Happy New Year!
Can you believe that we are in the year 2025? I can't. 2024 seemed to pass so quickly and yet seemed to drag simultaneously. I was a bit under the weather the first week of 2025 so I haven't really gotten a chance to sit down, reflect, and plan until right now. So let's do some reflecting!
2024 was the year that I...became human again.
2020-2023 were some of the hardest years of my life. The COVID pandemic sent me into a downward spiral of depression, anxiety, fear, and OCD, but it also brought with it some major moments of learning a lot about myself and better ways to accommodate my disabilities. In 2021, I was professionally diagnosed with Autism and ADHD. In 2022, I was officially diagnosed with OCD. People should know these key things about themselves before age 31, but I digress. Needless to say, dealing with all of the mental and developmental disorders, as well as being chronically ill and at high risk for deadly complications from COVID, my world shrank to my tiny office. I worked from home; I didn't leave my house and became so afraid of absolutely everything. I couldn't drive. I couldn't be around people for any period of time, even masked and socially distant.
2024 was the year that I came back to life. I was ready to get a job out in the world again. It also helped that the work-from-home job I had was sucking my little autistic soul dry, and I desperately needed a change. I started a job working with adults with disabilities in January of 2024, and I love it so much. Anxiety is down but not gone, and life is genuinely better. I am human again!
2024 was the year that I...burned out on writing.
I didn't keep detailed stats of my writing in 2024, but it was abysmal. Across all my projects, and according to Scrivener, where I do most of my writing, I wrote 112,642 words in 2024.
There was one shining star of the year, though. I finally completed a full draft of book three in the Seedlings Trilogy, Seed Among Good Ground. It was 97k of my total words for the year. That book took so much out of me, and I didn't even realize it until I sat down to reflect on the year.
What didn't work: I set up a pre-order for book three because I was determined to release Seed Among Good Ground in 2024. Well...guess what? I didn't finish it. I missed the pre-order because I could not sit down and revise the book.
Because I'm hard-headed and don't learn my lessons, I also set up a pre-order for the first book in my cozy series, Library of Monsters and Magic. I'm sure you can guess what happens next. If you can't guess, it's January 7th, the book is set to release on February 10th, and there is no completed book in sight. I did make a nice cover that won't be the official cover, but I still want to share it.
Every time I sat down to write, I would be hit with this wall of awful and resistance that I could crank out one sentence or scene card, and then I'd have to stop. I couldn't get my brain to do any more work. I knew I was in autistic burnout, but now I realize that I was (am) burnt out in more ways than one.
I believe those are the main highlights of 2024. I am probably missing something, but with my progress in managing my OCD, starting a new job, and finishing book 3, I am placing 2024 in the win column. I want to recover from this writing burnout, though. I may cancel the pre-order for the cozy, but we'll see. In a future post, I'll outline my goals for 2025. I have big plans, but I'm also trying to be realistic. I just want to be better in 2025. I don't want to publish 17 stories. I don't want 100k subscribers on YouTube. I don't want a worldwide book tour. I mean, yes, eventually, but not in 2025.
In 2025, I want to learn from my mistakes. I just want to be better, so I will take small steps to make that happen. This blog is one of those steps. No promises here, just vibes.
Let me know in the comments how your 2024 went!
Until next time,
Morgan Lee
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