my 2024 goals ✨

2023, books, career, crafting, creativity, goals, lifestyle, mental health, organisation

Hello!

How another year has flown by so quickly is honestly baffling to me – I almost feel like my feet have been swept out from under me because I genuinely can’t believe it’s gone so quickly!

I don’t normally set mantras or affirmations for the year, but I’m definitely going to embrace ‘enjoy the process’ as my line for 2024 – I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time floundering, whether that be worrying about the future or deliberating on the past and I’d really like to spend more time feeling present next year and enjoy what’s happening in the moment, rather than looking back at a moment when it’s passed.

But like every other year, I’ve set myself a bunch of goals for 2024 (broken down into categories and sub-categories because I just can’t help it) and sharing them makes me feel like I’m more accountable for them so here are my intentions, aims and resolutions for the new year!

Personal Goals

Maintain Sophie Counts Clouds – blogging weekly, making YouTube videos (at least) once a week, post consistently on TikTok and Instagram
Creative writing – 2000 words a week + NaNoWriMo (50,000 words in the month of November)
Reading goal: 52 books

This is absolutely going to be the year of my career (and now that I’ve realised that rhymes I’m going to be using it way more), but producing content for my personal platforms, working on my creative writing and reading consistently are also important to me and that’s why these are my priorities for my personal goals. I’ve just returned to posting on my YouTube channel to celebrate 10 years since my first vlogmas (and I’ve gained nearly 50 subscribers in a month!! I’m very excited about this because it absolutely wasn’t my intention) so I’d like to be able to make time to continue making videos around my professional work. 2024 will see my 10 year blogging anniversary so I’ll need to think of a way to celebrate that (6th September, though I just re-read my first post and it is really cringy) and I just really enjoy TikTok and Instagram. Having a consistent content production goal with each of these platforms (as opposed to a numbers goal, which I’m not interested in aiming for) actually helps me feel creative rather than stifled by deadlines and ensures I don’t post seven videos in three days then disappear for three months! All of the content I make is one of those things that technically isn’t important and I shouldn’t allow myself to get stressed about, but it is important to me and making time to prioritise that is good for me.

My creative writing goal for this year was 1000 words per week and whilst I didn’t manage to write every week, I did absolutely smash this goal in terms of numbers so I’ve decided to push it to 2000 words in 2024. This year, my creative writing goal was intended to make writing a habit for me, which I absolutely did. But I did not stick to one project, so 2024 is for writing something more cohesive and maybe ending the year with something I can actually call a book!

And my reading goal is to hopefully read approximately one book a week. My 2023 goal was 42 books and I hit that in June… and I’m hoping to finish my 80th book before the fireworks go off at midnight so I think with realism in mind, I wanted to up my goal but didn’t want to put the pressure on myself to read this much again if I don’t have time or energy for it. Reading is a fun hobby and setting a goal is also just for fun. I keep reminding myself that it’s not about numbers but then I’m often reminded how many books are on my TBR and I think I should probably be reading instead of aimlessly scrolling through TikTok…

Professional Goals

figure out what’s next for me and work for it – figure something out
make time for learning and figure out what actually works for me – skillshare/youtube tutorials/books/classes etc
Update portfolio instagram account once a week

My professional goals were really hard to set this year. TL;DR – I got brutally and spontaneously fired from my ‘career’ job in media production in 2022 (five weeks before I got married lol) and after being formally diagnosed by my therapist with PTSD later in 2023, I have spent basically all my time since then floundering and wondering what the hell I’m meant to do next.

But 2024 is the year I figure it out – I’m using definitive language because I heard that’s meant to help, psychologically or something. I’ve been ‘waiting’ for the right thing to come along and it hasn’t so I need to be more proactive. Whether it’s making mood boards, spending time reading through job descriptions online or finding a mentor of some sort, I’m tired of feeling trapped by my trauma and I need to find an environment that will support me to flourish in the way my old boss refused to.

