What a year!
- Make rent with my business by the end of the year.
- NEAR COMPLETE! I’m actually surprised by this- I’m only about half a month short! I paid 11.5 months of rent (though not utilities, car payments, food, or anything else) just with my freelance and book earnings! Now, if we want to start getting into my pure profit, not accounting for expenses…. we’re a bit further away. But sheer gross income being just a tad shy of rent? Not bad! Not bad at all, considering it was a TOUGH year, financially and in the industry!
- Finish first draft of Headwaters.
- COMPLETE! I finished a few weeks after my UCLA Extension Romance Class, which was a tremendous experience for me for a lot of reasons, primarily because I now have a vibrant romance writing community! Together we’ve revised half of the now-complete Headwaters, along with many chapters of everyone else’s projects, we invented RoWritMo to replace the sadly disgraced NaNoWriMo, and I’m so grateful to every one of them.
- Full revision draft of Good Deal.
- COMPLETE! Finally, after two years of procrastinating! Is it good yet? Ask me next year. But it’s in MUCH better shape than it was, so that’s a win.
- Revise & explore self-publishing options for Rehabbing The Billionaire.
- COMPLETE! In that I did, in fact, indie publish this book! Get a signed copy of your very own, or read it on Kindle Unlimited or eBook. It was a tremendous learning experience, and I’m glad I did it. If you’re curious about the numbers and the biggest insights, you can join my Forced Proximity subscribers to read a full case study!
- Win NaNoWriMo 2024.
- COMPLETE! As previously mentioned, NaNoWriMo is NaNo-More, at least as far as an ethical choice to participate in for a variety of reasons. But my romance group and I made a new version just for ourselves, RoWritMo, I built a massive interconnected tracker spreadsheet, my friend Sriprae designed some gorgeous badges, and it was a success! I finished my 50k words faster than ever, in 3 weeks, so this was dEFINITELY a win. My new book (full draft completed 19 days after the challenge ended) is called The Curse Breaker, my first foray into paranormal romance, and I’m really really proud of it!
- Read 20 new authors.
- COMPLETE! In fact, I read 78 new authors this year! Subscribe to my romance novel newsletter for a full accounting of the 400+ books I read in 2024 😉
- Successfully propagate a succulent.
- UNCLEAR! But I didn’t kill any. I definitely successfully transplanted several plants, and nothing is withered in any of my propagation pots, but neither is anything flourishing? I think I needed to dry them and let the roots grow for longer…. but I don’t know if this is an entire failure or if it’ll just be extra slow!
- Order in less than twice a week, consistently.
- COMPLETE! Obviously some weeks are harder than others, depending on travel and work, but overall we order in significantly less than we used to, we’re building better systems for sharing the cooking
- Find reasons to leave the city/state at least twice a season.
- This was more of a resolution to get us out of our staying inside funk, and I am calling it complete!
- Spring:
- Malibu Creek State Park (painting and picnic for my birthday)
- Colorado in February
- Summer:
- Santa Barbara (for my brother’s wedding!)
- Colorado in August
- Fall/Winter:
- Topanga Canyon (for our friends’ wedding!)
- Oregon (for Thanksgiving!)
- Colorado (just me) (for Christmas!)
- Incorporate physical activity into my new self-employed weekly routine.
- Listen. We can’t have everything.
How was your year? Any resolutions you made and tried to complete? Let me know!
