Last week, everyone on social media was talking about what achievements they had during 2020, and I get they were being positive about a pretty terrible year, but when you feel like your life has gone backwards, it’s difficult to see all those achievements listed. But sometimes surviving is the biggest achievement of all. Also, I know I wasn’t such a downer the entire year.

Honestly, 2020 has flown by, despite March seeming like a year on its own. So let’s look back at January’s goals for this very interesting year…

• Get Fit: I’ve actually made a little progress on this. Nothing to brag about, but I didn’t continue the backslide that I’d been doing, so there’s that! Admittedly, working full-time at a job that is very strict about when you take breaks has helped with the mindless eating, although I don’t feel like it balances out all the negatives.
• Watch Less TV: There were good and bad weeks of this and it really depended on my mood, but it was a pandemic, so we’ll give this one a slide.
• Monthly goals: I didn’t really follow through with setting these, possibly because months were such an odd concept for the spring and summer.
• Write 120,000 words this year (that’s 10K a month): Success! I’m actually about 9K over that goal, and most of it was during the beginning of the pandemic, when I was half-unemployed and had the free time and emotional health to write. (Once I started the draining day job, with a part-time job, my writing plummeted. I’m glad I finished the project I was working on before starting this job.) That said, it’s been very depressing the last three months how little writing has gotten done.
• Submit The Miracle Man: Success! I’m still waiting to hear back (at this point I’m expecting a reject, but with feedback) but I did my part of it.
• I also submitted a short story to an anthology call, which I’m also waiting to hear back from (though that’s only been a month). The fact I haven’t already gotten a rejection gives me hope that they liked the story but don’t know if it’s a good fit (or they haven’t read it yet, the lil devil says), and I get that my angle was maybe not what they were going for, but it was very therapeutic to write, so I’ll understand if it doesn’t get selected and still be happy to have written it.

Keep an eye out for later this week, when I’ll write about my goals for 2021!