What I have learnt in years of making professional goals, is that sometimes it’s hard to make goals about things that are beyond your control (like not wanting to change jobs for a year then getting fired…) so I think deciding to make time for learning is a way to develop myself in a way that is completely in my control. I love learning, I love progressing my skills and I accidentally paid for a year of Skillshare so I really need to use it. If I’m not developing my career in a job, I can at least develop my skills. And I can track those developments on my portfolio Instagram which I want to continue updating once a week. Perhaps a slightly boring third goal, but keeping things like portfolios and showreels up to date is a challenging part of being in a creative field so having this goal to post consistently is a good way to combat that.

Home Goals:

Holidays
- go somewhere new internationally
- go somewhere new in the UK
- Scottish road trip with my mum
cook a new recipe from one of our cookbooks once a month
save some money every month – spend less frivolously!

It really takes a certain kind of person to put ‘holidays’ on their annual goals list doesn’t it? But these are things I’d like to do so why not include them! I’d love to go on another all-inclusive, sunbathing-and-reading-by-the-pool holiday this year but I don’t think it’s on the cards, but my husband keeps telling me how much he wants to see the Northern Lights so perhaps we’ll explore a country a little further North this year! As well as continuing to explore the country we live in and then my mum and I are in the process of planning a road trip around Scotland for the end of the summer so I’m really looking forward to exploring this year.

The cooking one is a bit weird perhaps, but we have a whole shelf of cookbooks in our kitchen that we never use so I want to incentivise myself to use them more! Whether it’s baking or trying a new dinner recipe, I’m determined not to let those books gather any more dust! I’m going to pick a new recipe on the 1st of every month and I’m looking forward to it.

Now money is a complicated thing – when I have a decent income, I’m not too bad at saving! When I don’t… I’m not. And I do a lot of sad spending. My self-restraint has been horrendous in 2023 but I’m determined to change that in 2024 – I’m going to be making more lists and spreadsheets of what I need to cover my bills, what I can keep as ‘fun money’ (for going out with friends, personal shopping etc) and what can go into that house deposit fund. It’s not going to be easy, but with the flourishing career I’m going to be nurturing in 2024 it will get easier… (remember what I said about definitive language…).

10 Aims / Things / Random Other Goals

monthly date nights!
monthly craft projects
use my lettering workbook to learn calligraphy
see a new musical
see a not-new musical
see a ballet
either use my musical instruments or get rid of them in 2025 (this sounds more threatening than intended)
continue learning French on Duolingo
make a 1 Second Everyday 2024 video!
make a 2024 photo album – at the end of each month, collate photos into a digital folder then at the end of the year have them printed in a photobook

Relatively simple, some are carried over from last year, some are going to take some planning but I’ve got that New Year’s Motivation that I’m going to have a great year!

And circling back to my line for 2024 – I’m going to enjoy the process. Even if I don’t meet every goal, I want to be mindful and present for the steps I take along the way. I want to be fully and intentional part of the process of my own life and not feel like I’m waiting for a certain moment for things to begin. My life began a long time ago and I don’t want to miss any more of it!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx

prepping for NaNoWriMo 2023

2023, writing

Hello!

With the National Novel Writing Month event being in November, perhaps the end of September feels like an odd time to be writing about it but as the website has opened up for people to submit their 2023 projects and the ‘prep phase’ has begun, I’m actually thinking about this year’s project more than a week in advance!

I’ve been consistently creative writing since about 2008, took part in my first NaNoWriMo in 2011 and won in 2012, then tried again in dribs and drabs over the years but it was only in 2022 (amongst a surprising amount of life things!) that I managed to hit the 50,000 word target again. But I wasn’t writing a specific novel – last year was more a practise of actually writing again; letting myself get lost in words and go on that journey with characters, whether they were original to me or my imaginative take on pre-existing stories (I was rewatching Teen Wolf so there was a lot of YA werewolf writing).

But I wanted 2023 to be different – rather than writing to reach a certain goal every other month, I wanted to be more consistent so I decided to challenge myself to write 1000 words every week. Initially I had plans to stick with one idea and actually work on finishing one project but I’ve learnt that my brain doesn’t work like that and I didn’t need any reason to squash my creativity. So I have an ongoing doc that currently has bits and bobs of 20 different original ideas, a lil bit of fanfiction (Gilmore Girls and The Resident really got to me) and some other random notes have thus far amounted to over 65,000 words, well surpassing my annual goal of 1000 words a week.

