Mixed Results for My Goal for 2019

For the last several years, I've organized my new year's resolutions not as a grab-bag of random, uninspiring, dutiful items (e.g., lose weight, floss more, eat more veggies), but as a single, unified year-long project selected for its sheer deliciousness.

My goal for 2017 was to submit something somewhere every month: book proposal, completed book, academic article, article revisions, essay, poem. The goal was not acceptance, but mere submission: that wonderful tingly feeling you get when you have something Out There In The Universe with at least some chance that any day - any moment! - the universe may give you a favorable response. I ended up with about a 50-50 rate of acceptance to rejection, but I was happy all year long pursuing this objective.

My goal for 2018 was creative joy: to log at least ten hours a month of creative joy in a special small notebook, with stringent requirements for what could be counted here. It wasn't enough just to get joy in my ordinary creative efforts; I had to ADD an infusion of joy by trying some new creative activity, or doing my usual one (writing) in some new place, or with a friend, or even just with Cool Whip on my usual Swiss Miss hot chocolate. I was happy every single month with this one, too.

My goal for 2019 (the year I turned 65, and so officially became a senior citizen) was to embrace the new, to celebrate "newness" in lots of ways in my creative life.  I picked six new things to do: write a book on a topic on which I previously knew nothing; teach my first online course; make my first serious effort to promote my books; write a verse novel; write a picture book with a very spare text (under 500 words); and make an effort to publish my poetry.

I did the first three items on the list:

One: I wrote Lucy Lopez, Coding Star, and so had to learn about computer programming, which was a wonderful challenge. Here I am with the eleven-year-old tutor I hired, Lorelei Held.

Two: I taught an online course for the graduate program in children's literature at Hollins University on the figure of the female author from Little Women to The Poet X. To my great surprise and delight, I loved it.

Three: Here I am in my chef's costume to promote Nixie Ness,Cooking Star.

But then mid-year my project petered out. I didn't have time to work on the verse novel because instead I was researching and writing Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star (with sign language another topic totally new to me, so at least in the spirit of the year's goal). And I found I simply didn't feel like writing a picture book or submitting my poems. I had put those items on the list just because a list of three items seemed too skimpy.

So: I did some new things - and loved doing them - but this goal didn't sustain my motivation throughout the year. It lacked the right kind of structure: "do x every month" is an excellent structure. "Do these six things, where you don't even really want to do three of them" isn't.

I also think I needed to branch out from newness-in-my-professional-life to newness-in-all-aspects-of-my-life. My writer friend Tara Dairman, another person who loves goal-setting, designed a year of newness for herself that was a lot more fun. She wrote down twelve things she wanted to do but was scared to do and plucked one from her "newness jar" each month. That would have had a lot more appeal for me, in hindsight.

I've just - today! - worked out my plan for 2020. It, too, has a sub-par structure, alas, but I'm excited about it nonetheless. It gives me the requisite tingle of joy when I think about it. So watch this space for details when the new decade dawns!