2025 in Review and 2026 Goals

It struck me while I was writing this that I do not yet have a public entry mentioning my mother's passing. I have written about her extensively in daily access-locked entries but not much has been in the public monthly reviews. Mom's health continued to decline through December. She passed away early in the morning of January 5. I don't know what else to say, but I wanted something to be in a public-facing entry for the friends who don't have a Dreamwidth account.

Goals 2025

Move to North Carolina: I have done this! I may even have completed all the bureaucracy associated with moving. I'm not sure if I had to de-register my car with Missouri.

Assist parents: I did this thing too.

Collect the rest of my Apothecaria Journal into epubs: I made two more epubs out of my Apothecaria journal. You can download the epubs:  here https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1qXXxnUATXH2LFMhaOr35TbF_NyuOGJY1 . I didn't edit this project because it's way too annoying to edit individual jpgs for each page. While I was writing the journal, I wrote two scenes between Umbral and Magnus that aren't part of the journal and aren't illustrated. Those weren't posted with the serial, but they're included in the epubs. 

Independent of my Apothecaria journal, complete six writing/publishing stages: 

I completed 5 stages:

For A Wolf-Shifter's Pack: finished initial edits, final edits, cover creation, and layout/publishing

For The Jewel-Strewn Night: finished initial edits.

I worked on some other things. I made some progress on drafting A Dragon's Secret, did a very small amount of initial edits on A Game to You, and made meaningful progress on outlining a new book. None of this is complete. None of it is even halfway done. 

I wrote a total of 45,963 words of fiction in all of 2025. The last year where I wrote less fiction than this was 2014. From 2016 through 2024, I wrote more fiction in November than I wrote in all of last year.

Last year sucked hard for writing, is what I'm saying. It sucked for every stage of the publishing process, for that matter. I set my goals low because I knew 2025 would be bad, and I still didn't meet those goals.

I am not disappointed in myself, but I am disappointed with RL. I thought we'd talked, RL. I thought you were gonna be better than this. Maybe not a lot better than this, but a little. You gotta make an effort here, RL. 

Complete monthly updates

I've been slower about doing these in 2025, I think because the hyper-detailed posts about my life make me feel like the month-in-review is unnecessary. Like 'do I read the book, do I really need the Cliff Notes for it too?' But the review posts give a nice summary view that's hard to pick out from all the everyday details. I am glad that I've kept doing them. Despite how often I felt like "I got nothing done this month either" was the takeaway. 

Also, looking back at the summary reminds me that while my mother's declining health was far and away the worst part of 2025, it wasn't the only difficult part. I had the gallbladder attack in January and the surgery in March and the move in April, too. 

Be gentle with myself

Yeah, I think I'm doing all right on this one. Like yes, I am frustrated that I didn't write or edit more in 2025. But I'm not frustrated with me. It's not 'oh, I should've tried harder.' There was a lot going on. I'm not beating myself up over it. I'm not beating myself up over the things I failed to do in RL, either. It is what it is.

Stretch Goals 2025

Keep up with the art habit now that Apothecaria's complete

I spent far less time drawing in 2025 than I did when I was illustrating daily (fictional) journal entries. But I spent enough time on art that I completed an art summary by month image: https://photos.app.goo.gl/iztciamHArjYBtVV7 . I did an absurd amount of fan art for Olive, my favorite Time Princess character, and I have no regrets. Doing more fan art of her this month. It's all good.

Exercise 15+ times per month

I did not succeed at this every month, but I'm giving this an honorable mention because, under the circumstances, I did freaking awesome at exercise. I exercise 14 times in January (because gall bladder attack), counted minimum effort in February (because gall bladder sapping all energy), counted moving prep in lieu of exercise in April, and exercised 8 times in May (because COVID and Mom's broken leg). For the other 8 months, I exercised more than 15 times. I may well have averaged over 15 times per month even if I count February and April as total losses. Given everything that went on this year, that I didn't give up on physical activity entirely is a triumph. 

Try some more journaling games

I started "Reincarnated as the Unlovable Villainess", and while I only wrote up three of the thirty days it's meant to run, I had fun with those days. 

