The end of the year is a funny time, because it always feels like some invisible marker. A finish line you have to cross before the clock strikes midnight otherwise you’ve failed.
And, this year, I can’t help but feel like I’ve come up short.
It’s been a tough year for me, both in terms of writing and in life in general, which means a lot of things I planned didn’t turn out how I wanted them to. On paper, I achieved almost all the goals I wrote at the beginning of 2018. Looking back at my blog post I wanted to:
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Finish editing #PoisonMS
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Write a draft of TOF.
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Hopefully squeeze another draft in there (either #MermaidPirates or OKAP).
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Blog more!
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Keep persevering with writing even when it feels like too much (this is probably the most important one!)
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And then just a few small things like finish my Senior History Thesis and graduate college…
I did finish editing my Poison MS, as well as doing a big rewrite on my other manuscript. I didn’t manage to write draft of TOF, but I did start working on a different project as well as starting a graphic novel script. Okay, I definitely did not succeed at blogging more (as this might be my first post since January 2018…oops). But I did manage to finish my history thesis (even if it nearly killed me) and I graduated from college. And I didn’t give up, despite many nights of writing that I got through solely thanks to ice cream.
So why have I come to the end of the year feeling like I haven’t achieved what I wanted to?
Here’s the problem: when I listed out my goals at the beginning of last year, I dutifully only included things that were within my control. That’s how you’re supposed to make goals without setting yourself up for disappointment or frustration. But the things is that didn’t change the fact that in the back of my head I knew what my real goal was. Even if logically I knew it was something I couldn’t control, that didn’t stop it from being there. It’s not something I said out loud–I’m not sure I even consciously admitted it to myself.
Even typing it now is a little scary, but I wanted to sell a book (predictable, I know), and since I didn’t it’s hard to end the year without feeling like I should have done more. Maybe I should have done that extra pass through my manuscript, or worked a bit harder on this character arc. My writer brain has no shortage of things it can tell me I didn’t do well enough.
I tried to focus on the aspects of that goal that I could control: I did a big rewrite based on editor feedback, I worked on a new book, I didn’t bug my agent every ten minutes (mostly…). I had some close calls and some great highs this year in terms of book stuff, but in the end my annoying perfectionist writer brain won’t accept anything less than that secret goal it put forth at the beginning of the year.
It’s so strange to think that it was only in January 2016 that I set my goal to write a full manuscript. As simple as that, no thoughts to querying or publication. Just write “the end”. If I could go back and tell that Alexandra where I am now, she’d never believe it.
But that’s the thing about goals: the finish line is constantly moving and there’s always something bigger you want to aim for. In some ways that’s good, it pushes you and motivates you to keep working, but it’s not so good when it means you spend the last week of the year feeling like you failed.
So this year I’m going to try something new. It might now work, but it’s clear that (for me) setting manageable goals I can control doesn’t always work, because that doesn’t get rid of the secret bigger goals in the back of my head. So this year I’m following something I saw Julie C. Dao write about on her Insta story. I’m going to have one set of goals that I can control, and one set of dreams.
As well as trying to not be so hard on myself, I’m going to allow myself to write down those big, scary dreams and acknowledge them. I’m hoping that by looking at them in the light, instead of trying to pretend those aren’t my real goals, that will mean that at the end of the year I can see that at least I sent those dreams into the world. I worked hard for them and didn’t lose sight of my aims, even if I haven’t achieved them yet.
I’ll leave you with this great twitter thread from the incomparable Sabaa Tahir, which definitely helped when I was feeling blue last week.
How do you go about dealing with guilt over not meeting your goals? Does your brain like to sneak in those extra secret goals too? Tell me about it in the comments!