An entirely new decade is upon us! That’s so wild to think about. The last time I experienced transitioning into a new decade, I was a senior in high school, anxiously awaiting the day I would graduate and leave a 4-year period of my life where I felt so trapped in not being able to fully express myself.
Going into this decade feels…weirdly similar.
I’ve recently had to make big changes in my personal life to allow myself to be more expressive of who I am. Now that I’m going into this new decade having made these changes, I feel so much more excited about what the future has in store. Continuing to blossom into the person/writer/content creator that I’m meant to be just feels so dang good.
And looking back on not just the year I had, but the decade that just passed, I accomplished so much. I graduated high school, went on to graduate college with a BA in English with certificates in Creative Writing and Literature (and a Minor in Psychology), eventually got my first paid internship, my first full-time social media job, got my writing published (twice), finally started therapy and meds to take better care of my mental health, got featured on the front page of Twitch (twice), raised over $5,000 for various charities, reached over 4000 followers on my Twitch channel, and have gotten to a point with the channel where it’s almost paying all of my bills.
That’s…incredible. It’s not until I actually started listing a lot of what I considered to be major accomplishments that I realized how much I did over the decade. I’m so used to minimizing my impact, and not thinking I’ve actually accomplished as much as I did, but putting it out into words like that…really changed things. Holy geez.
But enough looking back! That was uplifting and all, but we’ve got more things to accomplish!
With a new year coming, resolutions will be running rampant. While I’m super supportive of any reason to set some new goals, I’m never really a fan of “resolutions,” as if we HAVE to accomplish certain things by the end of the year. While I think it’s great to challenge yourself into achieving some big things, I’m much more of a fan of making small, more attainable goals that will inspire both little and bigger successes throughout the year.
These are some of the things I plan to do more of in the new year!
Read more!
As someone who wants to write so much more, I feel so much more motivated to write when I actually READ things, as opposed to simply drawing inspiration from TV shows, movies, video games, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m heavily inspired by so many video games and TV shows, but there’s something about the way reading a book fires off those creative neurons that I just can’t get from anything else. And I absolutely want to be reading more queer fiction, primarily! (Feel free to suggest some of your faves, to me!)
Write more!
I mean, obviously! I have SO many ideas I want to work on, and I want to crank them out so I can show the world that I am the writer I believe I am. I want to be writing so much more, even if it’s having 1-2 hour periods several days a week where I just write whatever’s on my mind. Just SOMETHING to keep working that creative muscle, you know? I can’t let it get flabby. No flabby writer brain in 2020. PERIOD.
Spend more time with with people I feel supported by!
I think we tend to spend time with people we feel an obligation to give time to, and those same people aren’t always the people who we feel support us. Time is such a precious resource, and your mental/emotional health is important enough to take care of, so don’t waste your time spending it with people who make you uncomfortable with who you are. Ever since I shifted my attention more toward people who empower me to grow the way I’m meant to, I’ve felt so much more confident in myself. I can only imagine how much that feeling will grow as I continue to do this in the new year.
Organize that work/life balance!
This has been one of my HUGEST challenges since making the transition to self-employment, and it’s still a challenge (…and it may always be a challenge). Very rarely do I actually grant myself a day off, because I’ll usually have little tasks and things to do here and there, and I’ll squeeze self-care time into particularly busy days. Granted, finding ANY time for self-care, whether it comes from going out, taking some time to catch up on a show, or whatever refills your spoons (I love referencing Spoon Theory) is always good, but an actual day off during the week would be nice! It was so easy to do this during my corporate full-time jobs, because I knew Saturday and Sunday would be those days, for me. Now, I have to carve them out, myself.
I know I also have get more organized with my work times, as well, which will help me carve out my leisure time. Put myself on a schedule. I have a schedule for when I stream on my Twitch channel, but organizing my off-times for getting writing done, doing off-stream maintenance, and even work for my Patreon should definitely be scheduled more wisely than I’ve been doing it. This way, I can create a better schedule around when I can lounge, and when I actually need to be focusing on work. It sounds tricky, but it wouldn’t be the first time I started a positive habit!
Find Love!
No, while a relationship would be great, I definitely mean this in a more general sense. Sure, if a man that I’m interested in wants to swoop me off my feet somehow in 2020, by all means, please do it. I’ve been single for so long. I can only go on so many first dates. *whispers* End my suffering. (Jk, being single isn’t suffering!)
What I meant is to find more love within myself, for myself. To love the body I’m in. To love the person I’ve become. To find more love for my surroundings, and more people who put love out into the world. I just want to be surrounded by so much of it, that I can pluck it off of a tree and take a bite whenever I feel starved of it, and I know that starts with me.
Maybe these goals for 2020 sound a little run-of-the-mill, but they’re what I want to do. They’re the things I know will bring my closer to my goals, for both my career and my personal life.
Will I stumble while I work on them? Sure. Will I feel like I can’t even do the bare minimum to work on them, some days? Absolutely. Will I have setbacks? Most likely. But the point is that I do something, anything, to work on these things daily, because I owe it to myself to make this next year even more successful than the last.
Happy New Year, y’all. Go forth, kick some butt (metaphorically), and make this next decade the best one, yet. You have everything you need to find success, love, and happiness. Never forget that.