So I’ve amended my plan.

I’m still writing a thousand words a week, but over October I want to fully plan a novel and for this year’s NaNoWriMo I’m going to actually write it – I really want to stick with one idea and actually finish it because if I could actually get a first draft finished? Maybe I could make this writing dream a reality. But that’s a lot further down the line.

How am I actually going to plan the novel?

Step 1 I think will be to go through the ideas I already have – some are just one line that I thought of randomly, some are a trope that I’d like to write and some are already pages of planning, characters and moments, so I need to establish which one not only had the most substance, but I like enough that I can commit to writing it for a whole month.

Step 2 is then to map out the basic premise – I don’t like to plan everything too intensely because 1) it’s less exciting to write and 2) if the characters take it a different way it’s more work to amend, so keeping things kind of vague but with a set point in mind is the way I’ve found works best for me.

Then Step 3 is figuring out how long I want it to be and how to break that down. In my first successful NaNo in 2012, I planned a 30 chapter novel so that every day I could write a chapter that was 1,667 words long and I could meet the daily word count, but then I had a novel that was almost exactly 50,000 words which, don’t get me wrong, is fantastic (particularly for a 16 year old who was taking her mock GCSE exams at the time) but is commercially a bit short. I’ve not quite figured this one out yet, because I’d love to end NaNo with a finished novel but if I want to aim for 80k-90k (a more standard novel length), I’m either going to have to write way more or accept that I won’t finish it in a month (which is kind of insane anyway).

I’m very driven by numbers – I love data and spreadsheets, I love my fitbit and step counts and wow you should see the spreadsheet I have for tracking my writing this year (I may not be an Excel expert but I know how to do some relatively basic maths). I think I might aim for a minimum of 1667 words per chapter (this is the minimum word count required each day to meet the goal) then if some are longer, great, if some are shorter it’ll probably work out in the long run.

I want to have the foundations ready so that when November 1st comes around, I’ll feel ready to dive in.

I’m excited by the prospect of actually finishing a project – I’ve been creative writing for about 15 years and although I finished a full novel when I was 16, I don’t really have anything to show for it (unless you’re impressed by a lot of fanfiction). With everything I’ve been through professionally in the last couple of years, writing has been a real comfort and the thought of potentially being able to do something with it gives me hope.

So I’m riding the wave! Any and all writing tips are welcome – especially about focusing on one project for an extended period of time!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

I won NaNoWriMo!

2022, mental health, writing

Hello!

My first attempt at the NaNoWriMo writing challenge (National Novel Writing Month – 50,000 words in the 30 days of November) was in 2011 – it was for a novel idea which I’d called ‘On The Flipside’ (which I still think is a decent idea, maybe I should come back to it at some point!) but I didn’t put anywhere near enough planning in so I struggled up to 15k and had to call it quits. I was only 15.

In 2012, I won NaNoWriMo with the first novel I finished – ‘Type 3: Hyper-Intelligent’, my zombie apocalypse story was planned in advance and completed during my GCSE mock exams and my best friend at the time had major spinal surgery. It’s one of my proudest achievements to date and whilst I don’t think the story will ever quite see the light of day, it showed me that I had what it takes to plan a full on book.

In the ten years since then (I cannot believe it’s been 10 years), I’ve tried it a few times here and there – I’ve never had the right idea to turn into a full length story, let alone the inclination and motivation to do it and take it to fifty thousand words.

This year wasn’t much different – I was intending to use it as a planning period to flesh out a bunch of ideas that I could turn to next year, but I returned to my usual tactic of finding a thirty day word prompt challenge and writing a bunch of short stories – some barely covered the 1,667 word daily word count goal, some reached three or four days worth of word count. I only ended up using 16 of the 30 word prompts I’d found.

But I did it. 10 years on from my first NaNoWriMo win, I did it again – but not only did I write fifty thousand words, I did it in a month I got married, didn’t write on my mini-moon, my new husband then left to work on the World Cup in Qatar and I sank back into the worst depression I’ve had in my life (being fired in September has actually destroyed my mental health, but that’s a different story).

I hit the word count for three days, took ten days off writing then managed to hit 50k by the 29th – I wrote fifty thousand words in 19 days.

