Looking Forward to 2018

Oh my gosh! Are we really at 2018 already?! This feels crazy... Like crazy, crazy. Two new Star Wars movies have come and gone, the Stranger Things craze began two years ago, we're months instead of years away from the Infinity Wars! Like seriously, this is just crazy.

2018 will be full of lots of fun and exciting things, even though, to be honest, I'm kind of nervous about what's going to happen this year, but here are a few things that I'm excited for in 2018:

• Sad and excited for the last season of The Originals. Now it truly will be the end of the TVD era for me. :(
  
• Avengers: Infinity Wars. I'm pretty sure every Marvel fan has that date set on their calendars this year.
  
• The Incredibles 2. How could I forget that?? That is going to be epic!! They better not mess it up!!
  
• X-Men Dark Phoenix comes out and I am so excited for this! I hope they do it well!
  
• I turn twenty this year. Which is scary, but also exciting in a way... I guess?? Twenty feels kind of like a big deal haha
  
   
• I get my Associates degree next December. Again, another scary, but exciting thing, since I have no idea what I'm going to do after that.
  

Honestly, right now my brain is dead and I can't think of anything else that is definitely going to happen next year because we don't really have any vacation plans or anything...

I have quite a few goals for 2018, most of them writing related and have nothing to do with like changing anything super significant about my life. But here they are:

• Finish revising and polishing Golden
• Finish revising Silver
• Write Bronze and revise Bronze (the third and final book in the trilogy)
• Revise, edit and polish Project Khione
• Find an editor for Project Khione
• Publish Project Khione by December
• Get better at marketing my books
• Write more short stories and maybe submit them to a few magazines/websites
• Become more organized and structured in my writing process.
• Perfect the art of character arcs and simpler plots instead of making crazy, all over the place first drafts.
• Get my driver's license (cuz yeah... that didn't end up happening this year either)
• Figure out what I want to do after I get my Associates
• Get out more. Meet some new people. Have some new experiences.
• We started going to a new church a few months ago and I started going to their twenty's Bible study group so I plan to continue going to that and making some new friends, and learning more about God.
• I've gotten so much better at my prayer thanks to this thing called prayer journaling, but now I want to get better at reading the Bible more often this year.
• Read 25 books or more this year.
• Ace my last few classes and try not to stress too much about them like I have been for the past year or two. I've learned that I'm kind of an over-achiever and I stress out over classes and probably work ten-times harder than others in my classes and then, by the end of the semester I have a high B or A and end up realizing I didn't have to stress out as much as I was.
• Keep better track of this blog and update it more frequently than I have been.
• Be more peaceful in general. I think it was the night before or a few nights before Christmas I was seriously stressing out and was just not in a good mental state or mood and my mom told me about this thing they do in Sweden and Denmark called hygge (pronounced hooga). It means living in the present moment, enjoying life and the company of family and friends and even the company of yourself without worrying. Just finding peace in the present moment. Then, the pastor talked about peace at church during the Christmas Eve service and I think that was God trying to tell me to chill out and be more present and not let myself freak out over things I can't control or over things that are super far in the future. So, I'm going to try and practice more hygge and mindfulness this year to keep my inner peace.

So yeah, that's a lot of 2018 goals. But all of them, I think, are accomplishable and will make this year interesting and hopefully more easy going and fun than this year was. Those are my goals and now that I see them all up there, it feels like a lot, but I think I can do it. Especially the writing parts. That's going to be a lot of work and I probably won't accomplish everything that I want to, but that's Ok. You just have to take life as it comes and trust that God has a plan and He knows what He's doing because He does. He's got me and He knows what's best for me, so I'm choosing to trust him as 2018 comes around.

I hope you guys have a great New Years' Eve and New Years Day and I hope you all have a great year ahead full of good times and fun and laughter and peace.

(P.S. I'm so excited cuz me, my two brothers and my mom are going to go see Star Wars The Last Jedi tomorrow for New Year's Eve!!)

What are some of your 2018 writing and/or life goals?