
Happy New Year, my friends!
The first Wednesday of the month was New Year’s Day. Since part of our re-set is to move away from grind culture, no post.
That brings us here, to the third Wednesday of the month.
I hope you had a joyful holiday season. I also hope, in spite of the challenges we face in the next few years (starting next week), that you live your life in defiant joy.
On a practical level, for me, 2024 was about acquiring new skills and tools, and figuring out what’s next. It was about tracking my time and my work better, to see what was working and what was not. While it was solid on a creative level, it was weak on a financial level, but it gave me good information to course correct.
Digital Presence
If you didn’t do a digital cleanse in the fall (and even if you did), January is a good time to assess where you spend your digital life, and how to adjust it.
As far as social media, I am on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, and Mastodon. While I promote across platforms, I use each platform a little differently as far as interaction. With Meta moving even farther right, getting rid of fact checking, allowing dehumanizing speech, threatening/promising AI accounts set up to appear like legitimate accounts, I will probably scale back on Facebook, at the very least (although it worked the best for ads for my books, but I doubt that will be true much longer). I do love Instagram, but there are so many ads lately (every two or three posts, sometimes every other post), that I’m getting frustrated.
Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are very different from each other, and I have very different conversations/interactions on each. I like each of them for different reasons. I am very quick to block and disengage on all platforms at this point. Since Threads is Meta, I may need to pull back from them, too.
I tend to forget about Tumblr, and mostly use it to cross post blogs and to promote my work. I don’t find much interaction there.
Technically, I am still on CounterSocial, but I hadn’t been on it in months. I checked back in there; it’s still plugging along. But it doesn’t support artists talking about or promoting their work, and I can’t afford (in any sense) to spend time on a platform that doesn’t support my work.
LinkedIn is nothing but frustration. CreativeGround.org is solid, and I need to make some more connections there.
However, I’m going through the follow lists on all the platforms this month to clean them out. Especially on Bluesky, there was a surge a few months ago, and some of the old bad habits of follow to raise follower count and then quickly unfollow was happening. So I need to get in there and remove those, along with some bots I may have missed.
I will probably wait until spring to do the twice-annual clean up of the websites. I’ve been good about keeping up with the Devon Ellington site, the Nina Bell Mysteries site, the Cerridwen’s Cottage site, and the Pages on Stages site. But everything will need a cleanup in spring, including this one.
Planning and Implementation
I have my Goals, Dreams, and Resolutions up for the year over on the GDR site here, if you want to take a look. I do need to work on a new template for the site. This one is very frustrating to work with.
I also want to get to work on a new personal strategic plan. In the past few years, I have made decisions about the kind of work I want to do, and the kind of work I no longer wish to do. My personal plans need to reflect that, so that I can then implement them.
We did a personal strategic plan on this site a few years ago. With what I learned last year, through the Capacity Building Program, I’m going to amend how I approach the plan.
Re-prioritize
I want to prioritize the work differently. My creative work has always been the center of my working choices, and that will continue. But I want to get the freelance work I take on around it more in alignment, especially in financial alignment.
I don’t like to compartmentalize my work and my life. I like to have an holistic life, where each feeds the other. There are a lot of different ways to do that. I will experiment this year to see what works (and what doesn’t).
I also want to disengage from a lot of the noise that serves as cover to exploitation. That means less time online and more time with people in person (as long as it’s safe to do so, and often masked). It means having at least one day offline completely each week.
It also means continuing to explore and learn new things, which is always something I enjoy.
How are you approaching the year? I’m tired of feeling like I have to shoot out of the starting gate on January 1. I want a gentler, kinder, and more holistic approach this year.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments!