Reflecting on the Past Year, Setting Goals for the Next
Overview
2021 was a good year. I enjoyed my work a lot more. I made an important decision to focus on writing. Suprisingly, in a year that was supposed to be a sabbatical-like one, I earned more revenue than ever. 2021 was a year of mostly failed goals, and that makes its success even more surprising. But I think I failed mostly in the right ways (trying and learning from the outcomes no matter what), and I achieved the goals that truly mattered.
It feels funny to open on a note about financial success, especially because none of my goals were very specific in that department. After taking a hit in 2020 and planning not to take on a lot of client work in 2021, I just had no real expectations for income besides making enough to live on.
Truly, the real success was in that I enjoyed illustration a whole lot more. I felt a lot more purposeful in my work. In my Year-in-Review post for 2020, I called that year “the year of being lost”. I grew tired of my illustration. While I had pangs of fatigue in 2021, I most certainly enjoyed my work, and I think this was the result of being more selective about the…
