I want to talk a bit about how to set goals to be…more realistic. Because I have fallen a twee bit behind on a few things.
First, I wanna’ talk about this piece, pictured at the top.
Right now, the title is (tentatively), “Cryptid of Leaves.” I started this piece all the way back in 2019. So…it’s been A WHILE. I worked on it, then set it aside, because those leaves ALONE took effort to draw. And then I thought, “Let’s color this with colored pencil! That’ll get the look I want to achieve!”
And past me thought I could have this done in a month. On top of everything else I have going on. Which…(insert laughter here).
I have only worked on this in my free time, when I have the urge to do it. So I’m shifting the goal for this piece: I want it finished by…the end of October.
Why so late? Because I still have KickStarter rewards to fulfill and other books to put together. Speaking of which…
Second, I want to talk about the PDF for The Legend of Jamie Roberts, volume 1.
For KickStarter backers, I had said, “Oh this should be delivered to you by the end of May!”
It’s June 1st now. The PDF still needs put together. Oops.
To be fair, May was a big transition month. I quit working at NeverEnding (long story), and shifted back to freelancing full-time. Still, getting my freelance sea-legs back can only explain so much. All I can ask is please, continue to be patient. The PDF should still get done by the end of June. I’ll go more in depth about the process in a KickStarter update tomorrow.
Third, The Legend of Jamie Roberts.
So…I’m out of buffer. The month of May had some unexpected events that prevented me from keeping up with my usual production schedule. That means right now, I’m making the next updates as the story is going. That’s not a place I like to be in.
Does this mean that The Legend will get a temporary hiatus? I don’t know. But I’m tempted to have a short, two-week break from regular updates just so I can build the buffer back.
I think we can all agree that we’re SO HAPPY to leave 2020. Granted, the first week of January’s been a hot mess, too. I chalk that up to 2020’s final gasps of desperation, like the attention gremlin it is.
This year, I’m going to have a theme for the year, not resolutions.
For me, the theme for 2021 is GROWTH. I want to grow my book catalog, my minicomic collection, and a LOT more. And I want to grow into new subjects and mediums.
To get there, I decided to play with numerology. I set 5 separate goals, because 2+0+2+1=5. And in those goals, I intend on making 5 things. Let me illustrate:
GOAL 1: Make 5 New Craft Pieces
I’ve been getting more hands-on this past year. But that also means unfinished craft projects. So I want to finish some crochet, sewing, and scrapbooking projects that have stuck around for too dang long.
GOAL 2: Release 5 New Minicomics
Funny story; a few weeks ago, I followed up with Quimby’s, whom I sell on consignment with. As I made minicomics to send to them for restocking their shelves, I realized something…
The stuff they wanted restocks for were over 5 years old.
My art has changed in the last 5 years. And I want my minicomics to reflect that growth. Also, there’s some story ideas and art tools that would work better in short form, rather than in graphic novels or novellas.
GOAL 3: Make 5 New 11×17 inch (or Larger) Prints
Real talk…I’ve been writing a lot more prose in 2020. But the art bug keeps biting me with those stories. These stories don’t want to be told as comics, though, so I’m going to draw select scenes and moments as large prints.
Also I have colored pencils and watercolors that I REALLY want to use to make more art. So these prints would be a good candidate for those. (Who knows? Maybe I’ll make some minicomics with these tools, too.)
GOAL 4: Release 5 New Books
This book count includes my own books, PLUS Sean’s book and a comics anthology project I’ve joined recently. I just really want Fantasyville Productions to grow its foundation of authors and creatives! And the world needs BOOKS!
GOAL 5: Make 5 Videos on YouTube
NO, NOT LIVESTREAMS. Livestreams are fun, but they don’t count for this goal.
Instead, I want to grow into making animatics and short animations. And since I’ve joined TikTok recently, I may even make compilation videos of some of my own TikToks and post them on YouTube. (btw follow me on TikTok at kelcidc.)
“This is a lot of making stuff,” you might be thinking. “Why not have your theme be ‘Make’?”
Because I want to grow into new mediums, subject matter, and topics and challenges this year. Making things is the vehicle to grow into those challenges.
Will things get uncomfortable on the journey? I guarantee it. When trying out new things, there’s always discomfort. But I look forward to the challenge. After the trials of 2020, I look forward to seeing what this year will do.
Since this is a LOT of stuff I want to make, I’ll be blogging and posting on social media more often. So stay tuned for more updates!
This is going to be a 2-part blog series. Part 1 – today – is about what I accomplished this year. Part 2 will be about what I plan to get done next year, in 2019.
So I had a list. Like everybody else, I wanted to get everything on the list done. That said, I’m happy that at least half of it was accomplished. I’ll get into why the entire thing wasn’t complete by the end of the post.
The purple circles next to the entries are for comics/business related goals. The green circles indicate personal goals of mine.
I can tell you right now the reasons that “Get a passport” and “Pay off at least one student loan” weren’t accomplished.
A) The student loan goal wasn’t accomplished because my student loans are federal. In one package. The package has a breakdown of, like, 6 loans. But my repayment plan is set so that one payment splits among all the loans. I tried to negotiate it to do otherwise, but the loan servicer wouldn’t let me. To do that would have necessitated changing the repayment plan, which I couldn’t do until the very end of this year.
B) I have the money saved back for a passport. HOWEVER, there’s a metric ass-ton of paperwork involved to get one. One of the documents you need is your original birth certificate. Not a copy. Already this is a pain in the ass for me, because my birth certificate is on THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE COUNTRY. Thanks, dad, for being in the military when I was born.
