 Hello, my name's Jackie and welcome back to my channel. And as it's almost the end of 2020, I thought this would be a good time to look forward at 2021. Last year I did like a decade in review, as well as my goals for the year, and I was thinking about doing a year in review for this year, but the truth is that I don't think I achieved any of my goals, so that would be a depressing video in a nutshell. Some of the things I wanted to do were quit my job and go traveling for three to six months, which didn't happen because of COVID. I wanted to write two new books, which didn't happen mostly because work commitments, actually. So I got a new job, so in Camp Nanarimo in April, or is it May? No, March. The first Camp Nanarimo, I actually had an interview for this job and it was a really intense interview process. I had to do a whole lot of assignments and was basically working for them full time for a week. There were three different interviews and two chats with HR and a lot of calling the immigration office to figure out what my status would be because I'm an Australian, living in Estonia and now I work for a Swiss company, so that was quite time consuming, so I didn't finish that book. The second book I was going to write in Nanarimo, and I did a video back in October, I think, explaining why I wasn't doing Nanarimo, but basically I had a whole lot of freelance stuff and it was just too much to try and do it any one time. So I didn't write anything new. I also wanted to revise my nanoproject from last year, Powerless, which I sort of did, but I didn't really understand what's involved in the revision process because I hadn't done it before. I thought I would be able to go through my book once, fix it up, get some beta reader feedback, and it would be good to send to publishers by the end of the year. And what actually happened was I revised it in July and August, I sent it to my beta readers, they came back with really good feedback, all of them liked it, which is awesome, but there was a lot of feedback that I hadn't even considered when I was trying to improve the book. And in hindsight, I wish I just sent the first draft out for feedback so I could have been more effective in my revisions. So I did revise it, I didn't finish revising it though, so I don't consider that goal to have been met either. The only other one I remember is that I was going to be able to do and hold a handstand, which I mean there's still a few days left, so who knows that might happen, but probably not. So unfortunately 2020 wasn't the success I had planned it to be. And I'm okay with that, in fact if I'd been filming this video at another time or another stage in my life, I probably would have really been beating myself out about it saying, you know, you almost don't deserve to be a writer if you're not willing to put in the time and the effort and so on. But the truth is 2020 was a really difficult year, it threw a lot of people's plans out of whack. And yes, maybe I could have just gritted my teeth and gotten on with it, but I didn't. And beating myself up for that now isn't constructive. In fact, beating myself up for that now is probably going to make it harder for me to get back on track, which I really want to do in 2021. So what are the plans for 2021? Well, we'll start with writing. The first one is revise powerless and send it out to publishers. I would love to have it out on submission in the first half of next year. I'm hoping to revise it fairly quickly, but I have found it really challenging to do so while I've been trying to plot out new book ideas, as well as working a full-time job, I feel like I'm only capable of doing like one side project at a time. So it's either going to be revising powerless or working on something new. And I'm not sure whether I should put the other stuff on hold just to get powerless done or whether I should try and get these new projects done and then go back to powerless. So timing's a bit up in the air, but I'm hoping that with another round of revisions, I can get it to the stage where it's ready to go out to publishers, which would be really exciting. The next goal is I would love to write two new drafts again. So the difference between the next goal is I would love to write two new drafts again. The difference between next year and this year is that this year I wanted to write two brand new things. And I also mentioned a project I wrote last year, which some of you may know is my fantasy hot mess. I mentioned that if I had time, it would be nice to revisit that. For next year, I think one of the two new projects is going to be my fantasy hot mess. And the reason I'm counting that as a new project is because it needs so much work. I'm planning to rewrite it from scratch. I'm not even going to have like the document open and then be retyping and making changes as I go. I'm going to be starting a brand new document, not even referring to the old one. And just trying to, trying to tell a good story because at the moment it is a hot mess. The other project I'm not sure about. I'm trying to outline a murder mystery at the moment, which might be one of the other projects. If not, it's definitely going to be either a young adult, new adult, fantasy sci-fi adventure type of thing. Because one, I want my books to be fun. At this point in my life, I am writing to have fun. I think we need more fun in the world. People should be able to read books and watch movies and watch Netflix and escape for a little bit. And one of the things I loved about Howlis was it was so much fun. And from a more commercial perspective, if Howlis does end up getting picked up by a publisher, then I will have better luck of getting a similar book published by them. And even if it doesn't get picked up by a publisher, if I end up self publishing it, it makes sense to write another book for the audience that that book will find to get my author career up and running. So those are my writing goals. I'm also considering trying a couple of