2022 Goals and Resolutions
A writer sits down and decides to get her shit together. Here are my 2022 resolutions.
After a year of spending time with my mentor at the Iranian-American Women’s Foundation, I’ve had way too much time to think about the concepts of resolutions and manifestations. Some things may never happen, like me attempting to manifest the energy to actually proofread blog posts for typos, but as I sit down and write “I’m going to find consistent freelance work in 2021,” it actually ends up happening. So my goal for the past week or two has been just sitting down and writing a ton of things that I may or may not do.
I’ll probably end up meeting them halfway. One of my big personality traits is that once I write a goal down, it motivates me even more in an attempt to reach that goal. So by actually setting somewhat unrealistic goals, I’ve found that I’ve managed to bust my ass off in an attempt reach that goal. I sat down on my iPad and wrote a huge list, so let’s get to the nuts and bolts of this post, shall we?
These will be broken down by category just to make my life easier. Hey, maybe at the end of 2022 if we’re all still alive I’ll do a reflection post on this list and see where I’ve made it.
Career
Get into graduate school. I typically try to avoid making resolutions in which the power to achieve it is out of my hands (because, let’s be real, if I’m applying to Harvard and busting my ass off then it’s out of my hands as soon as the app is done). I only applied to three schools and my god I just want to get into one of them.
Grow a digital influence. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I absolutely hate social media. I also hate texting and emailing, so it’s often hard to get a response from me. But what sucks is that social media is so important in today’s world, especially for personal branding, so I made an outline of targets I want to hit when it comes to Twitter, blogging, and Instagram. I won’t reveal the specific targets here because I hate the comparison game too, but this is a goal I’m working on.
Build a stronger digital network. This kind of goes hand in hand with the previous one.
Improve public speaking and performing skills. Will I be doing this in the darkness of my bedroom? Yes.
Separate the personal from the work. This may not may sense at first, but, in a nutshell, I want to distance my face and true self away from certain things, like social media. If I am to grow online, I don’t want certain things to be known about me. Privacy is increasingly becoming a concern after being doxxed on Reddit for one of my Movie Web articles, so nowadays I want to hide more in myself while still being authentic. It’s a balance at the end of the day.
Find more work. I already make enough to cover rent if I had it (I live at home, thankfully, and have no expenses outside of having to pay for student loans). As a workaholic, it would be nice to diversify my income stream and see what else I could do while getting paid for it.
Stop the comparison game. A lot of young writers and creatives fall into this trip of needing to live up to the Twitter standards of their peers or to kids even younger than them. I mentioned this once in a workshop I was taking to the instructor, and she just laughed and said “those kids have too much time, they don’t got to work.” And that really made me take a step back and think about how writing is such a privilege, one that some may never have the access or resources to try and do it for themselves. I rarely let other people’s achievements bother me, but I always wondered why my work never got picked up at XYZ mag when theirs did. I’m also coming to realize that I don’t want to do the work that is quote-on-quote mainstream; my niche is ethnography and writing that criticizes. Versus being a well-published youth writer, I want to make work that matters. Not that other writers’ work doesn’t matter—it does matter. I just want to go down a different path.
Writing
Keep up a consistent tracking editorial calendar. At the end of 2021, I downloaded the YouTuber A-Hong’s yearly calendar just so I could have a landscape version of a month-to-month calendar. I then use those daily to write in the amount of writing work I get done, where I’ve submitted to, and where I’ve heard back from that day. I started slacking off a bit in December with it, so I want to be able to become more consistent because it’s pretty cool to know when I wrote XYZ poem or short story. Here’s the link to her 2022 video (which in turn has the link to the calendar).
Write fifty creative pieces. I am an insane workaholic, so I probably will write more than this, but I just want to keep having consistent output. Even if it’s a pile of shitty pieces, it helps to keep writing and have my skills/muscles be worked out consistently.
Treat freelancing like a 9-5 job. I look to this in the blogging realm and seeing how I could expand my website. I already write for Movie Web and tend to get paid decently (not great though), so that’s helped funnel in a decent income. But website-wise, I’ve been slacking in December 2021. I have posts up until May 2022 but I used to be ahead of my game. With the help of Google calendar and my iPad, I’m hoping to work my way into a schedule that gets me more productive and hustling.
