My goal was to take care of myself and my family. Which I did. Today was the year I've been waiting for for years and years . . . the year all four kids were in school. So, for the first time in years, I've actually had abundant time for self care. And I pretty much did use it for that, although I didn't meet some of my goals.
Practical resolutions were these:
- Go on a vacation.
- Submit the next book to agents.
- I'd like to look into taking some classes at the community college in the fall.
- I have already found a pool I would like to purchase a membership for in the summer.
- Finish my solar sailing trilogy and keep looking for a small publisher for it.
- Keep writing and submitting short stories.
- I want to make sure to take my boat out a lot in the coming year.
And I don't travel that great by myself either. I can drive eight hours by myself, though I don't enjoy it. But then I get there and sleep barely at all and am weird and shy with everyone because I'm out of sorts from traveling. Just . . . I am terrible at this.
I sent maybe ten or fifteen queries. It was hard to get excited about querying, and I've mostly gotten rejections or silence. And I just don't know about this book. Maybe it's bad?
Did not take community college classes. I decided not to on account of being exhausted and overwhelmed. I'm probably missing out and would be meeting fun people and stuff, but . . . ugh, it feels hard to even contemplate. I'm so tired.
Did not purchase a pool membership. It ended up not being worth it. But we did go to the pool most weeks and also the kids had swimming lessons. Everybody but Jackie was swimming by the end of it.
Did sell my solar sailing trilogy! Biggest triumph of the year.
Don't think I submitted short stories at all. Maybe once?
Took my boat out exactly once. It is very hard to go boating by oneself.
Overall, this year has been a little disappointing. I imagined that when my kids were all in school, I'd have all this extra time and jump into loads of interesting new hobbies and a previously unseen dedication to chores. But instead, I just took twice or three times as long to get started doing work. Oh, and laid around a lot. The only part of the house I really like is my room, and the only place comfortable to sit in there is my bed, so . . . I spent a lot of time in bed. I did read quite a lot, which I'm happy about. But I also wasted a lot of time, which I'm not.
I'm unclear if having less to do just made me that much more sluggish and my time more formless, or if I genuinely have been tired and would be even more overwhelmed if I'd committed to more things. Part of it is that I was sick the entire month of November. And I did manage to finish one novel and write a whole other one. So, it's not like I've been doing nothing. But have I been exercising, sewing, finishing my knitting and weaving projects, or hanging out with friends? Not very much, no.
I did do one thing that nurtured myself, which I've been putting off since we moved. I found a new doctor and finally had a checkup. Turns out my thyroid numbers are not right. I probably have Hashimotos. However, it's not very bad yet, apparently, and therefore there is nothing they can do about it but wait. This seems wrong to me, and I'll have to follow up with an endocrinologist I guess. Because if it's bad enough for me to feel this tired, maybe there's something that can be done?
It's the most reassuring and wonderful thing to think my thyroid has been busted all this time and that's my excuse for all this slacking. Very un-reassuring to then be told I shouldn't be this tired and there is nothing they can do it yet.
I think I have been less depressed this year. At least, during the summer and fall. Being home alone with just Jackie was, in retrospect, really bad for me. Getting a break helps. But I still have days when randomly I feel horribly sad. This, too, can be caused by thyroid disease, so . . . ? I don't know, it's a thing to look into.
Thinking about the year to come, I find I don't really know what I want to do. Do I want to get better at accomplishing things every day? Do I want to cut myself slack and realize this is my recovery for twelve years of almost nonstop kids? Do I want to get out more? I am lonely, but all my efforts to hang out with people this year have mostly led to me concluding that I am so bad at it I should just give up and stay home. So do I keep working on that or accept the inevitable?
Here are a few things I hope for in the coming year:
- I made it into a by-application-only online writing seminar, which terrifies me, but I'm going to do it. (I mean, I paid my money so now I can't chicken out.) Hopefully that will be good for my career and my ability to handle zoom.
- I wrote a romance, which I hope to revise and then do something with. I'm considering self-publishing something after my book comes out, hoping to coast on my improved reputation (if . . . anyone likes the book, that is).
- I've got my novel coming out in July, so that's one thing that's definitely happening. I hope to talk to some bookstores about carrying it and maybe doing a launch event. I am so bad at that kind of thing. But I may end up even doing some podcast and youtube interviews. I gotta do my best for my book right? No matter how terrified I am of being perceived?
- See an endocrinologist.
- Get that stuck wisdom tooth out finally.
- Keep prioritizing my mental health: go outside, exercise, don't spend too much time on social media, do creative things.
- Go to two science fiction conventions. I am dreading both, but maybe I could meet some people or publicize my books. I feel like they could be fun if I could only get the hang of them. One of them, luckily, is close enough I won't have to sleep away from home.
I came up with my word after several days of struggling to think of what I even want to do next year. The word is SIFT. By this I mean, sift through the things I can't change (and should accept) and the things I can't accept (and must change). There are so many of these things in my life, and my default is to accept them all. But maybe some things aren't going to get better until I choose to change them.
One thing to sift is moving again. I don't like living here, there's no getting around it. This place is not good for me, it does not make me happy. But I also hate moving. So every time John brings it up (given that he's working from home again, and we could live anywhere) I just panic because I remember how bad it was going through the last move, how many months it took me to stop feeling terrible every single day. And there's the question of whether it's worse to disrupt the kids' lives yet again just because I was unhappy. If I sift this, I work out whether there is a way to be happy here, or whether this is a thing to be brave and do despite the temporary difficulty of doing it.
I want to sift whether to keep trying to get a literary agent or keep working on small presses or self publish some things.
I want to sift whether trying to apply more willpower and get out of bed more will, in the long run, make me happier and better able to do more things. Or whether this is simply the speed I can manage my life. Or whether in fact there's a combination of different pills that can transform me into a reasonably energetic person!
Because the fact is, there's no one kind of answer to all problems. Sometimes you make a brave resolution and do a hard thing. Sometimes you gradually get used to a thing until it doesn't bother you anymore. I need the wisdom to know the difference.