Happy New Year! I took a few days off before starting fresh on my writing challenge again. I still have the goal of writing 109,500 words by the end of this year. So far I'm at 14,985, which isn't too bad!
At the start of the year, I always get reflective and think about what I want to work toward. There are a few changes I'll be making to my habits and work, so I'm putting some scattered thoughts together here. Some of them relate to how I'll be using the blog, but mostly you won't notice anything I'm sure :)
I'm going to spend much more of my daily writing challenge time working on informational/inspiration blog posts. This will include things like travel and gear guides, itineraries, and my best tips for getting outdoors more. You may notice my "day #" titles skip numbers as I jump through the days writing posts that aren't primarily for that writing challenge. Although I do like having a separate outlet for more stream of consciousness writing that doesn't fit into a guide-style blog post. We'll see how I balance them as the year goes on.
Since I love writing, I'm moving some of my focus to this blog and am hoping to grow it. Up until now it's primarily been an outlet for me to write or to put longer pieces of information that I can link to from my other social platforms.
Consistency (see day 4)!! This is my main focus for 2024. I tend to let my mood and events in my personal life distract me from creating consistently, which has been a big challenge in my growth. I'm ready to start taking my content creation more seriously and treat it like a "real" job. That means sleeping and waking at consistent times, putting in the hours at my desk, spending time thinking about what to make, reviewing and revising my work, and strategizing about how to improve. The end goal is that I create way more content that's helpful for you!
Now that I'm not employed by a company that provides health insurance, I'm no longer seeing the therapist that I loved. That means a lot more self-monitoring and self-work. It's difficult not having her as a sounding board to work through problems, but thankfully she equipped me with lots of strategies and knowledge. When my personal life gets hard, I'm working on staying level-headed and proactive instead of emotional and reactive. Communication is key and by god, I'll master it one day or die trying.
Something that having a nice consistent base routine gives me is the freedom to deviate and get out of my comfort zone. Knowing that I have my reliable schedule makes me feel safer branching out -- and that's what I intend to do this year! More trips, more meeting people, more saying "yes" to things that light me up. I'll just be cognizant of needing to stay on track while having fun :)
More experiments and more failures. A perk of creating consistently is there's less pressure on each piece of content to be perfect or go viral. I want 2024 to be the year of figuring out what works and what doesn't. There will be a lot more fun and finding my own voice again.
More action and less consuming. A lot of these points go hand-in-hand. I've written recently on Posting Paralysis, which is something I'm still trying to overcome. When I'm in these slumps, I find myself doomscrolling to "find inspiration" when I'm really just procrastinating. I want to shift the balance more to creating instead of consuming and not getting lost in the endless spiral of swiping for more entertainment.
More quality time with Pico. I've been neglecting this aspect of my life! In 2024, I want to teach Pico some new tricks. I'm thinking "bow" and "roll over" will be some of the first. Though he hates being on his back so rolling over might be a tricky one. I know he needs more mental and physical stimulation, so i'm looking forward to spending much more time playing with and training him this year.
There's much more going on in my mind today, but I'll leave it at that for now. It feels good to get some thoughts out and be back on my writing grind. The first part of my Maui vlog should be finished up tonight and I'll either publish it tomorrow or on my usual day of Sunday. Slowly but surely we're getting back into the flow.
I hope you all had a wonderful and safe holiday season and New Year. I'll catch you again tomorrow -- if not in this format then in some content I've written for a guide.
Thank you for reading and --
Happy adventuring,
A