If you want people to take your hobby seriously, treat it like a job. And then, you can hate it.

While I love to schedule activities, set goals, make long lists of accomplishments no matter how small, the one thing I’ve learned about myself is that if I schedule anything, I’ve now made it work. Even if it’s going to dinner with friends. Suddenly, I have a task to accomplish, a timetable to follow, and now the fun thing has become stressful.

And yet, somehow, I thought that this wouldn’t become a problem with writing.

Since I was in about fourth-grade—and even earlier, if my records from elementary school are any indicator—I’ve wanted to be a writer. I believe the whole time, I always thought of that writer as a novelist, I think simply because that was what I read at the time. The genre I wished to write changed over time, or rather, the target audience, until I ultimately landed in the realm of young adult. Though flexible with the idea of that changing too, as my interests evolve.

This meant I always had a go-to answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” “Author” was always my answer. Usually, this was met with a response of “remember us when you’re famous someday,” which only goes to show how little the average person understands about the career. At least I knew better, even as a kid. I even planned on taking on a full-time job to help support my desire to be writing. But the response was cute. Nice. I didn’t mind it.

The alternative response was…yeah, worse. Once upon a time, I made the mistake of mentioning I had changed my major while I was in college. Now, I was going to college in order to pursue an education that would allow me to get a full-time job that supported my writing. I spent some time trying to further my writing skills at well, but that wasn’t really the point of my going to college. Of course, when I made the comment that I had changed my major to Computer Information Systems, which I ultimately graduated with, I had a family member say: “Good. I never wanted to say anything, but you never would have made any money as a writer.”

Well then.

Never mind the fact that this family member had never read so much as a word of my writing at this point. Never mind the fact that this was probably a silly, offhand comment. At the end of the day, this stung. I knew I was a writer. Knew that writers often don’t make a livable income. That’s why I was planning on getting a day job for crying out loud! But none of these factors matter when the right words dig in through your skull and make a home in your head.

Years later, it was sentiments like this that drove me to think about writing as more of a career, more like a day job, even as I already held one down. I took a look at my writing life and recognized that most of the time I spent focussing on my writing was over the weekend in a coffee shop, or on my vacation days. I worried that maybe this wasn’t enough, if I wanted novelist as a career.

This was how I made the decision to set a writing goal of working on my writing for at least 500 total hours in the year 2019.

I’ve written about this a bit in the past in an entirely different context. Written about I connect productivity with self-worth (which I shouldn’t) and how I run my life with checklists (and how that’s not always the best idea). And honestly, all of this comes back to writing. Everything in my life tends to because I’ve spent most of my life wanting to be a novelist. But there are some ideas about creativity that I’ve only arrived at recently.

Before I get too far ahead of myself and tell the story how this goal ended, let me go back and explain how I arrived at this arbitrary goal in the first place.

I started querying my first novel in September of 2018. The idea of the novel had actually originated back in 2007/2008-ish and gone through a number of iterations before reaching this point. In fact, though I worked on other novel ideas during this basically-10-year period, this work felt like the one that defined me. I was this story; this story was me. Which didn’t make it easy to throw into the query trenches. The rejections weren’t unexpected, but that didn’t make them less disheartening. It’s just the hard truth of being a writer.

By December of that year, however, it had started to beat up my self-worth. Remember how in the past I equated my productivity with self-worth? Yeah, this is an excellent example of how bad of an idea that is. I felt like less of a writer, because I wasn’t finding success. Even though I hadn’t expected to find anything remotely immediate! However, while you can know something is true, it can still feel false. Which is why, in December of 2018, I couldn’t help but feel like I might not be able to call myself a writer.

Again, I cannot state enough how WRONG of an idea this was. And I did realize that, even at the time. But when negative voices spring up in your head, they are a challenge to quiet, no matter how loud truth screams.

I started thinking of ways I could legitimize myself as a writer, make it clear that I approached it with all the intention of a career. Which is how I reached the idea of writing just 10 hours a week. Just 10 hours, I thought. Nothing compared to the 40 hours a week I worked at my day job. What was a quarter of that?

Boy howdy, let me tell you.

I thought this idea would allow me to write 10 hours a week, then shut off the guilt valve so I wouldn’t always feel ashamed when I was’t constantly working on writing. But this 10 hours a week goal meant I was always working on writing. I didn’t want to work on writing if I wasn’t tracking the time I spent, completely missing the fact that my best ideas often came out of spiraling thoughts that started off unrelated to writing. Which meant the only time I was working on writing was when I was focussing on writing. But writing comes out of how we live, not how we write, so my creativity was sputtering and constantly exhausted.

