#year-end reflection

[theunchosenwan]

I Choose to Fight On

2024 Year-End Reflection 2023 pushed me to my limits, dragging me to rock bottom despite giving my all and doing my best. It taught me that effort doesn’t always guarantee equal returns and that self-sufficiency doesn’t mean invulnerability. I entered 2024 with fear, expecting an even harder year. But despite the fear and doubt, I chose to fight on. There were moments when I wanted to quit, but…

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[sachhsoft]

Holiday Thank You Post / Brand Reflection

As the year draws to a close, the holiday season offers a rare and valuable pause. It’s a moment to step back from roadmaps, deadlines, and…

Holiday Thank You Post / Brand Reflection

As the year draws to a close, the holiday season offers a rare and valuable pause. It’s a moment to step back from roadmaps, deadlines, and deliverables — and reflect on what truly moved the needle over the past year. For us, this season is not just about celebrating milestones, but about acknowledging the people, partnerships, and shared trust that made those milestones possible.

[milk-and-wildflowers]

🪴 The Year We Learned to Breathe

We didn’t plan to survive like this.

We didn’t write it down— “This is the year I’ll unravel and put myself back together differently.”

But we did.

This was the year of unlearning. Of truth told through trembling lips. Of goodbyes that weren’t clean. Of love that didn’t look like it used to.

We buried things. We unearthed things. We cried in kitchens. We forgave people who never said they were sorry.

We grew tired. We kept showing up.

This was the year we sat with grief and didn’t rush it. The year we lit candles not for romance, but for peace.

This was the year we learned to say no without explaining.

To say yes to things that didn’t sparkle, but felt like home.

We didn’t bloom the way we thought we would. But we rooted deeper.

We lost things. Ourselves, sometimes. The versions of us who smiled too wide and asked for too little.

But here we are.

Not healed, not whole, but here.

And maybe that’s the miracle.

That we kept going. That we kept loving. That we learned to breathe through the ache instead of around it.

So here’s to the breaths we remembered. The words we finally spoke. The garden we kept tending— even when the frost came early.

This was the year we didn’t bloom on schedule.

This was the year we became the soil.

And that, too, is sacred.

[theaspirationsinstitute]

TAI Motivational Moments Blog: Reflecting on the Year Gone By – Lessons and Gratitude

The new year is a time for reflection, rejuvenation, and a fresh start. This week, we'll venture on a daily journey of inspiration and enter

[orchidandnectar]

Last month marked one year since I began blogging on Tumblr. Similarly to the reasons why others use this space as a means of escapism, my purpose has been to illustrate expressions of beauty in its many forms with my mood on a given day serving as inspiration. The way in which I curate my posts comes about organically and has been a form of journaling, at times. If I say so myself, I find it pretty impressive to see my thoughts woven together in such an aesthetic and succinct way (my "archive" view is lit!) and laid out before my eyes without having to utter a word.

Unfortunately, any form of self-expression always manages to be a problem for some. Apparently, a woman cannot create on this or most other social media platforms without m$n thinking that they are the arbiter of what her posts should or should not express. I'm happy to disappoint anyone who thinks a woman goes about her day -- or her life, for that matter -- with m$n at the center of her thinkings and doings. We dress, discuss, and indulge in things that WE enjoy, from traveling solo to sharing our musings on blogs. We don't (fill in blank here) for you. We do it for ourselves. Passive-aggressive posts and DMs are not a good look for you.

One other issue with blogging on this platform since the allowance of monetizing is that it fosters an environment of competitiveness and cattiness that I have absolutely no interest in. By this, I mean that a couple of bloggers who briefly followed me -- and who shall remain nameless because I won't indulge them by bringing traffic to their pages -- have decided to unfollow, steal my posts and copy my format. A lot of thought goes into what I choose to post. I find people's need to poach others' work intellectually lazy and desperate. Leave it to insecure, one-dimensional people to take an activity where others find solace and proceed to ruin it.  I guess I'll have to take the remainder of the year to decide whether I care to continue with this page.

Much love and many thanks to those of you who have supported my page. I've truly enjoyed sharing with you. I sincerely wish you all the best in the year ahead.

[deemoyza]

A look back, and a glimpse ahead …

To my surprise, 2019 was a very good year for me, writing-wise.  I completed my first multi-chapter fanfic, branched out into original fiction, and surpassed a milestone that I never imagined I'd reach in terms of word count.

I continued to rediscover the joy of creating, and I'm becoming more comfortable with actually calling myself a writer.  Fingers crossed for 2020!

(Some year-end writing reflection, and loose plans for the new year, under the cut.)

My 2019 writing actually got off to a false start.  A few days into the new year, I wrapped up my first multi-chapter fanfic.  Or so I thought.  One reviewer on FFN was honest enough to tell me that the ending felt rushed, and I am so grateful to them, because, frankly, the ending was rushed. This was my first long fic, and I was both eager to finish it, and nervous that readers would get upset if it dragged on too long, so I crammed the remainder of the story into one chapter and threw it out there.

