For me, the New Year has never really seemed like the right time to set Big Goals (aka resolutions).
As a kid who always loved school, the fresh start of an academic year was the more natural goal-setting time for me, and I brought that into my adulthood by using my October birthday as a reminder to reflect.
To be honest, I actually think that the time to set yourself some New Goals is… anytime you think you’d benefit from them. You can give yourself a mental “fresh start” on the second Thursday in April as well as you can on January first.
The thought process is more important than the timing. Ordinarily, we’re under so much pressure to GO GO GO, that once in a while, it’s valuable to slow down, look at what you’ve been up to lately, and see whether your efforts match your priorities.
For some people, the last week in December is sort of a quiet fallow period that’s the BEST time for that, but for a lot of people, it’s already full of family and friends, or travel, or simply keeping the kids occupied until they go back to school. And to anyone who’s feeling too overwhelmed to be thinking about goals right now, I salute you, and reassure you that it doesn’t have to be now.
Having said, that, I’m breaking decades of precedent this year. I spent September and October in a really productive flow on a couple of different creative and professional projects, so I just kept going, and didn’t stop for my usual reflection.
It wasn’t until December rolled around that I realized… I’ve been pretty much non-stop for all of 2023, and I needed a BREAK. I’ve spent the last several weeks doing lots of little things that needed to get done but didn’t need my brain at its best. And I’m spending the last week in December mostly offline, and mostly resting.
I DON’T have goals for 2024 yet. Not even for January. I need a little bit more stillness first. When I come back next week, I’ll start slow, I think. Make sure I’m pointed the right direction before I build up a head of steam. I do have some basic priorities, though, which will shape the actual goals I create:
- I’m querying a novel, and still resisting the urge to continue to constantly tinker with it. (It has been tinkered with incessantly already) If I get interesting feedback, it might find its way back into my creative focus, but it’ll be starting as a mostly administrative priority.
- I have an old project that’s asking for an overhaul. I put the manuscript on a shelf two years ago, because I wasn’t sure what it needed next. After re-reading it, I have a bunch of ideas, but I’ll probably end up treating it like brand new project, instead of a revision. A brand new project that happens to have a couple hundred pages of “pre-writing” to help ease the blank page syndrome.
- I’m also going to start submitting short stories to contests and magazines. I’ve had my eye on this goal for a while, and I’ve spent the last year churning out short story drafts, and sending some of them to a critique group, to improve my skills. There’s still progress to be made, but I’m ready to add the additional pressure of deadlines and potentially wider audiences to the mix.
And that’s it. That’s a lot, and it also just barely encompasses all the ambitions my more ambitious self wants to add. These aren’t goals yet. Just priorities. Areas of emphasis. The goals will come later.
I wish you a very happy new year. If you have new goals, I hope they’re inspirational. If not, I hope you continue forward with whatever has worked for you in the past and find a way to let go of the things that haven’t. Be well.