These last couple of months have been incredibly hard – my mental health was hugely suffering at the end of the summer, I changed new meds, I had panic attacks like I’d never had before, and then I got fired which snowballed everything into being a hundred times worse. I’ve not been able to sleep properly, it takes me hours to get out of bed and my anxiety has been manifesting into physical symptoms that make me feel ill 80% of the time.

I’m not looking for pity, but all these things rolled together meant I truly believed I was never going to be able to achieve a challenge like this – with no proper storyline, most of my writing only taking place between 10pm and 2am and barely being able to look after myself like a basic human, it didn’t seem like there was any way I could really do this.

But now I’m more inspired than ever – I did it; I did it 10 years ago in the middle of my exams, I did it this year with over a week of no writing and next year I intend to do it again. Although I intend to write more consistently and frequently next year (the goal is 1000 words a week!), I definitely want to do NaNoWriMo again in some capacity. Maybe it’ll be more short stories, maybe it’ll take an idea I spend the first 10 months of the year planning, who knows! But if I can win NaNo whilst going through all of this, hopefully next year will be a different picture entirely.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

I have nothing to write about

2022, writing

Hello,

Don’t get me wrong, I really love my little blog – I haven’t committed to anything for this long probably ever, maybe the dance classes my parents paid for before I went to uni. But the inspiration is low, even though I’m only writing one post a week instead of the two I managed for most of last year.

Every time I think of something I could write about – how I’m adjusting my routine to spend more time on basic self care, my experience with mental health and body image at the moment or even how I turned being the burnt out bright kid who didn’t finish any of her A Level English Literature texts to reading 45 books in a year, but it all feels so fake. Who am I to write about any of those things as if I am in a position of authority? I have no advanced experience in anything to share or educate with anyone and I’d be writing for the sake of it.

Which is exactly what I’m doing now… But we’ll gloss over that one for now.

Part of me thinks it’s imposter syndrome – who am I to think anyone should listen to or read anything I have to say about anything? But then I think that thinking it’s imposter syndrome is pretentious because assigning that term to myself implies that I believe I really am an authority on any of those things and I’m just having a moment of self doubt. Can it be imposter syndrome when I’m just right in that I’m not qualified to write about anything and I should stop writing a blog as if I’m important enough or knowledgable enough for someone to read it.

I’m really proud of the fact that over the last couple of years, I’ve stopped trying to ‘commercialise’ my blog – I did my time using trending hashtags and posting every couple of hours about my latest content and trying to be an influencer. I’ve stopped sharing my content as much, I don’t put my social links at the bottom of blog posts anymore because I write the things I want to look back on and if there is anyone else reading my posts, I’d rather they engaged with the content than followed me on Instagram.

I love writing – getting this all out has felt really nice and sitting with my laptop and just typing is a comforting feeling. Like when I’m creative writing and I’m working on idea or a moment and the story is almost telling itself – there’s several moments where I’ve been writing and I’ve almost been surprised by the words on the page because it almost feels like I’m not writing them, or the characters have started building a relationship I didn’t intend for and it just makes sense. I love that feeling.

I think I’m tired and burnt out. I think a full time 40 hour work week is too much for my neurodivergent brain, so piling on dance classes three nights a week, wedding planning, maintaining the bare minimum of a social life and desperately trying to make lifestyle changes to lose weight isn’t really helpful. There isn’t a solution at the moment, just hoping for a full nights sleep and a better week next week.

But the blog block is real – I now plan for roughly four posts a month; the last of each month is my reading wrap up and the first is my monthly goals and whilst I prefer the idea of keeping the middle two to be less structured, maybe I need themes and guides to take out the element of decision making that comes with not knowing what to blog about.

My two most popular blog posts are ‘there’s no songs about turning 24‘ and a creative writing piece called ‘if you had three wishes, what would they be?‘ and I can’t explain why they’re still consistently my two best performing posts when they were written two and five years ago respectively. But they’re examples of two more things I really love writing – personal rambles and creative writing. Maybe my four monthly posts could be my goals, creative writing, a personal ramble life update sorta thing and then a reading wrap up.

