My End of 2022 Reflection

I’m sure within the next few weeks, you all will be really sick of new year stuff, but I wanted to do a recap of everything that has happened this year and sort of parse out my feelings regarding 2022.

2022 has been the best year in a while for me. It feels odd for me to say that considering all the negative things that happened in 2021. Last year was rough. 2022 was a year of regaining my equilibrium and figuring out what my new normal is. Where 2021 put things in perspective, 2022 was a year where I actually started moving toward a future I want.

Before 2018, I was doing pretty well as an indie author, but I had massive burnout and depression that year, which tanked my writing and career in general. When I started to finally come out of it and focused on my writing again, the pandemic hit. This year, I decided to make a concerted effort to get my writing and author career back on track, and it worked. I wrote, edited, and published The Reanimator’s Heart, and I even wrote Flowers and Flourishing (a newsletter freebie coming in late January) during that time. What shocked me most this year was how much I accomplished and how much of an impact those things had on the success of The Reanimator’s Heart.

When I say The Reanimator’s Heart was the best book launch I ever had, I’m not exaggerating. I had over 100 preorders (nearly double of my previous best), lots of first week reviews, consistent sales, and so much buzz and support from my friends and readers. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for all the support I’ve gotten for this weird book. Never in my wildest dreams did I think an autistic necromancer and his undead love would get this kind of attention. I just wanted to write a book that appealed to me and was the right brand of weird to get me back into writing consistently again. Oliver and Felipe are a pair I cannot wait to write more of, and I will be publishing book 2, The Reanimator’s Soul, in 2023 (no preorder yet but you can add it on Goodreads). There will be at least one more book in the series as well, maybe two, so stay tuned for that.

My word of the year for 2022 was “rekindle” because I wanted to rekindle my career and my love of writing. I’m still in shock that I managed to do it, but I put in a lot of focused effort to get there. I did the HB90 class as well as Publish and Thrive to remind myself of good practices for authors and where to focus my energy. I advertised my books regularly online and did a decent job of preparing for my preorders campaign for The Reanimator’s Heart. Looking through my goals and notes for the year, I covered a lot of ground, and I am proud of myself for getting my shit together finally.

In a perfect world, I would love to be able to rely less on adjuncting for my income and rely more on my books and/or other creative endeavors. Previously, I’ve applied for lots of full-time jobs and got approximately zero interviews or responses (and yes, many were outside academia), so part of me wants to try working for myself more while I’m able to do so. I enjoy teaching a lot, but the tenuous nature of class quotas, universities deciding to cut or change programs, and just the general misery surrounding the way the humanities in academia have taken a nosedive makes me hesitant to put all my eggs in that poorly constructed basket. With my writing and creative stuff, I can’t control how much I make, but I can certainly influence it and do my best to set myself up for success. The fact that I can change things or make choices that work best for me is the greatest appeal. That and being neurodivergent, I don’t necessarily cope well with many traditional jobs, which sucks. I would love to be able to do so and have more stability, but thirty-one years of life has shown me I’m suited to the structure academia but they aren’t hiring, unfortunately.

When all is said and done, I’m really proud of what I’ve done this year and how I feel going into 2023. I hope this coming year moves me forward as 2022 did, but more than anything, I hope I can look back at 2023 next year and feel the same sense of pride and achievement. I’ll talk more about what I have planned for 2023 in a few weeks, but for now, I hope you all have a happy holiday season and a great new year.