for months, but this goal will definitely trail along into 2025.
- Add 6 more books to my “Proud of Myself” shelf in 2024 – If I fudge it, I would be able to say there are 6 new things. However, I need to be honest with myself. I added FOUR new things to the shelf this year, which isn’t shabby. There are at least three more items that could be added, but I don’t have timelines for them yet. In Q3 I added marketing a few of these anthologies to the list.
- Plan 2024 garden, order trees and seeds – I planted a second plum tree this spring, and the garden worked really well. Josh got a lovely harvest of tomatoes in Albuquerque, and I got tomatoes, beans, zucchini, chile peppers, carrots, and radishes here. (The cantaloupe didn’t pass the first freeze, the spinach got sunburned, and the broccoli was eaten by insects.)
- Plus all the annual fire season safety work. This is an annual thing that happens every year. I have to harden the house, clear the 30′ closest to the house, clear up any problematic areas in the woods, and refresh and restock my evacuation box. Similarly, chopping fire wood each fall feels like it goes here (the problem areas in the forest are where I get my firewood).
- Take some trips, see my friends and family – This year, Josh and I went to California, Texas, Florida and to several national parks including Yellowstone, Arches, and Canyonlands. We saw five members of my grad school cohort along those routes, as well as a ghost town, a lot of bison, some coyote, elk, lava fields, and at least two meteor craters. Sara and I went to Wisconsin to see what there was to see and drink root beer.
- Open streams of income to support my writing for longer-term – This wasn’t something I really started in Q1, but it started to come together in Q2. Now, at the end of the year, I feel like I have a far better picture of this. From March – September I did have a roommate to help defray costs as well while I figured this out. In Q3 I added the goal “establish financial security into 2025.” which is pretty vague as goals go, but that’s mostly because this is a public blog. Let’s just say that one is achieved.
- Know the plan & budget for which conferences I intend to attend for Storytelling, Mythology, and Writing. – I did this in Q1, and attended conferences in February and July. I also spoke at conferences in May and November 2024.
- Read at least 13 books per quarter – this one I did not do well at. I did so poorly at this goal that I removed it from the Q4 list. It was just making me feel bad.
- In Q2 I added “attend a live music performance” but that never happened. I think the combination of post-covid crowd anxiety and simply not prioritizing it sort of took their toll
- In Q4 I added a few Home Projects after the roommate moved out. I finished redoing my kitchen painting and refresh project, and I set up a maker space for crafts and sewing projects.
Overall, I achieved about 80-95% of my goals through the coarse of the year. By setting them and revisiting them quarterly, I was able to avoid the things that weren’t working, or that no longer felt right (like reading goals).
Of course, there are other things that also surprise us along the way. Here are some things I accomplished in 2024 that weren’t on that list:
- Studied the Kalevala to speak on the text with a group of Finnish-Americans on Kalevala day
- The roommate to defray costs was not on the goal list, but it did the job
- Got 2 more tattoos
- Wrote 7 short stories, and a novella
- Read 15 books (non-fiction research just doesn’t read the same way.
- I learned how to make home-brewed ginger ale (and I’m addicted to it)
- I got hearing aids to help with my tinnitus
- Launched a Patreon channel
- Taught 6 classes on Morbid Anatomy (one of which sold out), plus re-fitting one to be on-demand, and one lecture (with 95 attendees!)
- I canned pickled beets and spicy garlic carrots
- Vlogged on YouTube with 9 videos (not to mention the 40 or so videos that I have made for Patreon)
- I’ve created two burnout on-demand classes, but haven’t sold them yet
- I started an LLC to make all of this an official business
What I Learned in 2024
I think it’s more useful and powerful to acknowledge what we learned from the goals, successes, failures and surprises than to list where things fell short. I learned a lot this year, and I’m going to be able to take those lessons learned with me into the new year.
When I started this year, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make ends meet. I wasn’t sure what my career would look like at the other end of this process. As I began working toward my own goals, I was struck by how hard it was to do marketing for myself, and how burned out I still am on that work. While my burnout wasn’t surprising per se, it was pretty stark to realize how even marketing for myself was nearly impossible at this point.
Another surprise that happened in the last few months of the year was the beginning of the Coaching path for my career. I wasn’t sure about this (hello, imposter syndrome), but the Universe has been providing nothing but encouragement and potential clients since I dipped a toe into this idea. It’s going to take off a lot more in January.
I was much more able to self-regulate my stress levels and my pacing of work and rest through this year, though I almost think I took too many vacations. I know that sounds a little silly, but now, as I wind down toward the end of the year, I’m looking at reducing those distractions and the time away from home and pets. Maybe it’s just because I have only had the house to myself for 8 weeks this year (!!), or because I can feel how much I want to be around my critters right now. But I am scaling that back a bit.
Even though I preach SMART goals and having specific goals that you can say “yes! I did that!” for some reason, my list for 2024 was weirdly vague. Most of my list of items that “success looks like” are very squishy, and I’m annoyed with past me for doing that.
What I’ll Take to 2025 Planning
This is a post reviewing the year prior, not envisioning the year ahead – that will happen next week. So, for now, I just want to touch on a few of the things that I learned and how that will change my next quarter’s goal list.
- Marketing / Growth goals will be very specific. Now that I’ve hit that magic 10K number that publishers look for, I’m going to be focusing next year’s growth where the money is. Either monetizable platforms (like YouTube) or direct monetization like Patreon will be my main focus for any sorts of marketing goals next year. The other major marketing goals will likely be class and book sales goals. (I have yet to sell an on demand course of any kind, so I want to learn better how to do that.) I also want to get way smarter about reusing content I’ve already created.
- Learning how to self-publish. At this point, there are some pieces that have gone the rounds (like the fairy tale collection), that I’m just ready to have out there. I just want them on my backlist. So, this will probably be a pretty quick goal in the coming months.
- Coaching seems to be scratching some itches that writing and teaching weren’t. I find it really fulfilling, and all the signs I’m getting have been very encouraging. While I’ve “soft launched” the coaching thing in 2024, I’ll be “hard” launching it for real in January. (Brace yourself!)
- As I look at Q1, my hunch is I’ll have fewer trips, and less time away from home. I’ll also probably only have one workawayer / house sitter in the Spring for a few planned excursions. This feels good after all the travel I’ve been doing this year.
- Some of 2024’s goals will carry into the New Year. The dissertation-as-book and the mythology retelling novel are both top of mind for this.
Overall, I’m satisfied with all that I achieved this year, and really proud of myself. I think I laid a lot of important foundations for the year to come. I can see a clear path to having my income be enough to support my needs, while maintaining an emergency fund and relatively low debt. I can see what my longer-term career looks like now, with the synergies that flow between writing fiction, non-fiction, classes, and coaching – how each of those activities strengthens and feeds the others.