Write 50 blog posts

The vast majority of my posts were access-locked this year, so it's not obvious to people who don't use Dreamwidth, but I wildly overachieved on this. I posted a detailed account of almost every day in 2025. It's wild. I didn't post each day -- I'd often post a batch of days at once -- but I have 160+ entries total. Not the kind of "essays on a particular topic of interest" that I think of for a blog, but whatever. I wrote a ton of nonfiction here. My diary entries probably come to 500,000 words; more than I've ever written before. It's become a habit I don't want to quit.

Goals for 2026

Modest goals seems like the plan for 2026, too. 

• Provide care for Dad
• Assuming Dad's health does not precipitously decline or some other new disaster: complete five writing/publishing stages
• Complete monthly updates
• Read 2 books 
• Be gentle

Stretch Goals 2026

• Keep up with the habit tracker most days
• Do some art every month so I can make an art summary at the end of the year
• Exercise 15+ times per month
• Try some more journaling games. Maybe a short one.
• Finish the "Villainess" journaling game.
• Redraw an old picture that I'd put considerable effort into at the time
• Promote my books a little
• Write 50+ blog posts
• Track reading
• [Open space, feel free to add stretch goals as desired]

 

Details

Caregiving

Dad is pretty self-sufficient in many ways, and most things he really needs help with (laundry, showering, general cleaning) his aide or the housekeeping service takes care of. Pretty sure I spend less time caregiving for Dad than I did for Lut in last few years of Lut's life. But it would not be realistic for Dad to live alone. He needs someone who can remember things for him, as well as someone who can make appointments for him and suchlike. 

Writing/Publishing Stages

The stages are:

• Outlining
• Drafting
• Initial Edit
• Final Edit
• Cover Creation
• Layout/publishing

So five of these might look like:

• The Jewel-Strewn Night: final edits, cover creation, layout/publishing
• A Dragon's Secret: Finish drafting
• Finish a new outline

It doesn't have to be these exact ones. It can be any five stages. I can finish drafting a different book, or editing A Game to You, or complete five different outlines. Whatever it takes. Also, cover creation counts as a stage whether I do it myself or hire someone to do it. Hiring someone is also work. Different work, but nonetheless work.

I finished five stages in 2025. 

Five stages is not enough to take a book from beginning to published. From 2016 through 2024, I did more than this every year. Generally a lot more than this. I've averaged two books a year since I started publishing in 2015. In most respects, I have far less going on in 2026 than I did in my most productive years. In 2018, when I published three books, I was working 32 hours a week and providing care for Lut, who'd already been diagnosed with cancer. In 2026, I'm retired, and while I'm still caregiving, I am caregiving-while-wealthy -- which is doing it on easy mode -- and my father is arguably healthier than Lut was. 

But 2026 Me is traumatized by nine years of caregiving and watching four loved ones grow sicker and eventually die. And wondering when my 88-year-old father will take a sudden turn for the worse. And that's not even mentioning the worsening state of national and global politics. There's no sense in making a comparison.

Right now, five stages feels pretty ambitious. Finish drafting a book? In this life? Idk man. Still. I want it on the goal list.

Reading

I saw a post from someone who was like "I set my reading goal at 2 books one year and I read like 13 and the next year I set it at 3 books because let's not get overly ambitious about this." Y'know, I can probably manage two books in a year. Maybe I'll even finish the webserial for Housekeeper of the Dungeon finally. (I kinda forgot it existed until I looked at StoryGraph recently and saw it on my Current Reads list). Let's not get overly ambitious on this one.

Track Reading

I've been using StoryGraph to track what I've finished; it's a little clunky but not to bad. It's hard to use for first-reading things, because I'm reluctant to enter an unpublished book that the author plans to publish later, but for most other cases, it's fine. I noticed it has a "Paused" status, so I may start using that with all my Tapas manwha that I can't finish reading because the rest is not yet written/illustrated/published/translated (I seldom know the exact source of the bottleneck.) I'm not holding myself to that, because I've started so many manwha on Tapas.