It’s my blog, it’s always been for me, I’m lucky if I get a few hundred views per month, let alone per post, which leads me back to ‘why am I writing this’ and ‘nobody cares’.

I don’t know why I’m writing this, and I don’t know if anybody cares. But I know I’m not the only one who feels like this, even if I don’t really see anyone else talking about it. And I do like the idea of saying things that others won’t, no matter how vulnerable it makes me feel.

Thank you for reading if you are, I hope you don’t mind my content ideas,

Sophie xx

why I took a month off / 2022 plans

2021, writing

Hello! It’s been a while!

My last post was December 5th – not even a month ago – but it’s the longest I’ve gone without posting in what feels like a very long time!

I’d love to give a long old reason as to why I haven’t written anything, but it’s just a case that work got on top of me, everything got a bit much and I had to prioritise getting through each day – I was out of ideas and absolutely couldn’t bring myself to write. I did not look at my computer when I wasn’t working.

But on Boxing Day I spent literally hours working on my new goals for 2022 and my bullet journal (it sounds tedious, but I had a fantastic time with all my pens – so relaxing!) and I feel so ready to get into some new routines and working on the things I’ve really decided to prioritise this year. I’m really excited about my goals for this year and I can’t wait for January 1st!

One of the things I wanted to make room to prioritise was this little blog of mine – I maintained two posts a week for much longer than I anticipated, but I think it just makes sense to go back down to one because I do have a full time job and I don’t have a lot of mental space for anything else so I needed to figure out how I was going to complete the goals I want to complete without filling up all my time and not having enough time to relax.

Another thing that I think will help is having more structure in what I blog about – my favourite posts to write are my monthly goals and my book related posts, so my first post of the month will always be my goals and my last post of the month will be a round up of the books I’ve read and listened to. Who knows what I’ll write in between but with a wedding coming up and lots of thoughts about finances, savings and house deposits maybe I’ll write more about that, but who knows? My blog has always been somewhere that I write about whatever I want to, almost more like a diary – whether it’s film reviews, some fun photos, a favourites list; anything. And I intend to keep it that way!

And that’s what I have to say – I didn’t mean to take so long off, I didn’t mean to have a break but I’m coming back and I’m coming back strong!

I’m going to much more mindful in 2022 not about what I ‘should’ be doing and how much I can squeeze in to every waking moment, but how much I am actually capable of doing and giving myself the space to recover without burning out quite so much.

2021 has been a rollercoaster and I know I’m incredibly fortunate to come out of it relatively unscathed, but I’ve learnt a lot about myself this year and I want to continue that journey of growth in 2022.

(and that might be the most pretentious thing I’ve ever said!)

Happy New Year everyone! 2022 feels like it’s going to be big – I feel like I have room to grow in my career, I’m excited about some personal projects I have planned and I’m getting married!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

prepping for NaNoWriMo

2021, writing

Hello!

As, somehow, October slips further and further away from us, the creative writing community becomes acutely more aware that NaNoWriMo is creeping closer.

NaNoWriMo is the thirty day writing challenge where the only goal is to write 50,000 words – 1,667 words a day. It’s the reason I do my ‘training’ writing challenges throughout the year – to keep myself writing so I have ever so slightly better chance of actually making it to 50k!

So far, I’ve only done it once but I’ve tried several times and I still adore creative writing and maybe this year will be different? But even if I don’t get to 50k, whatever I do achieve is more writing than I would have done otherwise so I’ve never thought of it as ‘losing’ NaNoWriMo – if a runner doesn’t finish a marathon, they’ve still run at least some of the way and it’s an achievement none the less!

Here’s my top 3 tips to prepare for NaNoWriMo:

One – have at least a vague plan:

I know, it sounds really obvious, but I’ve tried a couple of times to go in blind and figure it out as I go along and no matter how excited I am about an idea, I always lose momentum because I don’t have time to do the slow logistic bit when I’m trying to write 1,667 words a day.

The whole point of NaNo (at least from my point of view) is putting together a word-vomit-esque first draft – it’s not for polished words, it’s not for a perfect story, it’s to get words on paper and what you do with them afterwards is of your own choosing. Anyone who’s writing a perfect first draft by writing 1,667 words a day is a genius (or a full time writer, who knows).

