Let's Talk About Expectations

There are many, many things to have expectations for/about in life, but this post is focusing on self-expectations, specifically in regards to goals/resolutions, because these are the expectations we have the most control over.

I set some goals for myself at the beginning of the year and by the second week of February I knew I'd built a pretty high mountain to climb. January went well. Book read, edits done, writing mark hit! Of course I also finished a book, so starting a new one was hard--immediately my word count plummeted. I finished edits, got beta reads, submitted the book...and immediately got developmental edits to do. While I was brainstorming how to fix February's editing case. So my "edit a book a month" plummeted. Reading one book should be easy, right? But after reading all day, editing various books, and struggling to write, the last thing I wanted was another person's words in my head. I read one page of a book and switched to another. Read a page of that and put it aside.

What I realized around the middle of the month, was that I might have burnt myself out by being too productive too fast. I need to reassess and adjust accordingly.

Revising: One book a month is kind of crazy, especially depending on how much work needs done. Especially since I edit for a living (duh, Alex). I think if  get 6 books revised this year, I'll call it a win. It's still going to be about 5 more books than I did last year!

Writing: Same basic 10K a month, but I think it'll be a year-end goal of 120,000 instead, which will average out to 10K a month, which is pretty much how I looked back a 2017, so I think it'll work.

Reading: I might need to "cheat" and read another volume of manga, but I do want to at least hit some of my titles on my to-read list. However, I also want to watch a bunch of anime shows (many of which are subtitles), so I'm giving myself flex here. Kind of a "we'll see how it goes". I know it sounds like I'm giving up, but it's more a matter of "how much can I fit into my free time without feeling like it's not fun anymore?"

The important thing, for me, is not thinking of the above changes as failing. Goals and resolutions should be flexible, especially in the beginning, so you can improve while also not killing yourself. Because once you start to fail, you give up. But if you lower the bar, then you might end up jumping just as high as you'd first planned, once the stress of failing is removed.