Planning the Year Ahead

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” ~Douglas Adams
I hope I am not the only one who often tries to stay on task by making endless lists and vowing to follow through with plans only to find myself dropping the ball again and again. Case in point - I try to post something on this blog each month and then... I just checked and the last post I made was from September. Hmm... Well, I guess my resolution for the coming year is to do better at keeping myself organized and try to plan further ahead so that I can stay on task.
My first attempt at keeping this resolution is to mark my calendar with dates of shows that are coming up so that I can prepare my work for the ones I'd really like to participate in. That will also allow me to budget for the entry fees needed for each show. Once those dates are marked I can start to fill in the gaps to plan time to work on the business part of what it takes to be an artist as well as carving out planned studio time to actually create work. This is always a challenge when holding down a full-time job so hopefully I can find some success with making a schedule for myself.
The second thing I am going to work on is planning a social media calendar. Posting consistently on social media is important to building and maintaining an audience. While it's easy to post something every day during a monthly challenge, it's sometimes difficult to find stuff to post about consistently in the interim. So by planning out a monthly schedule I hope to make improvements there as well.
Of course this doesn't mean that every second of my life will be planned out for the next year, but making a conscious effort to look beyond just the coming week ahead I really hope that I won't live by the quote above anymore. What's your new year's resolution? Do you have similar goals or do you hope to accomplish something different? Either way here's wishing everyone a better, happier new year! Cheers to 2022!