Two – time management is key:

Fitting in writing 50,000 words around daily life – full time job, keeping the house clean and tidy, having a social life etc – is a mission. I usually fall into the trap of doing all my writing between 10pm and midnight in bed and it ruins my sleep schedule.

I find calendar blocking the most effective way to organise my time – I use Google calendar to plan when I’m going to do my tasks at work then I generally just use a piece of paper to roughly plan how I’m going to spend my evenings and weekends.

Another thing I’m going to try for the first time this year, is using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word (is that controversial?). We used Google for everything in my last job and being able to log in to any device and pick up where I left off could be really helpful this year where I’m working full time and commuting for nearly 2 hours a day.

Even just having somewhere to jot down any notes or ideas when I’m on the go (obvs not when I’m driving) and not having to make sure I have the most up to date version of the doc on whatever device I’m using will be really convenient.

It’s super nerdy to be excited about trying a new software for NaNoWriMo, isn’t it?

Three – take the pressure off:

Like I said – the goal is 50k but anything written is more words than you would have written if you hadn’t tried, so not meeting the goal of this challenge (i.e. it’s difficult!) isn’t the be all and end all.

In one of my previous challenges this year, I managed to write at least something every day and that’s the mentality I’m going into WriMo this year with. Even if I only manage 100 words on my lunch break, if I can write consistently for 30 days that means more to me than the word count.

The other thing is to not put any pressure on what you’re writing – sometimes when I sit down to write, I’m ready to craft a new story, come up with new characters and get to know them, but sometimes all I want to do is write fanfiction of whatever show or movie I’ve watched recently and that’s fine! Writing is writing.

I feel a little more mentally prepared for November this year – I’ve been vaguely thinking about what I’m going to write for WriMo for a few months and I’m actually excited about what I’m going to work on. Will I fall back on writing superhero fanfiction within a week or two? Almost certainly, but writing a little every day is my focus and as long as I don’t resort to including my shopping list in my word count, it’s all good with me!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

we’re all stories in the end

2021, writing

Hello!

Today, I actually went into work and spent the day working with my colleagues. It was the first ‘normal’ work day I’ve ever had in this job, having worked from home since my first day in January.

It’s about an hour to drive into work and usually I’d listen to my favourite podcast, but I’ve caught up on all the episodes and they’re on hiatus, so I needed something new for my journeys and I don’t fancy music at the moment. So I’m using my Audible free trial and I’m giving audio books a try – I redeemed my free tokens on two books that I really wanted to read and I listened to 8 chapters of ‘The Magpie Society: One For Sorrow’ today and now audio books are all I can think about.

But I can’t write a blog post about the two hours of audio book I listened to today – I can do a whole post about audiobooks when I’ve been listening for a year, but I think I’m getting a little bit overexcited.

It got me thinking though – I’ve been toying with the idea of a podcast for a while, but I’m not famous enough nor do I have enough friends to do a chatty, interview style podcast (which is my favourite kind of podcast to listen to) but audiobooks are kind of like long, fictional podcasts right? And I started fleshing out an idea that could be a short, fictional podcast and I felt so inspired.

I love storytelling. So much. I love listening to stories, reading stories, hearing people’s stories, making stories, writing my own (both in the literal sense of writing something for other’s to read and the more existential, pretentious sense that I’m writing my own history in living my life) – I love it. It’s the basis of everything I do – I studied journalism because I love telling stories and but I didn’t want to study them like I would if I’d picked English, I wanted to write them, make video stories, audio stories, tell stories with photographs. Granted, news stories aren’t my favourite stories but I got to tell them either way (my favourite one was the video about a new KFC burger, what a highlight).

Whether it’s games, TV shows, reminiscing over a drink with friends or writing a Christmas card to someone you don’t see much anymore, it’s all stories.

I was thinking about it the other day – I love performing, and I often think about what my life could look like if I’d properly devoted myself to dance, or music, or theatre, and I thought about what I spent my night’s off doing when I was teenager; I wasn’t practicing dance, I wasn’t practicing music, I was writing. Every spare moment of my childhood went to writing whether it was original fiction, fanfiction or talking to other fangirls on the internet, my priority was writing and storytelling.

