Looking Forward to New Year's Resolutions
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My mum asked me at the weekend what my new year’s resolution was going to be. I reminded her that I had set myself a ‘new year’s resolution’ in September. Well, it was a new school year resolution. With my daughter now at secondary school and walking herself to school and back along with various friends, I had resolved to keep the house tidy at all times so she could always bring a friend back home without me having that mad dash to tidy up.
Resolutions take some working on, so as far as how it is going, let’s not delve too deeply. (I’m a creative, I’m meant to be messy!)
We are still a couple of weeks away from having to set our intentions for the new year, though my point is, resolutions can be made any day, any week, any month. We can resolve tomorrow to do something differently, better, or at all.
For example, it was October 2022 when I resolved to open a book shop. I had never done anything like that before, I had not worked in retail since I was a teenager and I knew nothing of the systems that needed to be in place to make that happen. In the new year, I’ll write a piece telling you how I did it, and how you could do it too, after all, isn’t opening a book shop the dream?
But the book shop that I did open was a pop-up. And sometimes I think it is best to start small, or at least with smaller goals, it makes them more manageable, much more achievable, and less likely to fail.
For example, if I give myself a day to clean the house, I’ll just procrastinate, wander around, sitting down, looking at my phone, and by the end of the day I won’t have acheived anything. If I give myself an hour to clean the house though, I will whizz around like a Tasmanian devil and it will be done.
The best way to set a good new year writing resolution is to join my Write With Me Club starting in January, but for those who have already done that, below I’m going you ideas on how to set yourself some resolutions in your writing life that are more manageable, whether that is fitting them into you life, having a different approach to a problem, or not setting yourself up for failure.
Here are my five tips: