Having written a post about goals back in January, you’d think I would remember to go back to it sometime in June or July and review. No. Not at all. Not until Quinn brought it up through hir blog post and the Smutlancer chat. Frankly, I tend to do a lot of “out of sight, out of mind” with my work and forgot to make a note to do an update this summer when I wrote the original post. So thanks Quinn for prompting this post since it’s important and the first half of 2020 has been…well, it’s been something.
The Goals
I split goals between main ones and side ones where main goals are the ones I want to 100% accomplish by the end of the year and side ones are kind of bonuses or things I feel need less literal work. You can read all of them here in my January post. Primarily, I wanted to focus on self-growth and improving my relationship with myself.
Updating Them
- Read more kink books – I’ve actually read 48 books this year so far and have blown past my original goal of 20! A big chunk of this has been rereading an old childhood favorite series and then reading all the other series in the same universe that has come out since then. I joined Scribd which has also helped immensely with this since it’s a subscription rather than me buying books constantly. I’ve only read 3 kink related books though which is an area I need to work on.
- Be more consistent at yoga – I’ve found that I’m actually capable of doing yoga for 30min which was my original goal, but I’m struggling hard with doing it semi-frequently and consistently. I have weeks where I’ll do it once or twice and then a month goes by and I haven’t done any. This is something I need to get serious about since I know it will improve my sciatica pain. There’s definitely a mental block here though.
- Journaling – I’ll be honest – I haven’t done a single page of slave journaling. I haven’t written much about my dynamic here on my blog even! I did pick up my copy of The Artist’s Way a couple weeks ago and have been developing the habit of Morning Pages. This is also an area I struggle with consistency but I’m trying. I have a difficult relationship with journaling in general though so I knew this was going to be a difficult one.
- Cooking – I don’t care! I don’t care right now about what we’re cooking or about my cookbooks or grocery shopping or anything else to do with food. We live rurally and already cooked at home 90% of the time but the pandemic has increased that and I’m tired of it, y’all. I think everyone is though. Maybe later this year or next year I can get more serious about it again.
- Less time on social media – I’ve been doing okay at this one. I’ve deleted Facebook from my phone! I’ve deleted and redownloaded and deleted and redownloaded Twitter. I’ve left off my Queer Courtesan Twitter and just read my vanilla one from my phone, I’ve added QC Twitter and read both. Twitter is a time-suck! But I have started to teach myself crochet and doing some of The Artist’s Way activities, playing a lot of video games, reading books, etc. So it’s getting there and this definitely remains a goal of mine. My mental health needs it and so does my art.
- Playing with makeup – Another one like cooking, I don’t care right now! I’m tired and have a whole bunch of other stuff going on and we’re not going out anywhere either so who cares! One day I’ll pick it up again.
Blog Goals
I didn’t include any blog goals in my original post for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of them weren’t solidified yet and were very vague. And two, in the past, I have shared goals of mine and then not carried through and it’s kind of embarrassing. It’s a combination of a lot of things – some of which I’ve developed coping mechanisms for over the years – but it still sucks to say I want to do X and then it never happening and not having a great reason for why. Also, who wants to talk about money? Not me.
But I want to share a few of them because these are in progress and I’m feeling good about it all.
- Blog twice a week – Consistency is my downfall in many many things but this has been improving steadily, even if it’s been a big of a struggle. I’m aiming for a new post every Tuesday/Thursday with flexibility and have been successful in filling out my editorial calendar with a schedule, even if I don’t hit every planned blog post (like June!).
- Develop digital products – This is a little less further along than I’d like at this point in time but it’s still churning. I want to develop power-exchange focused workbooks for both sides of the slash and sell them. There are some other ideas I have too. Creating an income is important to me and a route to “passive” income would be even better
- Pitch more – I spent a summer three years ago doing nothing but learning how to pitch, how to get clients, reading everything you can imagine about how to freelance write. And then got scared and never sent anything out. So I need to get over myself and just do more pitching. Writing QC for the last year has proven that I’m more than capable of writing great things.
- Refocus QC – This is a very recent thing but I feel that a lot of my content has drifted all over the place and, originally, I really wanted to blog about power exchange. I wanted to write about how this relationship style has been the best thing I’ve ever found and about the trials and pitfalls of navigating it. I’ve drifted into a lot of queer stuff (which was on purpose in June) and I want to nudge my content back into BDSM, back into kink.
Well, this has gotten much longer than I originally planned but I’ve never claimed to be a concise writer! Besides, if I can’t ramble about myself for 1000 words on my own blog, where can I?
So what are y’all doing about your yearly goals right now? Have you stuck to them as a source of grounding in the chaos or let everything go and just focused on surviving? Let me know in the comments!
