Hi, I’m Kathryn, and I’m here, starting up my website and my blog. I’ve decided to share my current goals as a way to ‘get to know me’ because what someone is striving for, and how they go about it, can tell you a lot about that person! So here I’ll go through a few different categories of my life: Health, Relationships, Writing, Freelancing, and Finances.
Let’s get straight to it!
Health
Yep, the classic health goal! It’s popular for a reason, because our health – both physical and mental, but here I am focusing on physical – is the foundation for success in all other areas of our lives. I know that everyone has different health struggles, so certain goals are harder – or impossible – for some people to achieve, and I am so grateful to be lucky enough not to have any major barriers in this area.
While there are numerous categories within health that we can focus on, my current ones are:
-Diet – As in my day-to-day diet, not a calorie-restricted weight-loss diet. I would like to lose some weight, but I’m mainly trying to achieve this through focusing on my habits and choices around food. I’m not aiming for perfection, but I am aiming for progress and improvement.
-Strength training – lately I’ve been thinking a lot about me as an elderly person, and I really want to do what I can to build my muscles and make myself as fit as possible for those later years. I’m not one for the gym, so I’m focusing on body weight workouts.
-Outside walks – These have been fairly neglected for me lately for a few reasons (the weather, a toddler, for example) so I’d really love to get back to walking outside more, rather than using the treadmill or walking laps around my house.
Relationships
First up I have to mention my daughters (almost 2, and 6). It’s a huge, ongoing, underlying goal of mine to do everything I can to form and maintain positive relationships with them. Sometimes this is more active than other times, but the intention is always there. Currently my focus with them is reading more now that my youngest will actually sit and listen to a book. For a long time she would just grab the books, hit them, turn pages too fast, or just jump all over me. My experience with my eldest was completely different, and as a huge book person, I did not expect this obstacle! (I also expected them both to have a lot more hair at birth, yet most newborns have more hair than my almost two-year-old!)
When it comes to friendships, I’m a bit of an on-off socialiser. I’ll see a number of friends within a short space of time, then no one for a period of time. The majority of my friends are mums too, and constantly facing sicknesses across the board as well as life in general, it can be hard to see them even when I am wanting to.
I’m also a huge introvert, and on weekends when my girls are with their dad, I do enjoy being able to do “my own thing” a lot, but I’ve also been craving having more consistent social time with friends, especially as I don’t have a lot of family in the area, and especially now as a single mum. So, I’ve been looking for new friends, and trying to see old ones a bit more. Recently I had a games day with a friend who is kid-free, and it was fabulous. I always laugh so much with her. Now I just need to make sure to invite her over to my place next, sooner rather than later.
Writing
For a while now, this has been the most concrete, consistent goal I have progressed on. I planned, wrote, and edited my last novel in exactly one year (Yep, to the day! Check out my Querying Journey blog post if you want to know more). In that time I also worked on some edits for my YA (previously agented, then shelved), and since beginning querying, I’ve planned and wrote about half of a new novel. My current goals are:
Querying – This is passive, because there’s not much more I can do about it right now, other than wait to hear from the last group of agents who requested my full manuscript. It’s possible I may have to ‘shelve’ this one, in which case, I’ll then query my WIP (Work In Progress) and come back to it later when the time is right.
Work In Progress – I’ve been writing a new women’s fiction novel (with a bit of a mystery/thriller vibe) and I am loving it. My current goal is to finish the draft, finish editing it, and then have it ready to query around August? September? if the current project I’m querying doesn’t work out.
YA edits – I’ve got a bunch of edits I want to do on my YA, so my plan is to start working on those while waiting for feedback on my WIP. When the WIP is done – unless I have new edits to do on my current query project (if things work out to find an agent for it!) – I will dig into my YA edits which includes some developmental edits (generally on a scene-to-scene level, though a couple edits will impact other scenes in small ways) and line edits (this will be the main work!)
Freelancing
Last year I discovered how much I love providing feedback to other writers, and I decided to have a go at freelancing with manuscript critique/editing. This was the main motivator for my website at this stage, though it’s great to have ready for when I have published books, and I also would love to build an email list and keep up with a fairly regular blog.
I’m hoping I can find enough clients to support some extra income for myself, especially as I am a single mum now, as mentioned above. On that note, Finances is another goal of mine to keep on improving, such as building a bigger emergency fund, having a more consistent ‘reserve’ for those one-off but never-ending bigger expenses (car services, dentist, school uniforms etc), adding to my retirement fund, maybe investing at some point, and saving to hopefully travel again in the future when the girls are older.
That’s it for now! If you’d like to read regular updates about how my goals are progressing, you can subscribe to my email list. I’m also happy to answer questions, and would love to hear from anyone with similar goals.