All that said, Let’s talk about what WAS accomplished, in chronological order.
JANUARY: Start Roth IRA
This was top of my list for one reason only: I opened the wrong type of IRA last year. Aspiration is a great company, but right now they only have Traditional IRAs.
(The difference between a Traditional and Roth IRA can be found in this post. No, it won’t freeze your brain.)
So I opened a Roth IRA with Fidelity. I also got an Acorns account, but that’s a different ball of wax.
MARCH/APRIL: Make $500 in sales at a convention
Thank you to the peeps at Awesome Con for making THIS goal happen!
Awesome Con this year was the last weekend of March, going into April 1. This was my first convention in over 5 years with an attendance of over 70,000 people. So I was nervous.
I wrote a lot more about the experience of Awesome Con in this post if you would like to read it.
MAY: Edit The Legend of Jamie Roberts to Completion
I have this day marked specifically in my bullet journal: May 30, 2018. That’s the day I wrote the outline for the final draft of The Legend of Jamie Roberts.
Up until the outline, I combed through the first 5 to 7 chapters and fixed a LOT of things. Did I comb through the story after Chapter 9? Well, I didn’t feel it was necessary to.
Why? Because as long as I have the outline in hand, the story is set. It’s not entirely set in stone, to allow for some creative wiggle room. Because present day me will not be the same as me 5 years from now. And this comic is going to be updating online for YEARS.
That said, I wanted to write down the trajectory of the story and how it will end. That’s what the outline is for. And I’m glad I wrote it.
AUGUST: Paid Off Credit Card.
I got myself into credit card debt last year for one altruistic but dumb reason. I was making donations to political and social causes and thinking, “I can pay this off soon!”
Only I didn’t.
So I stopped making donations… though you couldn’t tell with the amount of mail I get from organizations asking me to donate to them.
The other problem, too, was that, at a certain point, I was charging reprints of my books onto my credit card. While shows like Awesome Con were a hit (and paid off the charges), other shows like Put-N-Play were flops that drained my money.
So I got aggressive. I adopted zero-sum budgeting and managed to pay off over $3000 in 6 months.
My last credit card payment was on my birthday, August 24. And I was SO FREAKING HAPPY.
Now I only use that credit card for my phone bill. Nothing else.
I did pull a potentially risky move and got a second credit card. But the new card I got is more in line with my goals. It has no interest for the first 15 months of using it, and it’s a cash back card. So far I’ve only been using it for everyday purchases (groceries and gas) and paying it off at the end of the month. The cast back I get? I put into my savings.
I do also use this new card for business purposes. In fact, I would rather have this card be for business use. However, I only purchase things if I have the money in the bank to pay it off ASAP.
NOVEMBER: Finish Writing Auxaton’s Story
I didn’t announce this, but I DID take part in National Novel Writing Month. I kept it low-key because I had just wrapped up Inktober and started a KickStarter to get the sketches into a book. (That KickStarter ended up running twice, because it failed the first time. I’ll talk about that in a future post.)
National Novel Writing Month encourages participants to write a totally new idea. But I broke that “rule” to rewrite Auxaton’s story. I had written the first draft a few years ago and wrote myself into a corner. I wanted to start over again. So I did.
Holy dang was it an emotional roller coaster! While writing it, I laughed. I cried (a lot). I had revelations. I wrote EVERYTHING down. I made the 50,000 word goal by Day 22.
In the end, the novel ended up with 74,079 words.
I don’t plan on touching it again for a long while. I want the story to sit there until I can look at it again with an editorial eye, not a sentimental one.
After I wrapped up writing the story, I realized two things:
1) I like writing in the mornings for an hour. It gets the creative juices flowing.
2) Inspiration is like a cat: it wants your attention when you’re at your busiest. So just keep working.
???: Make Appearances at 3 Comic Shops
I feel like I fudged this one. Not all of the stores I appeared at this year were comic shops. I also didn’t specify if these shops had to be new to me.
So… most of the comic shop appearances I made were at New Dimension Comics locations. Though I DID make an appearance at Half Price Books in Reynoldsburg, OH on August 18. There was also a visit paid to The Big Idea Bookstore in Pittsburgh on June 23. I talked about that a bit in this post because it was the same weekend as Feminist Zine Fest Pittsburgh.
???: Learn 3 new recipes and cook them regularly.
Truth be told: I started this year not knowing how to cook hardly anything. I wanted to learn to cook because I was tired of spending money on Subway and other places that made food for me. I wanted to learn how to make things myself, dangit!
Some of the recipes I learned this year (that I still cook) include:
I also perfected cooking chicken, fried potatoes, French toast, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, muffins, and ground beef.
All this made me realize: I LOVE COOKING. I love making food using SCIENCE. Plus, if done right, recipes like slow-cooker recipes can last really Mc-Freaking-Long.
Why didn’t I get the entire list accomplished? Because looking back on it, I was keeping track of the wrong things.
Up until my October vacation to New Mexico, my daily tracking regarded… the food I ate. I wasn’t tracking pages written or other relevant metrics on a daily basis like I should have. I fixed this in November, but by then, it was too late to wrap up the entire list.
Keeping track of the food I ate DID help in some regards. It helped me realize that I was getting lactose intolerant with age. Plus it helped me keep track of when/if leftovers from my cooked dishes were going bad.
But next year, I’m going to be doing daily metrics specific to my goals for the year.
How about you? What were your goals for 2018? Did you end up accomplishing them? What lead you to succeed, or not succeed? I’d love to hear about it.