Preparing for a new year is always so exciting for everyone, or rather most everyone. We all want to do something new and different. We want to make big plans and follow schedules and routines. The new year is the best time to start fresh, because that is what we have all been taught to do. We make resolutions and promises we fully intend to keep, but in the end we seem to fail. Do you ever wonder why we fail to keep our well planned goals in order?

I think after three months of being out of work for surgery on my ankle I was able to assess the situation. I always take on too much, I want to do too much. I want to hit it hard out of the gate and I lose traction. I stumble and get annoyed and I give up. I don’t want to take small steps to get to the finish line, I want to take a leap and just land there. I am from the generation of instant gratification. I have become the hare in the story of the tortoise and the hare. Run fast and get it done.

This applies to so much in any person’s life. We get burnt out when we focus solely on the goal at hand. We see the big picture and we struggle to break it down into small pieces. It can also work in a way that we see the thousand-piece puzzle and we just get overwhelmed at where to start. For myself, I can see the big picture and I can see all the little pieces, I just don’t know how to fit them together. I want to jam them together and make it happen.

I have done a lot of growing the past few years. I had a blog several years ago and posted on it regularly up until my dad passed away. I lost my drive to write, read, or really do much of anything. I lost myself in a hurricane of chaos trying to find my footing again. Sometimes you become so comfortable in life that you forget that change is a part of life and when a huge change comes out of nowhere its like a brick to the face. For the past 4 years I have struggled to find myself again and to really figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The conclusion that I finally came to was that I still want to be a published author. I want to write and live at my computer playing with words and creating worlds that have only lived in my head.

I have left the other blog where it belongs, in the past. I wanted a fresh start with a new year. I have been out of work for three months. I was able to reflect on how I want to tackle this task in front of me. I want to write and I want that love for writing to help me do more of it. This is going to be a year of fighting to reach my dream of being published. From writing flash fiction, short stories, and novels. Entering contest, writing for magazines, and polishing up query letters to send to literary agents and publishers. A year of finding literary agents and publishers. Also a year of lots of reading for learning and just for fun.

There is a year of hard work lining up in front of me. I know that there is a possibility that I will not be published by the end of 2022 or have a contract or even win any contest. That is all okay, because at the end of the year I want to look back at this first post on this new blog and be proud of all the hard work I put into my dream. If I don’t make it this year, I will make it the next or the next. I will get there one day. I am going to stay optimistic and 100% believe that this is the year I will make it.

What are your goals for 2022? Are you a writer looking for your break as well? If you are, I’m rooting for you!