So that’s my end goal – it always kind of was anyway, but I’m fired up and ready to do something about it. I do a fair bit of copywriting at work, but I’m going to flesh out this podcast idea, I’m going to find another original fiction idea that I really care about and write another book; this is what I love, telling stories and using what I love and my individual writing style to share that joy with others.

There’s a quote from Doctor Who that says; “We’re all stories in the end.”

Whether we leave behind a legend or a whisper, it’s all stories. And I’ve got a fair few to tell.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

April Goals

2021, goals

Hello!

Another month, another set of mini goals – with moving house in just over a week, I don’t feel like I’m ready to start any new goals yet but after we move, I’ll be ready for a new start and some more focus. Right now half of my life is in boxes and I’m looking forward to having the amount of stuff in our one bed house in our three bed house and having some more space!

So the first goal is to do all the admin and packing for moving house, but other than that – here are my five mini goals!

Writing challenge – 35,000 words – it’s Camp NaNoWriMo month so it’s time for another writing challenge! This month I’m aiming to start planning and writing a new original fiction project, which I haven’t done in a long time – it’s something very different for me and I’m looking forward to pushing myself creatively.
Cosplay work – I planned out the steps I need to take to make my first cosplay costume (Team Yell grunt from Pokemon Sword and Shield) and this month I’m going to make a denim jacket I have into a waistcoat, experiment with making armbands and find a skirt that I can potentially adapt if I need to.
Wedding planning – this months task is to contact the silk flower florist I met at a wedding fair last year. I have already sent her an email and now I need to figure out what I actually want and which flowers I want to replicate but I’m so excited to not have real flowers and be able to keep them – I said from the very beginning I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on flowers that would just die but the flowers at Indigo Blooms are beautiful. I didn’t even know they were fake. April is going to be very flowery.
Find pattern for knitted jumper – I’m really enjoying knitting right now and I really like oversized knitwear so… why not make my own, y’know? I don’t know if the pattern I’ve found is any good but I’m aiming for a Weasley esque initial jumper so it might take a couple of attempts to make one that actually looks good but I’m excited to try it.
Start Couch to 5k again – it will be the third time I’ve attempted Couch to 5k, but as the weather warms up and I move to a new town that feels a little safer than where I currently live, I really want to try and make running work again.

And my recurring monthly goals are to read 2 books, have a date night with my fiancé and put some money in savings.

I’m still figuring out balancing monthly goals with full time work and I think I’ve been relatively sensible with setting achievable goals whilst pushing myself to learn new things and develop in the ways I want to. But also on the other hand, I’ve been getting better at not feeling like a failure if I don’t ‘complete’ a goal because if I’m not prepared to put the work in, now isn’t the right time and that’s okay.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Facebook

a blogging writing block

2021, creativity

Hello!

I’ve been consistently writing blog posts for somewhere upwards of two years now – when I started in 2014 I had no idea what I was doing, in 2015 I did a 365 day challenge (successfully, might I add!), in 2016-2018 I played around with 2-3 blog posts a week and generally was pretty consistent! Then from 2019 (ish) onwards, I’ve pretty religiously written two blog posts a week and rarely missed one, other than maybe posting a day late because I forgot to publish a post.

But in the last month, I’ve not felt the motivation to write – I don’t like the ideas I’ve come up with, I don’t think they add anything to my blog’s narrative and I don’t feel inspired to write anything. Maybe it’s lockdown finally catching up with me – after a whole year I’ve finally run out of stuff to say. Maybe it’s the new job – it’s been two months of being knackered by 9-5 (does anyone ever get used to it?) so by the time the evening comes I want to sit and watch TV or play games with my partner and I wasn’t excited enough about the post ideas I’d come up with to open my computer back up and stare at a screen for even longer.

And I don’t know where this lull in my blogging motivation has come from – as a craft, I love writing, I love expressing myself in words and getting lost in what I’m typing. And I miss it – I miss writing those passionate rambles and creating my own little history book on this website, but I just didn’t see the point in anything I tried to write (and believe me I’ve tried).