new plotting methods. In fact, that was the one goal I did achieve this year was trying new plotting methods. So my battery ran out. But what I was saying was that the plotting methods is actually a goal I achieved this year. So I wanted to try new plotting methods. And this year, I tried the story grid, the snowflake method, story clock and anatomy of story. And I've still got two more that I can think of off the top of my head in the backlog, which are plot whisperer and three more actually plot whisperer, plotto and plotting under pressure. And part of me would like to try some new methods. However, one of the things I've noticed with the anatomy of story is that this might be getting in the way of me actually writing stuff. And given that, you know, I can only do so much at any one time. And I feel like I'm a bit behind after 2020. I'm not putting any pressure on myself to try new plotting methods in 2021, because the focus is writing new books. Outside of writing, my husband and I will be moving to Switzerland at some point, hopefully. So I mentioned earlier that I'm in Estonia working for a company in Switzerland. The immigration process is very slow. So the first thing they needed to demonstrate was that I was the best person they could find for the role. So they needed to readvertize the role in Switzerland to see if anyone local applied. So they did that for three months, I think, and didn't find anyone. And then maybe two weeks ago, one of the administrators in the office started contacting me for some more documents. So hopefully things are moving. And then the next three to six months we'll be heading over there. But we'll see. I would also really love to go back to Australia for a bit, like maybe a month or six weeks, and to spend part of the time on holiday and part of the time working remotely. That obviously depends on travel restrictions and what happens with a vaccine. At the moment, you can go to Australia. Actually, I don't know if everyone can go to Australia if it's just certain countries, but anyone who goes to Australia needs to be in quarantine for 14 days. So it's not really practical if you're just going there for a holiday. There's also an issue where the government isn't letting people leave until March 2021. So if we went there now, we wouldn't be able to come back. Which, again, is not ideal. So I'm hoping restrictions ease up and we can go back home for a little bit and see friends and family because I moved over here in August 2018 and I haven't actually been back to Australia since then. So it's a long time not to go home. As far as other travel goals go, I do still want to take some time off and just write and travel full time, but that's not going to happen next year because I do have this new job I'm about six months in now. And I don't think it's realistic to ask a startup because I work for a startup. I don't think it's realistic to ask them to have three to six months off to go traveling. So that's probably been postponed for a couple of years, which is unfortunate. I do still really want to go traveling and have that break, but I'm also really lucky to be in the position where I now work for this organization that's really cool and the people are really great. The role is not a perfect fit for me. My previous role was like a head of content marketing and now I'm head of marketing, which I'm far less comfortable with. My speciality is really in content, but it's what they need. And all in all, when I compare it to my last job, it's definitely a net positive. I'm so much happier now than I was before. So then I guess the last category would be health and fitness goals. So let's put doing a handstand back on the list. I also would like to get into my front splits again. I haven't been able to do front splits since I was in high school and would really like to be able to do them again. I also did start doing casual ballet classes maybe two months ago and one of the things that's really frustrating is my turnout is really bad. My turnout has always been very bad, but now I just feel like my legs getting stuck by the shape of my hips. So yeah, I really want to improve that. In fact, I'm going to speak to my physio about it this week to see if there's anything we can do, like adjusting the position or giving me some stretches or massage work that might help. So my camera died again. I didn't have anything planned when I sat down to do this video, but because it was the end of the year, I thought it would make sense to have a chat. In general, though, I hope that 2021 is a better year for everyone. I hope that coronavirus gets under control, whether it's through a vaccine or I don't know how else would get under control through effective lockdown measures, I guess. But I hope it gets under control. I hope borders open again. I hope people can start going back to their regular routines. But I also hope that some of the good things that have come out of the virus stay. I hope that people are able to continue being in regular communication with people they might not have usually been able to communicate with through things like Zoom and so on. I hope that people who really enjoy working remotely are able to continue working remotely, whether it's because they have young children or maybe they have special needs that just make it easier to work from home. I hope that when companies have the opportunity to go back to the office, they don't make everyone go back to the office if they don't need to. And I hope just 2020 has given everyone a little bit more perspective and we can be much more grateful when things go well and stop taking our lives and everyday conveniences for granted. And of course the people around us because I know there's a very large death toll from this year. So I hope we can appreciate our loved ones a bit more. So that is all from me for today. Please let me know how you went with your 2020 goals in the comments as well as what you hope for 2021. And I will see you next time. Bye.