2023 Goal Recap and 2024 Goals

"We plan, God laughs."
--Old Yiddish proverb.

Having learned from my 2022 goals what reasonable goal-setting looks like, I resolved to push several of my projects to the next stage while tackling a couple smaller personal growth projects. I drew up a list of goals that seemed pretty reasonable and started my year.

And the table absolutely got flipped. A minor goal became the most accomplished project of the year, and by May much of my remaining attention was co-opted by the out-of-left-field goal of learning to speak Japanese.

In 2023, I hoped to

1. Work with an illustrator on The Firebird, my children's story, and have around half of the artwork done this year if possible. (revised goal as of February) To start work on the illustrations this year, with no required end-goal deadline at this time.

This did not work out as I originally hoped, but THAT IS LEGITIMATELY OKAY. Neither I nor the illustrator have had time to focus on this project, and even if the illustrator had time to give me more, I still would have had to put this on the back burner for reasons detailed in the rest of this post. I have a few spot illustrations that are adorable and they give me a lot of hope for a future book, but right now this project is fully on the back burner for both of us.

I got three spot illustrations of the baby bird this year that make me smile.

2. Finish revising Thicker Than Water Tales and have them proof-read by an editor. (revised goal as of February) To revise the second story in the series, Worse Than Death, by the end of the year.

I only managed to revise four chapters of Worse Than Death this year. I felt extremely guilty setting this aside, but something came up that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was more important, and that was...

3. Write one original short story per month.

This was my goal to stretch myself into original fiction. Mostly, I wanted to keep myself trying to generate original fiction until I got more comfortable with it. Instead, The Remara Phenomenon happened. By now, it is a collection of short stories (or somewhat longer story-arcs) while also being a cohesive novel and I can envision the approximate shape of its end.

As of the end of 2023, I have written 21 chapters and about 68k words in this novel, which is far more than I intended when I set this goal for myself. I have what looks like 2/3 of a fantasy manuscript that I didn't expect to have when I tacked this goal onto the end of my list last year. I am ecstatic.

4. Face my fears about information.

Specifically, this goal was meant to kick my butt to watch and read things that I was afraid to consume because 1) I thought it would shake my view of the world or 2) I was afraid touching certain titles would cause others to hate me. I dragged myself to very occasional pieces of media early on like

• The Case Against The Case For Christ by Robert Price
• The Forever Prisoner documentary

Yeah... that's a pretty sparse list. I was still scared.

After October 7th of this year, I chose to confront a topic that I felt I had to take a stand on. It's funny how posting my opinion about Israel kind of killed the fear I had about diving into controversial or antagonistic pieces of media. After that, I consumed:

• Bibi by Benjamin Netanyahu
• The Greatest Lie Ever Sold documentary
• Lady Ballers comedy
• A lot of Ben Shapiro podcasts
• Two books about Israel so far

On deck are:

• The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi (unless I can find a better recommended title)
• Enough different books about Israel that I will hopefully get a sense of what happened, where, and when
• A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

At the beginning of this year, I was timid about all of this. I'd even decided I wasn't going to read anything about former president Trump for, like, twenty years until all the vitriol died down and I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting a calm assessment of the facts. Post October 7, oddly enough, as I tested the idea of diving into that sinkhole, I was not terrified anymore. It's not my focus at this time, but I won't rule out a few books up that alley in the coming year.

I am occasionally hesitant about consuming certain media, but I am no longer terrified.

5. Face my fear about heights. To that end, I intend to visit an aerial adventure course at least twice this year. By the end of the year, I want to be able to jump off a diving board into a foam pit at a trampoline park without getting stuck up there. Some fear of heights is reasonable, I've determined that mine is not.

After discussing my situation with an employee at a rock climbing gym (which also has a ropes course) I opted to start out rock climbing their easiest courses with an auto-belay (a device that lowers you slowly to the ground if you slip or let go of the wall). I started out going up a few feet, then letting myself down, then going up a few more handholds and letting myself down. I did that about four times before I let myself get to the top of the course... and then let myself down. I cried out or whimpered every single time, but I climbed courses for just under an hour at the beginning of March. It was great, and I was all set to come back once or twice a month until I'd kicked this fear.

And then I never went again. And I never went back to that trampoline park either. It had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with time. Writing The Remara Phenomenon took a lot of time and focus, and so did:

SURPRISE! 6. Learn Japanese.

Sergey had, years ago, mentioned wanting to spend a year or two in Japan at some point and asked me if I would learn Japanese with him. I told him I didn't have the focus required to learn a foreign language unless he could assure me that a relocation was actually going to happen.

It must have been March or April of this year when talks started. He was serious. He really wanted it to happen. He wants us to spend a year there with the intention of learning the language and finding out if Japan is a place we want to permanently move to.

We wrestled with the details and hard questions for a couple of months. I struggled with depression and anxiety over this massive looming change that was going to upend everything. But by May or June, when the emotional dust settled, it morphed into a sense of adventure.

Japanese is a difficult language to learn (says the native English speaker, to the frustration of anyone trying to learn this hot mess of a language). For a while, I managed to keep up with learning Japanese vocabulary, the various characters and symbols, and even maintained a 104 day Duolingo streak. I even started learning Kanji on WaniKani, a site that's really well set up to help you learn Japan's logogram system. Sergey and I also picked up a textbook called Genki and we've been going through it for new vocabulary, practice questions, and sentence construction.

Then I started writing the Remara and the Tiny Man arc, and everything else fell away for about a month and a half. House cleaning fell behind, meetings were put off, and I had to hire security because I broke my Duolingo streak and now the owl is gunning for me.

Just kidding about that last one, but I did break my streak. As I come back to Japanese, I realize how much focus learning the language properly takes. To that end, I feel that I now have to set The Remara Phenomenon aside for a few months to catch up properly. After all, we are looking at middle-to-late next year to start our initial one-year scouting trip to Japan.

I've learned all Hiragana and most of the Katakana letters, several Kanji, and am comfortable with many vocab words and a few kinds of sentences. I have familiarity (if not comfort) with even more vocab words and sentences.

That's an awful lot for this year. With all that in mind,

What are the 2024 goals?

1. Finish a first-draft manuscript of The Remara Phenomenon.
2. Prepare (repair) the house and all its systems so that it can weather our absence well.
3. Be able to read a Japanese children's book and/or largely understand a manga (Japanese graphic novel) and/or understand most of what is being said in an anime (Japanese animation).

Come at me, 2024.