Howdy folks! Have I ever said how much I hate new years? My step-grandad died on New Year’s Eve when I was in my early teens. I’ve had a couple of break ups around NYE as well, and a few other crappy things as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a couple of fun NYE’s too, but no matter what I can’t get excited about them. So, I just kinda get on with it. So today, I’ve written 1476 words on Penal Earth 2, had a nap after a couple of nights where I haven’t slept too well, okay more than a couple, and did some gaming.

Now, last year. I wrote 105, 858 words. Edited 19569, a paper edit (red penning) of 194 pages, and that all for a total of 5 days, 11 hours and 48 minutes. I didn’t set any goals for last year, just tried cracking on. This did and didn’t work. Not having the pressure of hitting certain goals did help, but other times I felt directionless. But it’s not just about setting targets like project completion, word counts, and how many hours I’m putting into the words. I need consistency. I talked a little about this in a recent post. It’s no good setting targets if I never hit them. It’s no good setting a higher target if I hit my previous months target, but then don’t even get close to the original target. So although last month I passed my target of twenty hours (23 hours 9 mins altogether) I’m not going to make this months target twenty-five hours. I’m going to aim for twenty hours again. Then in February I’ll set the same, and probably March too. Huh, why am I not breaking the year into quarters. Sorry brain wondered. But year, if I can maintain that twenty hours a month over multiple months then I’ll look at increasing the target.

Will this work? I don’t know. There’s a lot of factors to take into consideration, but I need to try.

I know I can make real progress if I can build that consistency and improve my discipline.