Change the Same

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. It’s been a hectic month, and I’m thankful you took a moment out of your schedule to hang out with me. I’d miss you, if you weren’t around.

All month long, I’ve been talking about some things that I want you to keep in mind, as we close out the year. And, true, a lot of these things are things you already know—but they’re also things we all need to hear, once in a while. We need to hear them, and we need to take them to heart. As writers, sometimes we need to hear it from another writer. And that’s what I’m here for. :)

#5: There won’t be as much change in 2019 as you might think

I don’t know why, at the end of every year, we get our hopes up that next year will be so much better, so much different, from the year we’re leaving. The odds are, not that much will change. In fact, the odds are that next year will be pretty darn similar to this year. Sure, some years will be better than others, some will be worse, but in the grand scheme of things, in the day-to-day, everything generally stays about the same.

Keep that in mind, as we enter 2019. It’ll help take the pressure off.

You, my dear writer, are always growing. I don’t mean to say that you’re not, that your craft isn’t constantly getting better or that you don’t need to work on it because nothing’s going to change. No, dear writer, I’m telling you that if you think of every year as just another year, another opportunity, without putting an extreme high-beam on it, your accomplishments will be all the greater (and it’ll be easier to look back on every year with joy).

2019 can’t control what becomes of it. But you can. 2019 isn’t an entity, but a year. It doesn’t get to decide what happens and what doesn’t happen. You do that. But if you put too much pressure on, if you try to tell 2019 that it has to be the best year ever, you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed when December rolls around again.

Before you go getting the wrong idea again, I’m also not telling you that you shouldn’t aim high every year. You should. In fact, you should aim higher in 2019 than you aimed in 2018—but only if you actually reached all your goals in 2018. If you didn’t, then shoot for the same mark. Once you get it, shoot higher.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to make 2019 amazing, that you should just think of it as another year and nothing more. No, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be thinking in terms of the calendar days at all.

Have a goal in mind? Set yourself a realistic timeframe to get it done. Don’t focus on it fitting into 2019. Focus on getting it done to the best of your ability, in the time that you have.

2019 is just 365 days. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s just a group of days on a calendar, and it shouldn’t be how you look at the things you want to accomplish. Sure, you’ll do some amazing things in 2019. I know you will. I will, too. And we’ll look back on 2019 and be thrilled at the things we did. But we’ll also remember 2019 as the year we started something. The year we finished Goal A and moved on to Goal B, the one that would take us five and three quarters of a year to finish.

Doesn’t matter what year it is. You probably won’t be able to complete all your goals, if you don’t set them realistically. That's what happens every year, or didn't you notice?

So take the pressure off. 2019 is just another year, another set of calendar days in which to work toward completing our goals.

And it won’t be all that different from this year, because nothing ever changes that far. We’ll still be writers, we’ll still be writing, editing, publishing, and repeating. Only we’ll be getting better at it along the way—no matter what day or year it is.

[love]

{Rani Divine}