But there was still so much story to tell.

I took down that chapter and worked on it, expanding it and allowing other characters to react to the events within.  I posted the rewritten chapter soon afterward, and in March, I posted the last chapter and epilogue, and feel so much better about the whole story than I did in January.  It remains the longest story I've ever written to date, and I am still ridiculously proud of it.

A few other multi-chapter projects helped to boost my word count, and were immense fun to work on.  This past year, I wrote my first AU, wrote several stories from POVs I'd never thought I'd write, and created what I feel is a good mixture of silly and dramatic stories.  I'm so comfortable with fanfic now, the nerves I felt getting into it in 2018 seem kind of silly in retrospect. :)

And getting back into original fiction was such a relief and joy for me, and, while I'm not yet at a point that I can write a long, multi-chapter original story, I am re-learning how to create characters and build worlds from scratch, as well as the myriad different ways to tell a story.  Not everything I try might work, but much of the fun is in experimenting, and spreading my creative wings.  I look forward to learning more about the craft in the year to come.

Speaking of the new year, I have quite a few projects I wish to complete or begin.  While it's nearly impossible to get to it all, I find that I work better when I have a choice of goals to meet.  So, here are a few things I'd like to get around to in 2020:

Overall:

Read more.  I'm definitely a slacker in this department, but I do realize its importance in identifying aspects of writing that work for me, or don't work for me, or new things that I would like to incorporate into my own writing style.

That said, play around with my own writing style some more.  I've done that a bit this year, and it's always fun.  It also helps me to identify my strengths and weaknesses, as well as ways to spice up my comfortable style/routines.

Meet my GYWO goal.  I pledged 150k.  Since this year was the first in which I even broke 100k, though, I'm still a little nervous. :)

For fanfic:

Finish "Where I Belong", and start on "4242" (I am so excited – and nervous – about this story!)

Finish "40-Love" and perhaps begin working on that hotel AU idea I tossed out there a while back

Finish "Space of a Memory" (I think it needs a rewrite)

Get back around to "Mercy" (fingers crossed!)

Branch out into other fandoms with a few one-shots (Transistor is a given, and I've been toying with an idea for a fic from an older anime)

For original fiction:

Work on stories about the Havenworth siblings (introduced in "Hook and Net and Twenty Men"; there's a lot of potential there)

Participate in more prompts and challenges

Read more of others' writing, interact with other writers

Submit at least one piece for publication

Yikes, that last goal scares me, but I believe it is a major step in my development as a writer.  I know I'm not polished yet, but that is something I want to work on, and submission for publication is a great incentive to that end.  I’m not talking about publishing a book, or even placing a story with a professional market; I just want to dip my toes in the water by sending something out to smaller publications.  Confidence and credentials build slowly, and I've got to start somewhere! :)

This got kind of long; I think that's about enough planning to get me through the first half of 2020, at least! ;)  It will definitely help to keep the words flowing.  While I don't anticipate matching my 2019 word count, I'd like to keep writing regularly.  As I said above, it's been a joy to rediscover my creativity, and I hope I can keep doing so through the next year! :)

[violetclarity]

PASS THE ASK: What are your biggest accomplishments in the fandom this year? Pass it on to five more, if you want! ;)

@rockmarina also sent me this, so thank you both!

Being in fandom at all this year certainly feels like an accomplishment! I’d been lurking in drarry/HP fandom for a while, and this year I finally got up the courage to start commenting and interacting on tumblr, join the drarry discord, and post fic/sign up for fests! It’s been a heck of a year and I’m pretty thrilled with everything I’ve done fandom wise, but if I had to pick a top three…

1. writing the strength to stay, which is my longest fic to date, and for which I actually made (and mostly stuck to!) an outline :)

2. starting @scorbusfest! I was floored by the participation and excitement for the fest, and also just like…wtf, I wasn’t even really in fandom in January and I hosted a minifest in August! go me!

3. I wrote over 135,000 words this year holy shit HOLY SHIT!!! My published WC on AO3 is ~120k atm (and I’m about to post a 13k fic) and that’s not even counting all the WIPs I’ve written words for but haven’t published yet (which I’d estimate push it up to 145k at least?). I know I keep harping on about this but prior to 2018, I hadn’t written at all for most of 2016 and 2017 - I wrote one short play for a class in the beginning of 2016 and nothing after that until I started working on Antlers and Ivy (and another fic that will finally see the light of day in a few months) at the very end of 2017/early 2018. I minored in creative writing in college, but I don’t think I wrote 100,000 words that whole year - and this from a person who won JulNoWriMo (like NaNo but in July) three times in high school.

College had really sucked the joy out of writing for me, making it something I had to do instead of something I wanted to do, and because I was always writing for assignments with specific parameters or rushing to finish things, I wasn’t proud of most of what I wrote in college. This year I came back to fanfic and remembered what it’s like to enjoy the process of writing and be proud of what I’m creating! When I talk about my yearly WC and how proud I am, what I really mean is that: Writing became something fun again this year, and I have 135,000 words to prove it.