January, what an exciting month! A time for new beginnings, promises to live better, create lists, get organized. That time of making resolutions and embracing them. Well, my January has been full of recovering from Christmas, having the time of my life out of town at a friend’s house, and then coming home to the flu. Not much of a chance for making those resolutions and turning them into reality. But, thankfully, the flu has left our household and life is settling back into normality. And though January is almost behind us, it’s never too late to make those New Year’s resolutions! I have a few things I really want to work on this year, and though usually by around February or March all those exciting goals and resolutions start deflating, I really do hope to keep with these. Like last year, my biggest focus is writing. I would LOVE to make a career of it, God willing, but to make a career of something you have to really put your heart into it and WORK. Lots and lots of work. Some people think being a writer is a dream job because you just get to sit at home on the computer all day. Haha. . .hahaha. . .ha. Writing is hard, guys. So hard. But I love it. I couldn’t imagine life without it. For now, my main project will be writing the first draft of Fallen Matter. For a bit there I couldn’t decide if that’s what I wanted to do writing-wise for 2014, but now I’ve decided it absolutely is. This story has snagged me, taken over my life, and seems to have no intentions of letting go. I’m loving it! So write it I shall! I would love to have it completely written and edited by the end of the year, but who knows if I can manage that. We’ll see. With that in place, I had to figure out how to keep myself writing. I do love to write, but sometimes I’m just so unmotivated. I’m the kind of person that has to have goals to follow to keep me doing tasks. NaNo is my best friend because of that. But for the rest of the year I’m kind of alone on the writing front, no goals set. Thus I decided that I would try to write at least 500 words every day. My biggest problem with writing is starting it each day. Once I’ve forced myself into starting, I usually don’t want to stop, but I never can seem to get into it until I’ve written at least the first few hundred words. So by making a goal to write 500 words a day, I’ll be forcing myself to write, and then, hopefully, I’ll end up writing much more than 500. Once I’ve written about that many I just want to keep writing. So it’s a win-win! I’m not holding myself completely to it, I’m giving myself some leniency. If I miss days here and there, that’s fine. There’s just going to be some days where I can’t. But it will at least keep me writing when I can. I see professional authors say that you should write every single day, no matter what, so I’m hoping this will get me into the habit of it. Writing isn’t all about writing though. If I’m going to attempt publishing, I also have to LEARN. Last year I spent a lot of time reading blog posts and articles and what-not on the craft, and all that information I learned has become invaluable to me and helped my writing to amazingly high degrees. This year I hope to spend even more time learning. I want to retain it though, so what I’ve done is made a document on my computer where I type out any information that I want to make sure I remember. This way I’ll always have everything I found super helpful right on my computer and easily accessible. I think it’s going to be immensely useful. Last year one of my resolutions was to write a blog post every single week. I’m very excited to say I actually managed it! So I’m going to try my very best to continue that this year. Usually I try to get a post out on either Monday or Tuesday, but that’s never totally solid, it could be any day of the week. But those days will probably be the most likely ones to find a blog post from me. Life isn’t all about writing though. I’m ashamed to even think about how much time I spent doing writerly things last year. I kind of pushed aside life to do it. I want this year to be different. Yes, I want to still focus on writing, but my family, friends, and most importantly God are far, far more important of course! So this year I’m going to try to balance out these things. I’m basically the worst at time management. I want to learn how to do better. I want to exercise regularly, be with my family more, keep up better with friends, spend much more time with God and grow my relationship with Him, and just LIVE. Smell the flowers, giggle with my sister, smile at strangers, soak up God’s world, embrace life to its fullest. Because life is short, and I don’t want to waste it. I’m honestly going to try my very best to manage my time to its fullest. So that’s what my goals for 2014 are. But if none of it turns out, that’s okay. Because sometimes God interrupts our life. And isn’t that the best? When God interrupts our silly little plans and steers us towards something so, so much better? “However much we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that at any minute He may break in.” –Oswald Chambers Whatever comes this 2014, I’m so happy to know God is standing before me through it all. His will be done!