Author: stephaniehaggarty

Global traveller. Writer. Minimalist. I spent my first 25 years in Australia. Moved to Edinburgh for the next four and a half years and now reside in the Netherlands. In my spare time, I try to write whatever takes my fancy, and that involves YA, Sci-fi and fantasy.

Goals Revisited

~ stephaniehaggarty ~ 1 Comment

Before I turned 30, I had the goal of 10 stories published. While I didn’t achieve it, I still hit that number before my 31st birthday.

So what was next?

As I write this, I can’t remember. And I’m too lazy to go back and check what I wrote about it. However, in the last month, I have been making myself think and decide on a goal for the rest of the year. There are five months left in 2022 and I’m going to make it count.

So I think my end-of-year goals will be;

  1. Self-publish one story.
  2. Have a completed first draft of a second story.
  3. Have the plan for a third story (mostly completed).

I’ve got a few ideas from back in 2020 that I still need to get around to. So maybe they can be the other stories. But I also have this one little gem from the beginning of this year that I’ve started.

Wellness in progress

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The first half of 2022 has been better for me than the three years. Even despite not writing since January. As the year dawned, I had a thought that turned into action.

This year is going to be my year of wellness.

Everything I didn’t like about myself, I was going to change. And I’m going to give myself lots of time to do so. No pressure. No specific timelines. Nothing like that. To start my year of wellness, I made a list of all the things I didn’t like about my situation.

  • I wasn’t writing, editing, or publishing.
  • I was fat.
  • I had depression.
  • I was not enjoying life.

I began the year with a new job, which felt like a mistake (though there was nothing to indicate it). I was having constant bad thoughts. I was not writing, and I half hated myself for it and half didn’t care. But I wasn’t alone. I was with my lovely husband and two cats.

With his encouragement, I went and got anti-depressants. And wow. It was night and day. These happy pills changed my outlook on life. I look forward to each new day where in the past I hadn’t. I enjoy life now. Everything is improving. I’ve lost weight. I enjoy my job and have fun with the people there. Things that stressed me before do not anymore. I think life is fun and good things are in my future. I plan on spending the rest of the year enjoying life and getting back into writing.