2024 Resolutions

  Technically, this post should be about New Years Resolutions. You know, the promises we make to

ourselves every January. Whether they are broken the first week, or we manage to claw and scrape and hold on to them, at least in spirit, all too often we end up heartbroken and worse off than ever by February. New Years resolutions are overrated, and almost literally made to be broken.

 
So, instead of touting the list of things that inevitably lead to feelings of depression and failure, I dedicate this post to to some positives.

Day by day, minute by minute, the sun hangs around just a little bit longer. Trust me, when you are living with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) every minute helps, along with mood stabilizing medication. I don’t need to resolve to be happier, it’s just happening.

If I one resolution, it is this: I will forgive myself when I flop. It will happen time and again. Life means I'll keep moving forward, even if its only baby steps. Each step mastered encourages me to take another. Meanwhile, I shall remain calm in 2024. In the words of an old song, "Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be".

 

PS, here’s some special advice for writers. Remember that being a writer without expecting rejection is like being a boxer without expecting to be hit. Success demands stepping up and taking a blow.

Goals for the new year by Paty Jager

Well, I'm off to a good start of 2024! I forgot today was the first Monday of the month. My day to post until I woke up and my calendar said I was up on RTG blog. 

I have always been a proponent of goals over resolutions. Goals are more concrete and fell like I've accomplished something when I complete it. A resolution is something you say you think you want to do. 

I have my goals set for 2024:

Professional

Publish The Pinch (book 5 in Spotted Pony Casino Mystery) write and publish Book #6  

Write and publish Gabriel Hawke books #12 & #13

Write short story for Windtree Press anthology 

Get the last Shandra Higheagle book, Vanishing Dreams, in audiobook

Get Hawke books into audiobook box sets.

Take audiobooks for Kobo off Findaway and put up direct to Kobo. Add more books to my bookfunnel account to do more cross-promotions with other audiobook authors.

Put up YouTube videos of me reading short stories and audio of my books with photo galleries.

Personal

Continue walking 5 days a week

Watch my carb and fat intake

Traveling

Keep up my personal blog

Do more horseback riding

Of the professional goals that I plan to accomplish the one I don't look forward to is getting my audiobooks (30 or them) uploaded direct to certain audiobook vendors where I can then do more special sales and hopefully get the audiobooks seen and people purchasing more of them. 

The reason I balk at this goal and task is I have to upload anywhere from 25-33 chapters per book to the sties. It takes time. Time I could be writing the next book. But after visiting with various authors who have been successful selling audiobooks, I feel this is something I need to do. Once I get the book I'm writing now, finished, I plan to take a month and get these audiobooks up where they need to be to start paying for themselves. 

The other goal I find daunting is getting said audiobooks promoted on youtube. It will again be time-consuming not only putting together slides but also reading and editing video to upload there. I don't like to be in front of a camera and hope to just use photos and my voice or clips from my narrated books, but that is even more learning how to edit. So we shall see how successful I am in the last professional goal. 

I am excited for the Personal goals. Especially the traveling. My husband and I have a couple of short trips planned and then next fall my oldest daughter and a granddaughter are going to accompany me on a trip I've been dreaming of for a long time. We will be gone for a month. 

I am looking forward to 2024! Are you? Do you have any fun goals or goals you know you won't like but need to do? 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 55 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it. This is what Books a Plenty Book Reviews has to say about the Gabriel Hawke series: "The blend of nature tracking, clues, and the animals makes for a fascinating mystery that is hard to put down."

https://www.patyjager.net