Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Mine went all too quickly, as it usually does. I’m not sure I’ll recover until February… maybe. I need a vacation after our break. Do you ever feel that way?

With New Years always come new goals. I’ve often written down my word of the year, or goals for each corner of my life. But more and more I find that these things tend to offer pressure over perseverance. It wasn’t always this way, but the older I get… the more it feels like lists and goals are just things that scream “You didn’t finish me!”

All the same, I decided to take a moment and think of my goals. I tried to make them simple, and tried to make them things that I really, deeply want to do and accomplish this year. Not all of them are writing or reading related, so I’ll just list the smaller handful here.

2022 Author & Reading Goals

  • Read 15-30 Books
  • Work on one of my books that has been set aside for far too long.
  • Promote What Did You Do With Maile? to the best of my abilities.
  • Get at least three bookstores to carry copies of What Did You Do With Maile? in shop.
  • Query agents with one project consistently.
  • Blog, Newsletter, IG at least twice a month.

I read somewhere that someone said if you don’t set big goals, you sell yourself short. Well, maybe I’m up for selling myself short in 2022, because it is all about GRACE.

With all of these things, I have many goals as a mother, wife, and individual. I feel like the new year has this way of rolling out all these things we want so badly to do, only to remind us that things take TIME. Not just a year. Time.

I have a journal that I started in 2019. I was going through a hard time: miscarriage, my husband left his job, we were moving with no idea where we would end up, our house wasn’t selling… it was a mess, y’all. But I wrote some things down. Some big goals to me at the time. They weren’t just for the year, but YEARS to come. I still look at them, and I’m so thankful I wrote them down. I’m going to share them here.

Big Goals & Dreams

  • Baby 2020 (my daughter was born July 2020- this was such a big one after my miscarriage)
  • In shape 2022 (I don’t just mean to be in shape because the world says so, but to take care of myself/health, and it’s at the forefront of this year for me)
  • Business 2025 (I have a small Etsy shop right now that you can check out, and also have my new little publisher for my own works that you can check out as well.)
  • Published Book 2027 (originally, this was meant for traditional publishing, and I’m still thinking of pursuing that for my novels.)
  • New Zealand 2032 (This is the place my husband and I want to go the most, and it would be for our 25th wedding anniversary.)

These are the big ones. And I don’t intend to sell myself short, but keep the long-term in mind.

I hope your 2022 is full of blessings, rest, and grace in all areas of your life! Thanks for sticking around.