Welcome to the New Year!
At the end of 2023 I wrote an article talking about what I planned to do in the future. I didn’t talk much about the past. While I’d like to do that again, I want to talk about this year in relation to some of what I did in 2023. My brain has been having conniptions with the wording here. The article I wrote was only a little over a year ago, that means I could be saying last year but there’s an issue.
I was intending to write last Tuesday and that would have been fitting but I turned out to not be home last Tuesday…it was New Year’s Eve. I had been planning on spending the night at home, going to bed early with the chance of getting some sleep. I won’t give you too many details of how I spent New Year’s Eve as that is someone else’s story. A brief summary is that I took someone to emergency and stayed with them until they were admitted about 1:30 New Year’s Morning. By the time I was able to get to bed and keep my eyes closed it was well after 3am. A week later I still haven’t caught up on my sleep, I’m going to blame the hot weather, but there is always the chance it’s my body letting me down.
Anyway, enough rabbiting. In that article I mentioned earlier I spoke about uploading more videos onto my YouTube Channel. I’ve totted up some stats for the past three years. 2022 I uploaded twelve videos. 2023 I uploaded only two videos. In 2024 I managed to exceed both of these years together and uploaded nineteen videos. I have my first video for 2025 almost ready to make public. I also shared one of my videos on Facebook and asked my friends if they thought that the resulting number of views meant I should make more videos about books. I had a resounding ‘yes’ from that discussion and managed to make my next goal on YouTube to reach 190 subscribers. I’ve no idea why 190, it just made sense on the day. Essentially, I’ll be taking books from my shelf and making videos about them. I should probably start with the ones I’m able to get rid of…before I get rid of them.
This year is probably the year I will publish my first book. Late last year I declared I had a first draft. It’s only 39,000 words, but I was struggling to write more. I know there are gaps and I’m sending emails and making phone calls to attempt to fill in these gaps. I’m also looking at the publishing side of things. I’ve got a list and I’m working my way through that list just figuring out all the bits and pieces. I’m not prepared to give a publishing month as yet, there’s way too many gaps.
Last year I finally left X (Twitter). It’s still on my business cards, but a bit of judicious pen will fix that. A number of my friends are decamping to Bluesky, but I’m really not sure if I’ve the time and energy for another social media account. Back in the day when I used to sell pre-loved books online I joined up with every social media account I could. I don’t feel the need to do this any more.
The good news about New Year’s Eve. I took my book with me and finished it. Ignore that it was only seventy pages, I finished it! Since then I’ve also started and abandoned a second book and almost finished a third book. Not so shabby for the first week of the year. I’m hoping to continue at this rate, any while hope springs eternal the reality is often very different.
Anyway, enough about my rambling. What have you done in this first week of the new year?