This time last year, when I was setting my goals for the first year of the twenties, I didn’t have this site or even any social media and I didn’t write my goals down so I have no record of what I actually intended for the year. Although given what 2020 brought with it, they probably wouldn’t have meant a lot anyway.
Bearing that in mind, here’s a little review of what I recall aiming for and how it went.
My aim was to finish my book.
It didn’t happen. I made significant progress but I didn’t get to write that all important “The End”. Although it’s not unexpected. I’d have had to write more than 50k and I’ve never written that much in a year. True, I’ve never taken writing that seriously before this year but still. That’s a lot.
One of the reasons I didn’t make more progress was I got sidetracked. By Social Media (Twitter and Instagram) and building this ‘ere site. All excellent, necessary abe enjoyable parts of being a ‘writer’ online but not at the expense of doing the actual writing.
Fully plot out the first in my murder mystery series.
As a pantser this one filled me with dread, and that may indeed have contributed to my tardiness in this area, because as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t manage that. I made some progress in plotting this one, and I found an overall arc, or sorts, for the whole series which is unexpected and happy-making. But as of writing this post, my Deco detective is languishing in the recesses of my mind.
Fall in love again with social media.
I absolute love spending time on Twitter and Instagram. I’m there every day (give or take a few here and there). But I suck at posting. I have a gazillion ideas and as soon as I open the apps, or my notes, I can’t seem to capture any of them. Maybe it’s the idea of being ‘seen’ that’s scaring them away; maybe I’m just anti social. I don’t know, either way I’m flaky as … Nope my analogy making brain cells have taken a break … flaky as a flaky thing
Build a website.
If you’re reading this, I think you can guess how this goal worked out ?
There were probably others, but since I didn’t write them down I can’t be certain. Overall, given the extreme circumstance we’ve all been under this year, I’m pretty happy with how I did.
What I learnt from 2020…
…is that I’m not alone. As someone who has a chronic health condition my life is often, and certain,y has been for the last few years, small and limited. There are no big parties, or get togothers with friends and family. I’m home almost all of the time and rarely, if ever, venture out. It’s a personal lockdown life. And it’s fine, it happens to goodness knows how many people and there are worse, many worse, things in the world. And then the rest of the world (seemingly) went into lockdown and joined me and for the first time people understood the life I have and I realised how lonely it had been surrounded by people who didn’t. Even though the majority haven’t given a second thought to the people for whom lockdown normal. I saw how hard people found it and realised that maybe I’m stronger than I’d thought because it had never affected me as badly, maybe that’s the upside of feeling ill, you don’t feel well enough to want to be out and about.
But what surprised me most about this year was how I felt when lockdown was lifted — slightly crushed. Because it didn’t lift for me. I can’t see how it will ever lift for me. And … and I feel I should have a conclusion to draw from that, some sort of lesson or resolution to take forward with positivity but I don’t. It’s messy. It just is what it is.
How about you?
Do you set goal? If so how did you do? And if not, how tell me how your year went?
