New year, same me

It's 2025, yo!

Back in the old days I used to think that I needed to start the new year the way I intended to continue it. So, not massively hungover, up and getting the words out, having an amazing writing day and a good day in general. Clean house, up to date on the laundry.

I did not always succeed. I was more often than not disappointed in myself - imagine that? Setting myself up like that and being an asshole. Not cool, Cassie. Not cool at all!

Things are different now though, in a number of ways.

I've decided to do away with goals, for starters. Well, SMART goals. After a lot of reflection, I've realized that they just don't work for me. They stress me out. My life is too chaotic. I keep using that word to refer to things, chaos, and I want to stop for a moment and expand on that. I don't consider chaos to be a bad thing - my life is sensitive to change, things shift and mutate and grow and evolve and I LOVE that. Sure, it means it can be hard to plan too far ahead, and that SMART goals are out the fucking window, but I'm good with flux and change. The psychics definition of chaos is: the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. That last part is particular important, because I am sensitive to small changes in conditions, so it makes sense that my life is as well - the things I choose to put my energy into can shift as life shifts, but I feel like over the course of 2024 I've learned so much about myself that I can now be more certain that where I decide to put that energy is the RIGHT place to put it.

This year I'm focused more on the process than the destination, which is why SMART goals have been kicked out of my world. The more I tried to work toward a deadline, the less I enjoyed the work. It stole my love - I gave my love away. Well, I'm taking it back.

Here is the chain of thought: when focused on deadlines/outcomes, I don't enjoy the work, I feel pressure, I don't feel like I have the time to make a book everything I want it to be, and then I find it really hard to actually do any promotion, so my books don't sell.

Um, well, that's dumb!

So this year I'm enjoying the process of writing projects that call to me, that challenge me, that allow me to learn and grow and write about things that are important to me. I keep likening myself to a dog rolling around in a fresh animal corpse, because that's totally what is happening in my head. When Harlow finds a dead thing, she tries her very best to throw herself on top of it and ROLL, getting that stink all up in her business.

I want to be all up in the business of these books. I'm SO excited about the projects I have on - but I'm also ready for things to take time, to need revising, to challenge me, to send me crazy with the problems that crop up. One of the best lessons from last year is that things take as long as they take, and if I give projects the time and space they need, I feel better about them, I can make them as good as I possibly can before I hit publish, and then I actually feel positive about promoting them and telling people about them. Win!

Part of this also means doing something I've been terrified about - finding beta readers, building my advanced reader team. I have this core belief that I am a terrible person, thus I must also be a terrible writer, terrible at everything basically - I'm simply fooling people into believing otherwise (muahaha, I am SO ghastly and clever). Obviously, I am not a terrible person, and also, as a very good friend said to me last year, I've had all the external validation that I should ever need to show that I am not a terrible writer too.

But I just can't get away from that fear, and that fear has stopped me from reaching out to find alpha or beta readers who could give me feedback and help me make my books better... It's stopped me from finding a decent editor to help me make my books shine, which is all obviously just feeding into my belief that my books are terrible, and I am a terrible writer.

Self-defeating cycles be damned - time to break free.

This year, it's time to listen to my intuition. To trust that I know me best. To disengage from the remaining 'should's that hang over every self-publishing author. To finally listen to myself rather than everyone else. I know, it's taken a long ass time. But I can be a really slow learner...

Normally I choose a word of the year. I literally can't remember what last years was because it went right out the window, and I moved back into Survival Mode. This year I'm choosing Expansion. This year I am choosing Sparkle.

Because I am going to shine. This year, I will be the me-est me I can be.

Maybe not the me-est me to ever be - yet - but working on it. And yes, there are cats on my dress, and it’s amazing.