Justine Manzano Before I begin, I would love to wish all of my readers Happy Holidays. Whatever you celebrate, I hope you enjoy your time and as we approach that countdown to a fresh start, I hope you can look back at this year with happiness in your heart, and look forward to a year filled with new and interesting possibilities.
OK, so I lied last week and said that I’d be writing about Bad Guys this month, but I won’t. We’ll get back to that next year. In the meantime, I’d like to discuss something a little more on theme. New Years Resolutions. Which I hate. When you sit around in December and look at your life over the last year, New Years Resolutions make you feel cranky. They are rigid goal posts, planted in the ground to remind you of all the stuff you were supposed to do, but drove right on by.
So, I don’t make resolutions. I make possibilities. I ask myself, “This time next year, where would you ideally like to be?” And I remember that word, ideally. Because it is important. Life is usually far from ideal and a lot can happen in a year. As long as we don’t make resolutions, and list ideals, we can keep a clear eye on the list as potential goals, and not as failures when we don’t hit each of those goals within a twelve month period.
So, what are my goals for 2014? I have a list.
1) Logan will be starting Kindergarten next fall, so I’d like to hope that, by the end of 2014, I will have a decent routine going after the great big change in the status quo. Here’s hoping that by next December, I’m not still racing into my office late everyday because I still haven’t figured out how to get him to school on time.
2) I hope to be able to better manage my time. I seem to have a real problem doing everything I want to do. Which is not for lack of trying. So, I’m trying to become better at procrastinating less, and staying more on schedule so I can have more time to see people and to get out and try new things.
3) I plan to manage my money better. I went through quite the financial crisis this year, and I don’t intend for it to happen again. So I’m trying to become smarter about how I manage funds, which means not spending extravagantly, and not offering to buy for everyone like I have a million dollars. I don’t know why I do that! But thankfully, nobody who loves me seems to allow me to anymore without a fight. Thanks, supportive people!
4) I continue to shop out my short stories in the hopes of publication. I haven’t been getting any bites, but hopefully I will be celebrating another short story publication in the year 2014.
5) I would like to finish revisions on The Order of the Key and start shopping it out to agents/publishers by the end of 2014.
6) I want to get in better shape. Do not read that as “lose weight.” I just want to be more healthy, i.e. get my migraines under control, get my eating under control, exercise more. Just generally become a more healthful person.
7) I would like to complete at least my first round of revisions on Legally Insane. I do not expect to complete the revisions for this right away – the book turned out being about double the size it was meant to be, so I know this set of revisions is going to be extensive.
8) I have completed a prequel short story for the series I’m working on, Keys and Guardians (The Order of the Key is the intro book to that), and I would like to complete edits, begin shopping it out, and, preferably, have that published by the end of the year.
9) I have also recently started a new short story that I hope to have completed soon.
So that is my list of goals for next year. This should probably give you a decent idea of what I will be babbling about over the next year. Stay tuned for my end of year post, my year in review. 2013 was a sweet year. 2014, here I come!