Whoosh!

Did that just happen again? Another year has sped past before my eyes. Hard to believe it was only beginning and suddenly it’s just about gone.

So there’s nothing left to do except take a look back and review my progress.

So how did I go? Did I get anywhere near achieving any of my goals for the year. I’ll quickly take a look at my opening post for the year, where my goals are set, and give you the update, one goal at a time.

1. Complete first draft of new novel (the comedy/fantasy/romance/adventure/satire) – achieved! I got the final words out at the beginning of May and have left it to sit since then. It’s pretty messy at the moment (well if you mix 5 genres, what do you expect?) so will need a heap of work. I suppose this will become goal number 1 for next year.

2. Finally release my picture book – Bella and the Blue Genie – achieved! That’s two out of two. Hard to believe after waiting for so many years, but the final product looks great, as you can see here.

3. Another published picture book. Well, this may have been veering on the side of over-optimism. At this stage, I have no immediate plans for another picture book release – but I suppose you never know.

4. Another picture book manuscript. Well, I outdid myself here. I planned for one but I ended up doing three (although this becomes easier to understand when you see how I did with the next goal). Hopefully, one day they’ll see the light of day.

5. The STEM project – i.e. the series of children’s stories with a science/technology theme. Not such good news here. Did not get anywhere. Absolutely nowhere. Ideas and inspiration never arrived, and with everything else going on, I did not try to force it. Maybe I’ll reconsider next year. Maybe it will end up on the ‘seemed like a good idea’ scrap heap.

6. Be generally less stressed and more happy. So how did we go with this one? If last year was the year of job uncertainty, this was the year of health uncertainty, so not sure I did that well. Then again, I always try to look on the bright side. After my health issues of a few months ago, I’m happy just to be here. All in all, I didn’t get through too badly. My left foot is kind of messed up and my right lung has some scarring (apparently) but other than that I’m not in bad shape. Given I could very easily not be here at all, that’s something to be thankful for. And on top of that, I’m still gainfully employed, and I have a great family, so things really can’t be too bad.

So, all in all, not a bad effort I reckon. Hopefully, we’ll keep moving in 2019.