If you are like me, you made a list at the beginning of the year. For a month or so, you revisited the list, checking to see how you were doing toward reaching your goals.

Somewhere during the second or third month of the year, you realized you were falling short.

Then, around month four, you rewrote your goals, using more realistic expectations.

After you gave yourself this swift kick in the seat of the pants, you seemed to improve. You even got a couple of items checked off.

Feeling better about yourself than you had in a long time, you made the big push—until

October.

That is when you started getting requests for book fairs and podcasts. And other writer-friends asked you to read the books they had been working on and write endorsements for them.

Then came Halloween and Thanksgiving, followed closely by two or three rounds of shopping for Christmas.

And, you were faced with the hard reality in the few days leading up to the new year: you hadn’t achieved many of your goals.

A few days later, the cycle would repeat itself once again. And some of those same things on the list for 2023 would be on your 2024 list.

Here are my leftovers—things I swore I’d learn to do in 2023, but didn’t: How to use Instagram and Twitter more effectively; How to run more successful ad campaigns on Amazon; How to write poetry.

What about you?