Starting new chapters... literally.

I haven't made a New Year's resolution in... years.  I don't like them at all.

I think it's an enormous amount of unreasonable, and often vague, pressure to put on a person.  I know myself well enough to understand that I cannot stick to a goal for an entire year unless it is something concrete that I can take day by day, like my One Good Thing a Day journal.  Perhaps other people can handle year-long resolutions better than I, but I am fully aware of my own inability and am not ashamed of it.  It's just how I function as a person.

However, I am a firm believer in setting goals to help one's self down the road of self-improvement.  I try to set smaller goals (which I've talked about in this blog before), even daily goals just to test myself and push myself out of my comfort zone.  The longest my goals have ever been set for were semester-long goals, but now that I've graduated, those semesterly goals are over.  I need a new version of my semi-long-term goals to move myself forward.

That being said, I am, in fact, challenging myself to a vague, year-long goal, though not quite a resolution.  My NaNoWriMo project has been sitting practically untouched since November 30.  I got my 50k+ words, successfully completing the challenge (and accomplishing a personal goal, score!), but I did not finish the actual novel.  I gave myself December "off" with the intention of working on it not when I could, but when I felt like it, which turned out to be less than I expected, for various reasons.  December was an extremely difficult month for me, and I do not feel bad about having let my project sit without my attention.

But I do want to move forward with it.  I just don't know how to break it up into bite-sized goals because I'm not familiar with this type of thing.  So I'm giving myself the entire year to come up with an edited first draft of my NaNo novel.  That's right-- I hope to have a first draft of a novel in my hot little hands by December 2013!  That's such a big thing for me... a tangible product of a life-long dream.  I've been thinking of it for years, and now, it's time to act upon it and make it a reality.

Is a year too little?  Too long?  I guess I'll find out!  Starting a new chapter in my life!  Or rather... starting several new chapters.  A whole novel's worth.