But it hit me the other day as I was desperately trying to expand a couple of hundred words into an actual blog post – I’m out of creative energy.

Talking about ‘energy’ at all feels more hippie than I have ever sounded before, but I think it’s fairly common within creative communities and professions that it’s not an endless source to be tapped into. It’s a pool and like any body of water and ebbs and flows in waves – I’m just at the bottom of the wave.

For some reason that thought gave me comfort, rather than immediately catastrophising that after six years my blog is finally going to crash and I’m never going to find motivation again, I knew that this is just a moment and my mojo will come back.

Whether it’s a few good nights of sleep (the fact I first tried to spell night with a ‘k’ at the beginning show’s how few of those I’ve had!), getting that one really big work task finished or moving house (fingers crossed!) to get my mojo back or it’s just riding through this funk till I can surf the wave, I will not feel like this forever.

Is the water analogy going too far now?

Either way, it’s happened before and it will undoubtedly happen again, but beating myself for not maintaining my trivial, self-set deadline of two posts a week isn’t the end of the world – giving myself the space with being okay with deleting that task from my list rather than ticking it off.

This blog is mine – it’s meant to be something fun and lighthearted and when I start to feel stressed by it, I need to listen to what my body and mind are asking for and give it some space.

So I might not be posting every Tuesday and Friday – sometimes it might go up late on Wednesday or Saturday or I might not post anything at all. If you miss me, send me a message on instagram – I’m usually scrolling!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

how I wrote 30,000 words while working full time

2021, goals, writing

Hello!

When I was in it, it didn’t feel like January was that busy but looking back? I started a new full time job, I did really well with my January Goals, I read 4 books and I even made a more consistent effort at going for walks! As well as finishing a 30,000 word creative writing challenge!

I did my first NaNoWriMo challenge in 2011, where I attempted to write 50,000 words in a month (I managed 15k but I was 15 so I think it was still a good attempt!) and I fell off the creative writing wagon when I didn’t have the same evening downtime when I moved to uni and I’ve been trying to make it more of a habit since NaNoWriMo 2017.

For the last two years or so I’ve been doing writing challenge every few months to keep me writing and give myself a goal, because I find it way easier to ‘write X number of words a day’ than to just task myself with writing.

So this year I planned a 30k writing challenge for January, 35k for April, 40k for July, 45k for September and the traditional 50k for NaNoWriMo in November. I knew I was going to need practice to write daily (or the equivalent of daily) in that quantity whilst navigating my first proper career job and for the first challenge for the year, I smashed it!

Here are some of the things that I really think helped me hit my goal for the month.

Having a spreadsheet with my daily word goal made it really clear what targets I needed to hit when and having this visible when I was writing meant I didn’t spend half my time clicking between tabs checking to see how much more I needed to write (might be a me thing, but I’m always looking to be able to tick things off lists!).

Although it probably didn’t help my sleep schedule, I found going up to bed a little early and writing up there whilst my boyfriend played video games downstairs much easier to concentrate. If we had more rooms in our house I would have worked at a desk or something but currently my options are living room or bedroom! My word target was only 968 words per day (compared to NaNoWriMo’s 1667), so if I was feeling inspired I could write it in about an hour and then I’d snuggle into bed with my book and then watch the Repair Shop with my boy until we fall asleep. Lovely!

I’m not someone who can usually work with music – even when I was studying for school exams, I couldn’t study to music with lyrics because I’d get distracted by the words and inevitably end up singing along and not taking in any of the biology revision I was doing. I’ve gotten worse at multitasking since then and I get very easily distracted now, but I’ve found some brilliant playlists over the course of this month – magical instrumentals, lofi hip hop music – beats on relax/study to and ambient relaxation are great instrumental playlists and my current personal favourite is main character because they’re songs that everyone can pretend they’re in that bit in a movie where it’s a montage of the main character being sad or something. Also most of the songs are used in lots of tiktoks so it’s a lot of ‘oh it’s that song’.

It’s not been easy – there’s been a lot of late night writing sessions and yesterday when I had less than 1000 words to go I really struggled with motivation but I did it and it feels amazing.

I decided yesterday I want to start work on a new original novel for NaNoWriMo this year and I feel super motivated now!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram