New Year, new Me

Despite the title of this post, I don’t believe in ‘New year, new me’. I enter each year the same person I was the day before, with goals to be better and not repeat mistakes. That doesn’t make me a new person, but one with goals and resolutions.

Now, with that out of the way, Happy New Year!

2025 Goals

Every year, I make a list of things I hope to accomplish. Rarely do I accomplish them, but each year, I make a new list, anyway. It’s a challenge I give myself every year, seeing what I actually get done.

Last year, the only resolution I met was a big one, becoming a published author twice over.

I released my debut novel, Mesmerized, and my first MC romance, Melting Point. Both are goals I’m proud of, and were the deciding factor for me in making a new list of goals. Because even if I only meet one, that’s still an accomplishment.

Without further ado, here are my goals in no particular order.

2026 Goals

The first goal I have is to meet all my writing deadlines. Last year, I was supposed to have a third novel released in September, Bewitched, aka the follow-up to Mesmerized. First, I had to push the novel back a month due to mental health reasons.

My mental health was still awful a month later, so I had to cancel it altogether and decided to push it back until May 26th, the first anniversary of Mesmerized. Melting Point, too, was pushed back, from December 5th to December 26th. So, my biggest goal is to meet all four deadlines I have in 2026.

Now, you may be asking why I have four deadlines when I couldn’t meet all three I had in 2025? The answer is simple. Most of Melting Point—a story over eighty-thousand words—was written in a month, giving me confidence to believe that I can meet the deadline for the four stories I have on preorder.

Louisiana Creole Flag

My second goal is to learn Louisiana Creole. As a Black Creole from Louisiana, it pains me to know the language of my ancestors is going extinct.

Efforts to suppress the language were unfortunately successful, and now, less than 10,000 people are fluent in it.

My grandmother knew some Louisiana Creole, but though she’s still alive and kicking, she’s since forgotten the words and phrases she did know. I often wish that my grandmother had taught me what she knew before she forgot it, or that younger me had taken more of an interest in the language back when she remembered.

Alas, that didn’t happen, and to remedy those past mistakes, I'll do my best to start learning the basics of the language and hopefully be at a conversational level by 2027.

My third goal is to join a book club. I’m a chronic anti-social, which stems from social anxiety. When I’m sober, I’m a nervous wreck around new people, even if I know how to appear put together. Moreover, I love books and miss reading as actively as I once did.

A book club would remedy both issues. It’d give me something to read regularly and enable me to meet new and interesting people with similar interests to mine.

One of the hardest parts about meeting new people is finding things to talk about, but that wouldn’t be an issue in a book club, because what you’ll talk about is a given.

Fourth is to lose at least twenty pounds. Now, I’m not going to say how big my back is, but just know that it’s too damn big. Pre-pandemic, I was dedicated to fitness, and was at my lowest post-puberty weight right before the pandemic hit. But when COVID happened, I lost interest in fitness, and have continuously packed on the pounds.

Not only would losing at least twenty pounds make me feel more confident, as there are many days when I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror, but it’d also help my health. My current weight isn’t healthy, and I’m starting to feel the consequences of it. Before those consequences become too severe, I want to reverse the.

My fifth and final goal is to get more tattoos. I don’t have to go into detail for this one, as it’s pretty self-explanatory. But I will, because why not? I’ve wanted tattoos since I was a child, and I adore the ink I have now. The moment I got my first tattoo, I was hooked, and I want more. Hopefully, by 2027, my sleeve of puns will be complete.

I will close out this post by asking what your New Year's Resolutions are, if any? If you have some, what do they mean to you?

Until next time, dear reader