I was constantly exhausted.

After I left my day job for the day, I would take up a spot at a coffee shop and write for an hour. Never mind if I had no idea where I was going with a story; I still had to work on it for an hour. This resulted me in forcing my way through plots in a bull-headed way. I wrote one story wrong over and over again until eventually I had to shelve the work. On top of that, I was stressed when I made plans with friends and family. Where would I get my writing time in if I came home tired?

I don’t think it was entirely a coincidence that 2019 was also the year I was diagnosed with anxiety.

In 2020, I still didn’t get it. After writing 500 hours in 2019, I upped the goal in 2020. Then…well…2020 happened. My mind was occupied with other things. I thought I was just easing up for a few weeks and then…a couple years passed in the same state. Like many others, so much time spent isolated offered me a lot of time to think. Which made me realize:

Wow, am I not writing the right way for me.

Like I said, I work best in stops and starts, in spiraling ideas that somehow solve plot problems. In wondering and wandering. Not an hour with my butt in a chair. Writing is so much more than writing. And by making it only about writing, it made me stop wanting to be a writer at all. At least a little bit.

But I love writing. It’s how I explain myself to myself. It’s how I make sense of the world and the swirling chaos inside of me. And when I stepped back from the rigidity of my plan, I started learning that love again.

See, the thing is, creative endeavors are not like normal careers. In some ways, they’re easier. After all, you get to do the thing you love. You get to live in your head more than a normal person, express those feelings, and if you’re lucky, get paid for it. In some ways, they’re harder. Your self-worth ends up wrapped up in your output and when your product is criticized, you yourself feel diminished.

To a certain extent, I think this path of mine to treat writing like a job—because I hope it to be one of mine that I get paid for someday—was born out of nothing more than fear. Fear that I would be diminished. Fear that I would be told that writing wasn’t my job. Fear that I would be nothing more than a little girl playing make-believe afraid to grow up and face the big, bad real world. All because I was worried about how I would be perceived.

The hardest part to remember is that sometimes, the way people perceive you doesn’t matter, not when they are reaching that conclusion through irrelevant facts. You don’t have to write everyday to be a writer. You don’t have to write every week to be a writer. I kept looking for a qualifier so that no one could tell me I wasn’t a writer. But that qualifier doesn’t exist, and I’ll likely always be facing such negativity from some direction.

Writing is my hobby. It is also my job. Maybe not one I get paid for, but one I feel responsible for. No matter what anyone else says, no one can take that away from me. I need to listen to myself, what I need to do, to accomplish my goals, not the ideas of someone else who has never dared dream that big.

So trust yourself. It will always be a challenge, always be a battle, but trust that the path you’re taking is the right one if it feels like the right one. It won’t be without hardship or naysayers, but at the end of the day, the only one you owe any explanation to is yourself.

I’m a homebody still learning how to be a homebody

I’m not someone who does a lot of traveling, don’t want to be either. Why sleep in a hotel or an AirBNB when you can sleep wrapped in your own covers and on your own pillows and maybe, if you’re lucky, the cutest little black cat curled up next to your legs? I love hiking but I’m also lucky enough to live right by a national park that I make a point of visiting whenever the itch to be in nature strikes. And then I can go home and shower in my own shower and curl up on my own couch wrapped in the Christmas kitty blanket my Grandma gave me a few years back. I love the smell of my own coffee, the tea selection I’ve carefully curated, a pint of lactose-free ice cream I keep in my freezer. I love reading and writing and nights spent in front of the TV with a cat in my lap. Why travel, when the haven I desire is the one I live in?

I am a homebody, through and through. Especially since I learned about the concept of hygge. It made a lot of sense to someone who grew up in Northeast Ohio winters. Winter in Ohio can last three months…but more than likely, you’re frozen from November through the end of April. If you’re exceptionally unlucky in a given year, you might also get snow in October or the beginning of May. The idea of embracing a more indoor life, a homebody life, a hygge life, makes a lot of sense when you’re trying to stick out snow and short days with little sunlight.

However, I also like to embrace these ideals in the summer. I’ll read outside, drink iced coffee from all the local coffee shops I like to visit as opposed to hot coffee that I make myself. But I’ve always been the “mountains and hiking over beaches” summer vacation kind of person and since I live so close to a national park, there’s really no reason to go further than my own backyard.

There are still times, though, that I feel guilty for being a homebody.

