My word for 2015 was CREATE.
I set out to stop putting off my side-hustle and start working hard on what mattered to me: creating rather than consuming. I had big plans to finish a novel, but my real goal that I really only ever said out loud to myself was that I was going to blog every Tuesday and Thursday in 2015. It is so easy to make blogging into the thing that gets forgotten or put off as the week gets busier. As with most things, it is easier to break a promise to yourself than it is to break one to other people – at least it is for me.
So I said CREATE would be my word and it was, with blogging twice per week my way of measuring it. It’s a little harder to measure whether or not a novel is “done” – or if you are even making progress. So blogging it was, and up to today I have been successful: I have blogged every single Tuesday and every single Thursday of 2015 (I already have my post scheduled for this Thursday, so I’m declaring it a big WIN).
I did it.
I did it for no one else but myself.
I make no money from this blog (or at least as close to zero as can be rounded down to nothing, really). It has not been a client-generator for me (yet) or even a traffic generator (I usually see less than 30 views per day). It really and truly did nothing for me this year other than make me happy to have accomplished it.
It was both easier and harder to accomplish than I thought. For starters, the sheer number of posts – 104 total – is kind of a lot when I lump them all together. It didn’t seem like much to say twice per week, but 104 posts? That seems like a large number.
But I did it. For no other reason than that I promised myself I would.
Somewhere around June it started to feel automatic. I knew without having to think about it that I need to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Period. The End. Some days, that post came down to the wire and I was finishing it just before I walked out the door at 7:45 in the morning. Other times, I’d have two full weeks of posts queued up and ready to go (and then of course I would get lazy and not write for two weeks. Human condition, and all.).
What This (Somewhat Strange) Goal Accomplished
Discipline.
I’m good at putting everything else before my own projects, so this goal was a good reminder to constantly keep moving forward with my own self-imposed deadlines. It’s far too simple to prioritize work for the office (paying work), time with family (which is important, don’t get me wrong), and even just taking a night off to chill.
Prioritization.
Instead of working on whatever side project I felt like working on, I found it easier and easier to internalize deadlines and know what I needed to work on when. It was refreshing to not get so overwhelmed, but to really sort through tasks and work on what was most important in the moment.
Accomplishment.
I’m not going to brush this off as not a big deal: it was. Committing to something and not backing out even when it would have been easy to make an excuse to do so was really and truly rewarding. I feel like I crossed a really big hurdle for myself, in doing something that seems pretty simple but was actually hard.
Progress.
Was every post out of 104 a home run? No. In fact, I would say less than half of them were really exciting/earth shattering/something that caught people’s attention. But instead of holding back until I was a “perfect blogger” (hint: no such thing), I clicked “Publish” and pushed a piece of myself out into the world each day, for no other reason than that I needed to do it.
Also, habits are not formed in a day. Or a week and sometimes not even a month. It took me until JUNE for this to be automatic… why would anything else be any different? I need to remind myself this when I get frustrated that I don’t settle into routines as quickly as I think I ought.
So, Goal Accomplished. What’s Next?
I’m not sure.
I’m still plotting out 2016, and I’m giving myself the rest of the week to do it. I know I’ll be making some changes, I’m just not entirely sure what they are at the moment. I’m tackling a new joint project with a friend (top secret – sharing soon!), and I really would like to finally finish that novel.
I’m giving myself a week to think about it.
What about you? What are you planning to change up in 2016?
