New Year's Wrap Up: Biggest Successes, Failures, and Goals
Reading time: About 5 1/2 - 6 minutes
Hello Moonbeams,
The Happiest New Year to you!
I wanted to write a 2021 wrap-up detailing some of my favourite moments, successes, and failures. All of us have such different paths and my year certainly ended up different than I planned. But it is okay not to accomplish everything. It does not take away from your worth.
BIGGEST SUCCESSES
A few months ago, I was stuck in a rough place. My mental health had taken an intense dive and usually when that happens I spiral in every way possible and it can be hard for me to recognize the good in myself or what I am doing. Since then, I have been in one of the best places of my life and while doing my 2021 analysis, I was pleasantly surprised at the things that came to mind as the most important.
Devoting so much time to learning how to strengthen the foundations of my business. Between taking MAW, getting involved with some serious peer groups and pushing myself to further analyze what went right and wrong with projects, this was a huge win.
I am also pleased with the areas where I pushed myself in my art. Although I did not get to create nearly as many major works as I would have liked, those that I did create are so dear to me and I could feel myself stretching and pushing for better with each one.
Finally, I would say that the work I have done on myself is probably my biggest personal accomplishment. I feel so blessed by the people who truly accept me for what I have become. It feels so good to shine with your own unique light and I just wish you all the same!
BIGGEST FAILURES
For me, a failure is simply when I miss my mark in a way that negatively affects my outcome. It is not necessarily a bad thing and can often lead to incredible lessons. I like to try to remember to revisit "failures" and see them in a healthy light. I would say the places where I fell short this year were:
Lack of releases
I wish I had been more on top of my releases this year for new products. I got very overwhelmed and disorganized and had to learn from that!
Lack of structure
I am going to be blunt, My lack of strategy and structure lead to several somewhat stupid moves in my career that lost me money such as taking my website down for an entire month as I fought to rebuild it during a time that was not totally feasible to lose said income. Lessons were learned however :)
Discouragement
This "failure" is truly meant with self-love (as are they all.) I had many moments, days, and even months of discouragement. I am not a failure because of that, But I feel that I let myself down by treating myself as poorly as I did during that time. There is a reason my main mantra is "trust in the muse". When I just give myself, and the universe a little faith, everything always works out. It takes a lot of mindset work to remember that, but it is something that took me almost the entire year to start making progress on.
FAVOURITE MOMENTS
This one is always so much damn fun to go back over. Even during a discouraging year, it is wonderful to remember your favourite moments.
The moments I got to reconnect with some of the people in my life I had been missing. I feel my relationships overall became much healthier this year.
My appreciation for the sky. This one probably sounds silly but my gods, the sky this year! Maybe Porter Robinson influenced me on this one...but seriously, I saw some of the loveliest skies of my life in 2021. I also gained an infatuation with the blue just before dawn and at twilight. Two times I used to really struggle with emotionally that now feel like pure magic.
This is not my "best" piece of the year in my opinion, but it is my favourite ♡
My absolute favourite moments, as always are those when I feel the most connected with my muses, when the art is just pouring out of me and I feel like I am on fire. I know you creative creatures understand! I do not know anything that can compare to that.
PLANNING FOR 2022
2022 has a few wild happenings in my personal life and career. I am not quite ready to discuss them all but the above is the current schedule-flow calendar I am going to be trying out. This is based on one I have shared before which I usually modify every couple of months as I find what works better. It is based on a lot of batch-working. I am also using the Passion Planner this year, along with the app Notion to keep track of more individual tasks.
GOALS
These are my biggest goals for the new year. I have these detailed out more personally for myself but as a brief summary:
• My self-love and strength
• Structure in my life and career
• Learning
I kind of wanted to briefly mention what "good goals" vs. "bad goals" look like. For me, an example of a bad goal would be "Stop comparing yourself/get rid of imposter syndrome", as the goal hardly contains a solution and feels too vast and nigh on impossible. Whereas "Work on self care/self love", is far more encouraging and tends to bring the kind of results that help with the aforementioned "bad goal". Keeping my goals more loose like this, and pairing them with tasks that help me work in alignment with them has been really helpful.
Okay! Deep breaths. That was long but you know me...Ms. Wordsy. I hope your new year is good. Please do not overwhelm yourselves my sweet moon weasels! I promise you, the plans I made for my year are bound to change, failures will occur, and so will unexpected successes. We are doing just fine.
~ Aria