I think it likely originates from some version of FOMO. I listen to friends and coworkers discuss their various vacations, planning weeks at a location hours from home. I read introspective articles about the wonders of traveling, of getting away from the “same-old, same-old.” I get asked what I plan on doing on my own vacations, and heat rises to my cheeks, wondering if I should have a more interesting answer like everyone else around me. Am I missing something? I’ve never been on an airplane and when I say so, people stare at me with wide-eyed disbelief. At first, it’s fun to receive such a response. But as time goes on, I grow itchy beneath the gazes of others.

I know that traveling has wondrous benefits. I know that it’s incredible to experience just how very wide the world is. I know how nice it can be to get out of the cycles you sort of fall into as life goes on and avoid feeling overwhelmed by typical responsibilities that you might feel if you remained within your own four walls. Learn about a new culture! Eat great food! Spend time with your loved ones!

Vacations are important. Traveling is important. But not right now, not for me. And I’m learning that this discordant point of view is okay to carry.

When I think about traveling someday, I dream about traveling with a significant other, with a family, and right now, I’m single. The idea of traveling alone isn’t as interesting to me. Yes, I’m familiar with the idea that traveling alone is a thrilling opportunity. But it isn’t for me. Aren’t vacations supposed to be relaxing? If I’m spending thousands of dollars, I would rather not spend it counting down the days until I can go back home.

And besides, if I traveled alone, I would want to spend the time eating interesting food and hiking. Things I can do my exploring the area in my own backyard. There are so many hidden pockets I haven’t seen yet.

I don’t know why I feel like I need to justify these things. I guess because I feel so at odds with the rest of the world, not caring one way or the other about traveling. At least not at this stage of my life. And that’s why I say I’m still learning how to be a homebody. Because I’m learning how to not apologize for wanting what I want.

When I think about what I want in a life, I look around and realize so much of it I already have. I want a cozy home to live in. I want time to write and read. I want to spend vacations with a quiet mind and a sleeping cat. So why seek the joys of someone else’s life? I am not them. I have no reason to apologize for that. And no one expects me to, except for some insistent voice in my own head.

So I am learning to quiet that voice. I am learning how to be the homebody I want to be. In the place with bookshelves full of books and my own cozy bed and so much coffee and so much tea and one single very needy, very loving cat. This is what I’ve always wanted. And so I will not waste time apologizing for being happy with what I want and instead spend the time letting myself melt into the warmth.

Is it normal, on New Year’s Eve, to look forward to a new year of resolutions as opposed to a kiss?

Don’t get me wrong: I have never been one to think of a new year in terms of “new year, new me.” I realize the turn of a calendar page doesn’t mean my personality’s done a complete 180, and suddenly I’m willing to completely change all my habits and become my best self. I am also not one to make a resolution like “I want to get healthy.” Not that it’s not a good idea and all, but it’s non-specific. I’m a complete nerd, very into the idea of setting SMART goals. In case you’ve never heard what that means, SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-sensitive

It’s an idea that comes up a lot in school and work goal-setting, but I naturally started approaching New Year’s resolutions the same way. For me, it was just better to know what constituted success. “Get healthy” isn’t useful but “workout for 30-minutes 100 times” I can measure. I also am not generally a fan of daily goals; they’re too easy to fail. I prefer a goal that doesn’t expect perfection.

Even if I expect perfection from myself in meeting my goals.

I don’t know exactly when I got obsessed with making New Year’s resolutions. I think I started making them back when I was in high school but like most people who make resolutions, I often forgot what they were within 2 weeks of the new year. As time went on, however, I got better at some of the resolutions I made. At first, it was just resolutions around how many books to read, though I have to credit the website/app Goodreads with that. I think the first year I truly committed to my resolutions was probably 2019. And that was only because my resolutions were absurd.

In 2019, I set the New Year’s resolution to write for 500 hours in a year. I also set a reading goal of 45 books but it was the writing goal that kept me constantly aware of resolutions. In the past, I had never set a writing goal like that. All writing goals I set tended to be more small-scale, specific to a particular month or a particular draft. I had never made a blanket statement on the time commitment to give my writing. But the way I figured it, if I wanted to make something of myself as a writer, I needed to take the work seriously. And 500 hours total meant about 10 hours a week, which seemed like a completely reasonable goal, even though I also worked a full-time job (still do, but that’s not the point right now).

Spoiler alert: the goal was not as reasonable as I thought. It burned me out. I spent almost everyday working on my writing for at least an hour if not more. Making other plans stressed me out and made me feel guilty for not spending that time on writing instead. Still, these warning signs didn’t stop me from achieving the goal and then setting a new resolution to write 550 hours in 2020.

