2022 in Review

2022 Goal Scorecard

Publish two books

Oops. I published Demon’s Alliance in October and will publish Angel’s Grace this month, so did not quite make this one. Grade: (see below)

Finish drafting two books

Failed at this one too. I completed Alien Peacelords but my next draft, A Dragonling’s Family, is only 65% complete. Grade: (see below)

Finish outlining two books

Also failed! I outlined A Dragonling’s Family but I’m not even close to finishing another outline. Grade: (see below)

See Below

So my first inclination is to give myself an F for all three of these goals: the goal was “two” and the number I did was “one”, that’s 50%, that’s an F.

My inner teacher -- like, the part of me that actually taught college classes -- thinks this is nonsense and rebels at the idea of scoring “partially complete” the same as “entirely incomplete.” She thinks that I should get something like this:

Published books: 100% for Demon’s Alliance, 90% for Angel’s Grace, for an A average.
Drafted books: 100% for Alien Peacelords, 65% for A Dragonling’s Family, for a B-
Outlined books: 100% for A Dragonling’s Family, 20% for misc notes made towards outlining another book, for a D-

This is probably more reasonable but I also feel like it’s too generous for “I only finished half of what I planned to do”? So idk. It’s fine, though. I knew back in October that I only had time left to complete one or two of these goals, and I chose the course most likely to fail all three because that was the right choice for overall productivity.

Continue caregiving for Lut

Nailed it! Grade: A+

Track food & exercise, on most days

I tracked this fairly well on 297 days, made some kind of guess at it for 48 days, and gave up for 20 days. So 81% of days were ones where I tracked. That is well over “most days.” Grade: A.

Post monthly updates

Like a BOSS. Grade: A.

Put month & year goal list in my bullet journal so I'll remember to look at it. Also, look at it.

I was pretty good about this one, but only pretty good. Grade: B+

Stretch Goals

Practice illustration on some kind of regular basis

According to my bullet journal, I spent 159 hours on art this year, or about 26 minutes per day on average. I’m gonna call this one accomplished. Good job, me. Keep up the good work.

Paint

Most of my illustration practice was digital painting, so I will count this accomplished as well. I even completed several digital paintings that I actually like!

Keep track of how many books I finish or DNF

I think I mentioned on Dreamwidth whenever I finished reading something. Let’s see.

Read:
The Wonder Engine, by T. Kingfisher
Maus, by Art Spiegelman
Kobolds in Space by terrycloth
Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree
Warden, by Delyth Angharad
Jubilant, by Galadriel Coffeen & Anneliese Knop
The first three Haley and Nana novellas, by MCA Hogarth

DNF:
I mentioned three in February so that might’ve been it?

My Kindle app has turned into a completely unnavigable mess. This process began several years ago, because I would toss random samples and cheap/free books into it, and I would not remember what any of them were about or why I had gotten them. It is now complete because Amazon merged my Kindle with Lut’s when we linked our accounts together, and Amazon does not let you sort by who bought a title.

The result is that Amazon shows almost 700 titles under my account. It has a handful of different sorting algorithms, all of them utterly useless for browsing. If I know the title and author I want to find, I can enter that in search to find it. If I remember “didn’t I buy a cool polyam romance that has cheese in it at some point?” Nope. There is no chance I will ever find it. I can’t even find a book I bought a month ago if I don’t remember the author/title, because Lut has bought thirty titles since then and the kindle apps scroll function is agonizing.

This is honestly so annoying that I may finally quit buying books on Amazon at all. Like what is even the point when it’s so hard to find them again? I know that I can sort books into categories but the tools for doing so are painful and tedious to use. And the web interface -- the logical place to do sorting since I can use a keyboard and a full-size monitor -- does not even acknowledge the existence of categories.

I would switch to Google Play but I think most of the authors I read don’t sell on that platform. Google Play isn’t any better at organization but I have fewer titles there so there’s less to scroll through. x.x

Anyway, I guess I’m supposed to use Storygraph or something to track what books are TBR/read/DNF, since any retailers I could actually pay money to buy books from have zero interest in making this possible.

Grade: ticked off that a giant corporation is not tracking this for me

Seriously giant corporations give me year-end reports on fifty-eight things I could not care less about, why can’t any of my e-readers tell me how many books I read and how many books I started but didn’t finish?

I’m looking at you too, Hoopla, don’t think you’re any better at this than the rest of them.

Exercise 15+ times per month

I averaged 16! Good job, me.

Use bullet journal to track what I’ve done, on most days

I have entries for 360 of 365 days! I often reconstructed days, so I’m sure I’ve missed recording stuff I did. Still, giving myself full credit for this one because that was well over “most days”.

Write 50 blog posts

I wrote a total of 33 blog posts (note: some are not posted publicly). So I didn’t hit this goal but I did average an extra post or two a month, beyond the usual monthly update. No bonus points for this one, but I wanted to note it.

Goals for 2023

I liked last year’s goals so I’m mostly just reusing them.

• Continue caregiving for Lut
• Publish two books
• Finish drafting two books
• Finish outlining two books
• Track food & exercise, on most days
• Post monthly updates.
• Put month & year goal list in my bullet journal so I'll remember to look at it. Also, look at it.
• Be gentle with myself

The "be gentle with myself" goal starts with not changing my "two published/drafted/outlined" goals even though I've got one book that'll be published by, like, next week. "Three published books this year" is entirely reasonable: Angel's Grace is coming out in January, while I have finished drafts already for both Alien Peacelords and A Game to You. That's fine. If I go above the goals, I can give myself extra credit. I'm not changing the goals.

Stretch Goals

• Practice illustration on a regular basis (say, 10 hours per month).
• Finish some paintings that I like
• Figure out how to measure personal improvement at art (I want a goal of “work at improving” but I think first I have to figure out how to tell if I’m improving.)
• Read at least a few pages of fiction (or a nonfiction book) I didn’t write, on most days
• Keep track of how many books I finish or DNF
• Exercise 15+ times per month
• Use bullet journal to track what I’ve done, on most days
• Promote my books a little
• Write 50 blog posts