Deciding on a Challenge

Setting Writing Goals for the New Year…

I have noticed this year that I seem to be very shell-shocked, for lack of a better way of putting it, when it comes to setting a goal for 2025. Never remember having this issue before.

I am not afraid of failing with a challenge. I always fail to success with every challenge, and failing is a part of publishing. Just nature of the beast. So no worry there when setting a goal.

But these last two years have been brutal in life events for me. First I lost vision and only regained a part of it, then I smashed up my shoulder and had that surgery and long recovery, then we discovered issues in WMG and are still in the process of cleaning those up. Two very long years with almost no real writing for me, even though I managed some words during this last year.

So now I face a new year, a normal time for me to restart and set a new challenge. So if I am not afraid of failing, what is the problem?

Time.

I have done so many challengers over the years, and never repeat a challenge I have accomplished, so that now anything I come up with is pretty extreme in nature. And in the amount of time I need to spend each day to make it happen. So the shell-shocked aspect of this comes in when I am looking at the time I would need and wondering if the world is ready to give me that time.

Or better put, if I can rip that amount of time away from the world and the life events.

I think I can most days. But even more important, I don’t think I can spend any more time having the world control my time and my writing.

I have a hunch I am not the only one dealing with this reluctance to dive back into writing after major life events.

So over this next week, I hope to lead here by example and just take the plunge with a new challenge for 2025. I am still thinking between three possible ones, all challenges I have not accomplished before. Two I have actually failed to success at in the past.

And all will really, really challenge me and the battle to take back my writing time from all the life events. Stay tuned.