Now, if you’ve been alive for longer than a minute, you’re probably all too able to guess that writing 550 hours in the year 2020 didn’t work. I lost my ability to write in coffee shops, plus the whole world was completely burnt out at best and devastated at worst, so emotionally, I wasn’t in the right place to write at that kind of pace. I knew I couldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t even be smart to so much as try.

Didn’t stop the guilt though. Even if I did achieve every other one of my 2020 resolutions and still managed to work on writing for 452 hours in the middle of a global pandemic.

Flashing forward to 2021 New Years resolutions, if I remember correctly, I started drafting my list in August of 2020. The sixth version of my resolutions became the one I went forward with into the year 2021. There were 9 of them, including:

1. Read 72 books.

2. Query PROJECT 1

3. Finalize PROJECT 2

4. Complete at least 30, 30-minute workouts

among others. And to be fair, I completed all of these resolutions. Except one: write 5 total novel drafts. Of which I finished 1. I talked about that topic a bit last week.

Looking ahead to New Year’s Resolutions for 2021, I’ll admit I’m filled with mixed feelings. The excited part of me is ready for a fresh slate, to let go of this feeling of failure since I didn’t achieve one of my goals. However, the other part of me is a mix of shame and fear of the resolutions before me. I’m not used to feeling this fear but after 2 years in a row of failing a writing goal…I have to face a weird truth:

Maybe I can’t measure my writing progress.

It’s taken me years to learn, but I’m starting to think that there are certain goals you really shouldn’t measure, at least not so objectively. And that’s almost a more painful fact to face than the resolutions I didn’t achieve over the last couple years. I keep looking for quantitative ways to measure progress toward larger goals. The way my mind works is that, if I achieve whatever quantitative measure I’ve set for myself, then I am working hard enough toward my larger goal. In this case, if I write “x” amount, then I don’t have to feel guilty.

And as it turns out, this is such a toxic way to live.

I thought it was a great idea, to set myself these measures. That they were flexible enough that I could work on whatever project mattered to me at the time but substantial enough that it looked like I was treating my writing like a job. It seemed to me like setting a homework goal or a studying goal. Like “if you study for this exam for two hours, you’ll probably do fine on the test and can stop worrying.” Objectively, that makes sense. Unfortunately, creating art is not the same as studying for a test.

In 2019 and 2020, I was so focussed on writing for a certain amount of time, I pressed through on writing a plot that wasn’t working. I wrote 10 versions of a story that wasn’t right before finally taking a break in 2020. Only now in 2021 am I finally working on “Draft 12v2” (don’t ask) and the plot is finally growing close to right.

In 2021, I feel like I failed as a writer because I only finished one novel draft. However, like I mentioned in a previous post, there were tons of other writing activities I worked on during the time. Plus I took more time on writing a draft slowly and getting it right, rather than writing it twice but fast. In the end, my New Year’s resolutions from 2019 through 2021 looked like they had no idea what I needed in order to make progress on my projects.

So…where does that leave my position on New Year’s resolutions?

I am still completely obsessed.

Maybe it’s a symptom of my anxiety (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was), but I still love setting resolutions. It helps me plan for the future. It means I take the time to think about who I want to be in the next year and what that person will accomplish. I set how much money I want to save, how much I want to read, what I want to do with my free time, etc. I set forward a structure for my year rather than looking forward to a big amorphous blob of time. When I have goals, I’m much more aware of time and asking myself if I’m really using that time in the way that I want.

There is always that risk of me over-scheduling productive time. Or of creating a resolution that doesn’t end up working the way I want to work. So if you are looking to create New Year’s resolutions in the same way as me, here are some recommendations:

1. Don’t write them New Year’s Eve! Start earlier in the year (even if just a few days) and maybe try a few different version.

2. Make sure the goals are SMART. This might mean different things to different people, but I find goals that are measurable the easiest to track and achieve.

3. Be okay with not achieving your resolutions. This is the one I most need to learn as well. But as the year goes on, your priorities change. And that’s completely okay! The important thing is that you make choices intentionally, even if they’re in reaction to things you have no control over.

4. Some goals shouldn’t be New Year’s resolutions. Remember: NYE is not your last chance to set a goal for yourself! Maybe you have a goal you want to set in March that will just last a couple months, or you prefer to set goals that coincide with the school year. Set goals that help you when they will help you!

In the meantime, the most important detail when it comes to making resolutions is this: you are setting an intention for how you want to live your life. They’re about you. Not about how other people want you to be. That way, when you reach the end of the year, you don’t have to wonder where the time went.

Okay, to be fair, you probably still will. Time’s weird. But at least you will have spent that time more in line with how you wanted.