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Apr 10, 2022

I failed my quarterly goals

Remember how I set five goals for the first quarter of this year? Well, that quarter is now over, and I failed miserably.

To recap, these were my goals for Q1, 2022:

I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t manage to finish either one of them. That isn't to imply that I didn’t make any progress, or that there isn’t a reason for not achieving the goals. Let’s recap, really quick.

Finish the children’s story I’m working on, and either pitch it to publishers, or plan for self-publication.

I did finish the initial story, but the project grew to three stories rather than one. I’m almost done with the second story, and have yet to start the third. Furthermore, I’ve commissioned some artwork to go with the pitch, but I must say, the end result wasn’t what I wanted. There’s a Swedish illustrator that has the perfect style, but he’s booked currently, unfortunately. Then again, it’s not like I’ve touched this at all in almost all of March, and until now, this month.

Find a place, a way, a … something to share my photography.

I’ve shared more photos on Instagram and Twitter, but not what, I feel, is my actual photography. It’s most snapshots of everyday life, which works fine on social media.

This is one of those half-done goals. I decided that there’d be a gallery of sorts on my personal site, TDH.se. In a way, I did find that place, it just doesn’t exist yet. I believe that’s cheating.

Write at least five essays in Swedish for TDH.se.

Oh, hang on! This one is actually done, the essays are written and edited. I’m ticking this one in my Goals list.

Do you want to read them? Yeah, that you cannot do because TDH.se doesn’t exist in that form yet. It’s the same thing as with the photo gallery, but here, I feel like I did achieve my goal of writing these essays. I just can’t publish them yet.

Oh yeah; design, build, and launch TDH.se because otherwise the aforementioned goal will be tricky.

It turns out, it wasn’t tricky to write said essays. The site, however, keeps eluding me. I think I’m happy with the design, after a couple of iterations, so there’s that.

I don’t think this goal will be achieved in April, but maybe towards May?

Revisit my signed manuscript, and revise the outline for the sequel.

I didn’t touch this one at all. The book still isn’t on a release schedule, though, so there’s no rush in that sense. I expect it to be soon, though, so this is what I’ll be doing after I’m done with the children’s story.

There’s always a reason as to why plans fail, and goals slide away from you. I kept up the pace all of January and most of February, but then things piled up. As you might’ve gleaned from my newsletter, work’s been tough, it’s been too much, and more things piled up. Some of this is due to a fault of my own, but there are elements here that were out of my control. Such is life, as they say.

Then there was, and is, the war in Ukraine. I won’t use it as an excuse to not achieve what I had set out to do, but it did make it hard to focus. I still think it is, despite the war – and all the horrible things that entails – being a part of the everyday news flow now. It’s downright sickening, what Putin is doing, and it takes up quite a bit of mind-space.

I’m off for a holiday of sorts over Easter, which involves quite a bit of travel by train. I’ll reconsider my goals for this quarter, and get back to you. Hopefully, I’ll have more luck as the next recap draws near so that I won’t have to sit here and feel ashamed that I didn’t do better.

Just kidding, failure is always an option.