job

2024 Goals and Words

When I was looking through my blog and paging through some old diaries, I found my list of previous words and have been revisiting those.

Interesting to see which years were ‘on track’ and which ones the wheels fell off a bit (2018 and 2022 I’m looking at you!). I think I’m slowly regaining my equilibrium with this job and trying to slot in some writing again (always!)

This year my word is ‘creativity’ which means finding time for my own creative pursuits, in whatever form – writing, baking, drawing, furniture restoration, decorating, home renovations – and trying to keep at bay the black hole of my job, which seems to suck all the oxygen from the room! Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of enjoyment out of my work but it’s not ‘for me’ and I need to find a better way to balance that out and not feel resentful and not pour my entire being into a place that just keeps take, take, taking.

I will hit 5 years sober this month. This was a goal of mine. I have to say, I’m feeling a little triggered and wobbly with that. The ‘point’ of sobriety feels dulled. Do I really need to be so hardcore? But then I think of slipping back into regular drinking and all the headaches, illness, self-loathing and additional work I’d have to do… it’s not worth it.

I also said that if it came to the point of drinking again vs. my job, I’d quit.

This is not a very positive post about my current employment is it! I wonder if that’s telling me something?

Funny, I survived for several years without (much) paid work and things were fine, but now I’m back on that hamster wheel, it’s hard to fathom how I could get by without the regular salary.

That said, my husband has been studying and out of paid employment for 2-3 years now, but he’s starting to earn $ again. So that might change things.

We’re also planning to renovate the house we live in this year! Gah.

Oh well. If I can somehow wrangle a way to roughly balance my day-job with my own writing and other creative pursuits, family time and fitness, then I will judge 2024 to be a success!

 

LIST OF GOALS AND WORDS

 

2024 goals and words – creativity

2023 goals and words – intuition, conviction, action (this was the year I ran my first marathon)

2022 goals and words – another survival-mode year. I was so slammed by work, my husband’s depression and COVID, while trying to write and stay sober and keep fit, wow.

2021 goals and words – intention (this was the year I started working at the Council)

2020 goals and words – ‘Raw’ and ‘Curious’

2019 goals and words– new and wild (this was the year I got sober and moved back to Australia)

2018 goals – paid job, survival mode, (this was the year I started running)

2017 goals and words – consolidation & realignment

2016 goals and words – small, incremental changes

2015 goals and words – surrender

previous words – don’t rush in where angels fear to tread

 

Writing goals 2018 and a question, dear readers…

 

Welcome to 2018! I’ve found it was useful to talk about writing goals at various points in the past so this is my housekeeping/ looking forward/ looking back blog for the year. Partly for my own reference but I’ve also got a question for you guys!

Housekeeping: I was really pleased to finish #26Cantons52weeks in the allotted time. I made a snazzy (sort of) homepage for it here: https://clairevetica.wordpress.com/26cantons52weeks/

I’ve also updated my About me page and added a new pic.

Taking stock: according to my submissions document, in 2017 I had 32 rejections and 4 acceptances. They say you should aim for 100 rejections per year so I only got a third of the way there. Partly this is because I only have about 6 hours ‘writing time’ per week but mostly because I really slowed down on sending submissions for various reasons, including making a decision not to pay for any submissions/reading fees/competition entries. Three acceptances were short stories, one is a poem that’s still in the pipeline. I love my poems but I guess in general the lit journals don’t? Or maybe I’m too impatient and I just publish all the best ones here 😉

My writing plans for 2017 were as follows

  • have a reasonable first draft of the novel by mid-year to give to early readers to feed back on – Not even close, I’ve barely touched my novel, although I did have a brainwave for a new start the other day, watch this space
  • (self-?) publish a chapbook of poetry and/or publish or contribute to a book of short stories –  The more I think about this, I don’t think I’m ready yet. I need to keep writing poems and consider themes etc.  before I go there.
  • record more poems – let’s say 6. At least one every two months – I achieved this and more, yay! Check out my soundcloud! 
  • perform some poetry live to an audience at least once (eek!) – haven’t made much headway here 
  • make a bit of money off my creative writing (ie: non-journalism) – not so far, still hopeful! 
  • get at least five pieces published in places that are not Claire-controlled: journals etc. – I made this target, if I include my upcoming poem and this writeCon writeup I had in The Woolf 
  • And I finished the #26Cantons25Weeks project. Woo hoo! As I say in the Woolf story, it was a valuable lesson to learn from Diccon Bewes about the amount of work it would take to potentially spin a project such as this into a book. Food for thought…

Writing goals 2018

I’m at a point where I really need a paid job. Both for myself and due to family circumstances. So I’ll be focusing on that for the next couple of months, which will mean less blogging. At this stage, I’ve had to be a bit tough with myself and decide I won’t even think about novel writing, short stories or poems too much while I focus on the job-hunt. It’s make or break time.

I’m sure a few poems will pop out, and maybe some travel stuff, but I need to give myself permission not to feel bad about putting my creativity on hold (sob!) to focus on finding work. And unfortunately, due to some travel in April, I won’t be able to participate in GloPoWriMo global poetry month this year either. 😦

Otherwise from that, I guess my goals remain much as above… I will revisit it all in May.

 

A few other bits and pieces:

  • I have created a Facebook author page if you want to ‘like’ me on there. It is mostly just publicising my blog posts at this stage but hoping to share a few articles and maybe have more writer-type discussions there. https://www.facebook.com/clairedoblewriter/
  • I’ve started using Twitter a bit more and I’m @Carabosse there

 

 

AND FINALLY…

I made this poll a while back and never published it. I was going to ask you, my readers, what you would you like to see in the next, say, six to twelve months, from Clairevetica?

Since this is mostly a place for me to write whatever, I don’t promise I’ll actually follow your advice. But it would be nice to know what some of you think!

Please feel free to pm/ speak / email me with your thoughts as well

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Cheers, Claire