Jake's 2018 Achievements

HOW WAS YOUR 2018?

Small break in the synopsis series this week to look at my 2018 summary. It can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling like the year flew by too fast, and you got nothing done.

I certainly felt that way until I looked back through my bujo and marked off all the important milestones I reached in 2018. Looking back on this year, I can see it was actually a huge and fantastic year, and I am very proud of all the things I have achieved:

Milestones:

- Came out as transgender

- Fell pregnant with first child

- Wrote 600k+

- Read 27 books (Not counting Aurealis)

- Edited 650+ pages

- Changed Legal Name to Jake Corvus

- New personal best: 10, 500 words in a single day

- Paid off house mortgage in full

- Brought a new car (Suzuki Vitara)

- Judged Aurealis Awards (Fantasy Novel Category)

- Launched my newsletter and new Website

- Taken on new role as President of Vision Writers

- Found new medication that decreased my migraines by 3/4.

- Finished 10 first drafts.

Books I Read In 2018:

- The Cruel Prince – Holly Black

Enjoyed this immensely. It didn't really kick off for me until about half way through, but then it really kicked off. And what a title.

- Happiness By Design – Paul Dolan

            I highly recommend this for anyone who likes psychology, sociology or who wants to be happy.

- Your First 1000 Copies – Tim Grahl

            Lots of good information and got me fired up about self promotion.

- In Other Lands – Sarah Rees Brennan

            Subversive and just plain awesome attack on YA genre fiction. Read it.

- The Happiness Project – Gretchen Ruben

            Ruben shares her experiences as she implements a 12 months 'be happier' plan in her life. A lot of useful insights, if a little self centered.

- The One Thing – Gary Keller

            I really enjoyed this book, but I don't like to bring it up, because inevitably someone who hasn't read it will say its stupid based on their incorrect understanding of the premise. If you want to be really awesome, read it. Don't listen to the people self-righteously bitching about it.

- Sick House – Jeff Strand

            I honestly hate Jeff Stand books. I buy them and read them and hate every moment of it, then buy more. He's fantastic at narrative traction, terrible at plot, characters, and everything else. I plan to buy more of his books and then bitch about how bad they are next year.

- Three Moments of An Explosion – China Mieville

            You either 'get' China Mieville or you don't. If you are going to read his stuff, start with 'Looking for Jake'. If you love it, go nuts with the rest of his novels. If you don't, just move on with your life. Personally, I idolise him with a passion that borders on blasphemy.

- 7 Steps to Wealth – John Fitzgerald

            Not as good as 'The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape', but if you have read The Barefoot Investor and are still hungry for more, this is pretty good. I like books on personal finance.

- Nevermoor – Jessica Townsend

            A great example of working with tropes. Townsend uses tropes and clichés as a form of literary shorthand to skip the 'boring bits' and focus on the more interesting parts. I enjoyed it as a learning/stylistic tool. The descriptions and language were gorgeous.

- Strangers to Superfans – David Gaughran

            Fantastic book for authors on self-promotion. Recommended.

- Gentleman's Guide To Vice and Virtue – MacKenzi Lee

            I wanted to love this, but the main character is so insufferably self-centred and selfish, I couldn't get into it. If you want to read a teen gay romance about a narcissist, this one is for you.

- The Death Collector – Jack Kerley

            Thriller novel that reveals more about the author's sexual fetishes than he probably intended. Every single woman in this book was described as looking EXACTLY THE SAME. I think I counted eight different tall red-heads by the end of the book. Come on, bro.

- The Kept Woman – Karin Slaughter

            I love all the Will Trend books. If you want to read Karin Slaughter, start with Triptych. Don't read the Grant Gounty books, Jeffery is human garbage.

- Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myth and Magic – F.T Lukes

            Worst title for a YA this year. Could never remember it, so I never recommended it to anyone. Pretty cute gay romance. Main character is a bit self-centred and oblivious, but I could get past it.

- The One Page Marketing Plan – Allan Dib

            Good book on marketing and self-promotion for authors. Recommended.

- The One Hour Content Plan – Meera Kothand

            Good book on generating content for your blog and newsletter. Recommended.

- Your First 100 Repeat Customers – Meera Kothand

            Almost identical content to Allan Dib's One Page Marketing plan. I prefer Dib's.

- Simplify – Joshua Becker

            Short and pointless guide to simplifying your life. Don't bother.

- Making Websites Win – Karl Blanks

            This beast is DENSE and targeted at big companies, not authors. However, if you enjoy this sort of thing, and are good at extrapolating, then I still recommend it. I learned a lot.

- Fence 1-12 – C.S Pacat

            Queer sports comic series. The first few are significantly better than the later editions. I will be using the first four to demonstrate various writing skills for many years to come. However, you can see where time pressures started to affect the quality of the story and art.

- Coffee Boy – Austin Chant

            Sweet transman/man office romance. I really liked it. If you like queer romance, you will also probably like it.

- Write and Grow Rich – Alinka Ruthowska

            A collection of interviews with best-selling authors, talking about how they became successful, what their biggest mistake was and what make the biggest impact on their career. Most of these authors are nonfiction, not fiction. I found it quite reassuring, since different people had different methods.

- Help! My Facebook Ads Suck – Micheal Cooper

            Good book on marketing and self-promotion on facebook for authors. Recommended.

- Barefoot Investor for Families – Scott Pape

            A must if you have kids or grandkids.

- Friday Black – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

            Excellent collection of speculative fiction short stories. Highly recommend. Several of these stories still haunt me and I think about them regularly.

ROLL ON 2019

Obviously next year my biggest goal is having a healthy baby in February and looking after him. However, being a new, single dad hasn't prevented me from writing a pretty extensive list of goals I am hoping to achieve.

Primary Goals For 2019:

- Have a baby.

- Get back to my pre-pregnancy goal weight.

- Build house #2.

- Complete 2 solo first drafts.

- Have two new books edited and ready to pitch/sell.

- Build my newsletter to 500 subscribers.

I also have another 9 'optional' goals to work on. Overly ambitious? Always. To be honest, even though I have had an insanely productive year in 2018, I don't think I achieved any of my goals. This was because they were tied to specific projects—which I had to put aside for other things—and weight loss, and, unsurprisingly, at 8 months pregnant, I can't maintain my pre-pregnancy goal weight. In fact, I am about ten kilograms heavier, which is honestly not that bad.

I don't know how having a baby is going to affect my time, just that it will, and that I will need to reorganise my days around Esteban and his requirements. I know there is going to be a learning curve, but I am as prepared as I can be.

Roll on 2019!

And don’t forget to sign up to my hilariously inappropriate newsletter at www.traditionalevolution.com. It contains book news, stories too personal for facebook, movie reviews and when you first sign up, you get the full, unabridged version of the chicken story.

Setting New Years Goals To Make Yourself Happy In 2018

New Year's Goals, Not New Year's Resolutions

 

These days everyone is very hostile toward the idea of New Year's Resolutions for some reason. I've heard people say: 'I can change any day, I don't want to wait until new years' or 'new year's resolutions never last'.

That's fine, I'm talking about goals. And I think having goals for the year is important. It's hard to get where you want to be if you don’t know where that is.

What's Your Motivation?

Why do we do things? Everything we do, every single thing, is to avoid pain and seek gratification. That's not to say we are all hedonists. We often suffer through painful things we believe will give us greater happiness in the long run. For example, I don't know many people who enjoy university assignments, but we imagine getting a good grade and getting our degree with allow us to get a job that makes us happy.

On the other hand, sometimes we avoid small things which would make us happier in the long run, because there is a discomfort barrier in our way. Maybe we must make an uncomfortable phone call to get our money back on a faulty item. We know having our money back would make us happier, but the stress of confrontation stops us from doing it.

As I said, everything we do is about avoiding pain and seeking gratification.

But What Is Happiness?

So, I am going to assume that your goals, whatever they are, are ultimately about you wanting to be happier. Losing weight, getting a boyfriend/girlfriend, reading more, cooking more, finishing your novel—you imagine these things will make you happy. No one has the New Year's Goal of getting into debt or becoming depressed, we know those things would decrease our overall happiness.

However, before we can work out what will make us happy, we must define happiness, which is not as simple as it sounds. I prefer Paul Dolan's definition in Happiness by Design: 'Happiness is experiences of pleasure and purpose over time'.

Purpose and pleasure. Not just pleasure. For example, maybe you don't really enjoy exercising, but it gives you a strong sense of purpose that is rewarding. And maybe you enjoy watching reality TV, there I a lot of pleasure in it, but you don't get a sense of purpose from it. There are also double negatives, like being forced to do work you know will ultimate be discarded. And hopefully double positives, walking your dog, for example, which is both pleasurable and purposeful.

Obviously, as much as possible, we need to steer ourselves toward activities that give us both pleasure and purpose, and avoid activities that give no pleasure or have no purpose. Its also important, to maximise our happiness, that we have a balance between pleasure and purpose. If you do nothing but play video games, you are not likely to be very happy, even though they are pleasurable.  Likewise, if you do nothing but work, you are unlike to be happy, even if your work gives you a strong sense of purpose.

In this blog post I am going to suggest five sequential personal assessment and development exercises that will help you choose and achieve positive goals for 2018 that will truly make you happy in the long run.

Exercise One:

This brings us to exercise one. I want you to write four lists. Each list should have about twenty activities on it, but you can as many more as you want. The activities should include all the things you do in a week (or even month) and all the things you wish you did.

- List 1: Activities that give you pleasure:

- List 2: Activities that are not enjoyable:

- List 3: Activities that give you a sense of purpose:

- List 4: Activities that feel pointless:

Every activity should appear on two of your lists. Because every single activity should be either pleasurable or unenjoyable, and purposeful or pointless. Some examples of activities could include:

- Cleaning = Unenjoyable/purposeful.

- Exercising = Unenjoyable/purposeful.

- Reading (educational) = Unenjoyable/purposeful.

- Reading (fiction) = Enjoyable/pointless.

- Watching TV = Enjoyable/pointless.

- Writing = Enjoyable/purposeful.

- Gardening = Enjoyable/purposeful.

- Angry tweeting racists = Unenjoyable/pointless.

- Watching the news = Unenjoyable/pointless.

It helps to put as many things as possible on these lists, as it will aid you with the following exercises a lot.

Exercise Two:

If you could go back in time five years and do some things differently, what would you change? Would you have started a savings account? Put more effort into your marriage? Made more time for your kids? Made more time to write your book? Started university? You might want to write a list of these for clarity.

You should never put something off because of how long it will take. The time will pass anyway, the only difference is, if you will have that thing you desire at the end of it.

- So, I want you to write a list. In five years' time, what things do you think you will regret not doing now?

There is a meme that is very popular now that says something like: "People are so intent on the idea that if they went back in time, small changes could have huge ramifications to the present, why don't they think about the small changes they make now that could have huge ramifications on the future?"

Change your future now.

Exercise Three:

Okay, we're finally here. Time to start thinking about 2018. Now you have a few important lists ready. You have a list of things that give you pleasure, a list of things that give you purpose, and a list of things you think you will regret not doing.

Now is the time to go nuts. Write a list of all the things you would like to achieve in 2018. Note I said: 'like to achieve' not 'plan to achieve'. This is not our list of new years goals, this is a list of all our possible new years goals. And I want it to include the bad things you want to get rid of: like cutting down your commute and spending less time on Facebook. Or the bad things you have been putting off, like finally writing a letter to a parent to tell them how much they failed you.

But also include all the things that you love and that give you a sense of purpose, even if they scare you. Want to start your own business? Move to another country? Cut down your carbon footprint? Go vegan? It all goes on this list.

Make this list long. Longer. Keep going until you can't think of a single other thing you would like to achieve.

Exercise Four:

Its time to curate. I want you to choose three goals from that list. They must meet three criteria:

1. They must be doable in a year.

2. They must be something that will improve your overall happiness.

3. They should be big, not something you can knock out in a weekend.

These are going to be your primary 2018 goals. Congratulations! Are you scared? If you aren't, you've aimed too low.

Exercise four is about writing down the steps to achieve these three goals. Keep breaking down each step into smaller and smaller pieces. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Ideally, you want to break down every single step into blocks that would take an hour, then do, perhaps, four blocks a day over your different goals. Depending on your goals, this planning and breaking down step could take a long time, but it will be worth it.

If your goal is to lose 10kgs (like me) your steps might look something like this:

- Plan meals for week one with shopping list.

- Plan meals for week two with shopping list.

- Plan meals for week three with shopping list.

- Plan meals for week four with shopping list.

- Plan meals for week five with shopping list.

- Plan slowly increasing exercise routine for 1-10 weeks, cumulating in a plateaued daily exercise routine of 30 minutes of stretches/sit ups/squats and 1km on the treadmill.

- Shop for week one meals.

- Begin daily routine of cooking meals from plan and following exercise schedule.

- Weekly weigh in on Tuesday.

- Weekly grocery shop on Tuesday.

Come hell or high water, you are going to throw everything you have into achieving these three goals in 2018. You will succeed or kill yourself trying. You have a plan, it is in easy to manage steps, and you know achieving these goals will make you a happier person.

I believe in you.

Exercise Five: Optional

If you are like me, there were a lot of smaller things on your possible list of 2018 goals that are good, productive but not vital. It might be worth writing a secondary list of things you will try and achieve, so long as they don’t take time away from your primary goals. For me, that was things like:

- Read 20 novels/books.

- Read or donate everything on my 'to be read' shelf.

- Read my goals every day.

- Write in my journal every day.

- Go to the beach once a week until it is too cold to swim.

- Brush the dogs in the evening while I am watching TV.

These are all things that will make my life better, make me happier and are generally positive, but I am not going to beat myself up if I don't achieve. I will still do my best to complete them—though since most of them are just doing things with a certain regularity, rather than, an actual goal that can be achieved, they are not suitable 'New Year's Goals'.

Feel free to write your own list of these, and put that list where you can see it. These are all on my Habitica page somewhere, and I have the full list written in my new 2018 Day Planner, so I can check it whenever I have spare time to kill.

So that's it. My guide to 2018 Goals That Will Make You Happier. I hope these exercises made a difference for you, and helped you in some way. And I hope you have an amazing 2018!