Publish five pieces. I barely care about publishing right now. I’m realizing that publishing a lot of work at a young age is a disadvantage for me because I’m young and pretty stupid. I also am afraid of peaking at twenty-one and never being published in quote-on-quote good places again, nor do I want the public attention at this age.
Start pitching more criticism. Criticism is my dream job, so I need to start taking the steps forward into trying to break into that industry. I’m already noticing that entertainment journalism is male-skewered, so I want to help bring in different perspectives and allow global cinema and food to have the chance to shine.
Begin playwriting. Self-explanatory.
Financial
Make $10,000 by July. Pretty self-explanatory.
Pay off all of my student loans by the end of the year. I have to buy a car which is a major setback, especially because there’s a used car shortage in the United States right now, but I hate debt. Thankfully Biden pushed back payments until May, allowing me more time to get my shit together, but I just want to rip this Bandaid off. I’m very grateful though that I’m only $20,000 in debt because so many students are in a deeper hole than me when it comes to student loans.
Buy a desktop. My eyes are not having fun with this laptop. I need a desktop to write and work properly, but man I really can’t afford that right now. In 2022 I want to change that.
Learn to put less weight on money. Seems ironic considering some of the other resolutions I’ve written, but I do want to stop obsessing about money. I have enough to live and will always probably have enough in the near future. But growing up in a house where my parents lived in poverty for hot minute, I was ingrained with this sense of doom when it came to financials and bills. I need to unlearn that and this year seems like the perfect time.
Lifestyle
Learn to be a quieter person. Anyone who has met me in real life knows I have an extremely short social battery and that I tend to avoid going out and interacting. And I think there’s nothing wrong with it because being social makes my mental health worse to be honest. In 2022 I just want to be able to sit back and listen to the world, take note of what’s around me.
Stop buying books. I usually download my books online nowadays, but I want to stop buying books so much in general. It’s costly, but I also literally live within a fifteen minute walk of a library. Baltimore County has a great library system so I want to tap into it more.
Expand my garden operations. You can’t grow anything here in the winter, but I’ve started an indoor growing operation with arugula that will soon expand into lettuce and herbs. I plan on digging up a bigger section of our backyard to convert in a farming operation. American grocery stores just don’t sell good produce and organic food is expensive. I don’t want to eat chemicals, but I also don’t want to pay ridiculously expensive prices for decent produce.
Cook more global food. I already cook a bit of what my mom calls foreign food, but I want to expand my knowledge a bit. In 2021 I started checking out more cookbooks at the library and writing down the recipes that interest me. But as I immerse myslef more in food literature and travel narratives, I want to dig deeper than these cookbooks.
Continue simple living and minimalism. Fashion school literally made me hate the existence of consumerism. It makes me anxious to see how Americans are literally hoarders. It’s also absolutely terrible for the environment, so I don’t want any part in that.
Go to more theatres. Going back to NYC in the winter and watching all the theatre shows made me really miss it. Theatre is an art form I really appreciate, and while it’s expensive, it typically has more soul in it for me than a concert. Once it’s a bit safer in the world I want to go and see more plays.
Creative
Get better at Bangla. I just finished my final Bengali tutoring session and man I already missing learning Bangla. I don’t want to lose everything I learned on CLS, so I think I need to hunt down a bunch of resources and keep up the practice on my own.
Start learning Uzbek and Kazakh. I’m obsessed with Central Asia. My sister can vouch for that. I genuinely think Uzbek food is some of the best food I’ve ever had and I will 100% die on this hill until the end of time. Since Uzbek and Kazakh are Turkic languages, the structures are nearly identical to Turkish and so are many words.
Get dressed up more. I thought of this when I was in NYC. I was doing my makeup there and getting dressed up, things I lack back home because I don’t go out. I want to change that in 2022 because it makes me feel like I have more of a purpose again.
Amp up photography game. I have some big trips coming up in 2022, so I want to really get back into the swing of photography before I go. California will be my first test of how rusty I am, but I definitely want to be in my best shape before heading off to Hawaii. I shoot on digital and rarely edit my photos, so when it’s time to take the picture that’s the moment of truth that needs to be set up perfectly.
