Hello darlings!
Are you ready to smash the end of 2021? I’m totally discombobulated about when and where we are in the grant arc of time, but let’s try to get some shit done!
Before I get into the planning:
Do you want to hang out with me? Get personalized career or writing advice from me? Have me review your CV? Then I’ve got good news for you! I’m doing a holiday fundraiser!!
What you can win (3 prizes!)
Dinner at SPSA with me! If you are going to SPSA in San Antonio in January, you can be my guest to the president’s dinner on Jan 12. I will introduce you to anyone there, even if I don’t know them. We can chat. I’ll also review your CV for you or give you any advice about writing or publishing that you’d like!
Coffee or ice cream at SPSA or any other conference with me! A coffee/tea/ice cream meet-up at SPSA to discuss anything and everything. I’ll also review your CV for you or give you any advice about writing or publishing that you’d like!
Online Zoom planning session: A Zoom meeting with me in January to discuss your goals for the year, plans for accomplishing those goals, and any other kinds of life advice you might want.
What you need to do: donate to an abortions service, bail fund, and mutual aid program. Send a receipt/screenshot to mhaws.ama@gmail.com with a note about which prize you’d like to be entered to win. Win! Deadline is January 1, 2022.
Here are my local organizations. You don’t have to give to these organizations. You can give to your local organizations. Honestly, you can give to any feminist/anti-racist organization and I’ll be cool with it.
New Orleans chapter of the Bail Project
New Orleans Mutual Aid (click on “donate here” in bio to donate)
Don’t want to enter but still want to do… something? You can buy me a coffee and I’ll donate any money raised in December to the above organizations!
Planning for next year!
It is almost the end of 2021 (WTF?), so it is time for me to do a little accounting of what I got accomplished last year and what I want to get accomplished this year! Quite a few of you asked in this survey for “more on planning” “PLANNING” “How you plan for different projects” so I’m going to keep shoveling my planning ideas down your throat!
Last year’s goals (construction in Dec 2020 / Jan 2021)
If you don’t revisit your goals, you are not actually using the goal-setting process fully. You might want to just look at your successes! “Here’s my trophy for all my writing and productivity and adult-things!” But that’s a terrible research design! Stop selecting on the dependent variable and look both at the projects you got done and those you did not.
My accounting: I was both wildly successful in my goals (I published all the articles that I have on my list! 3 APSRs!!) and wildly unsuccessful (I did not finish that fucking book). The two are related – I spent most of the first half of 2021 working furiously on three R&Rs at the APSR and that threw all my book work totally off. Then I had to bask in the glory of those publications! And I’m lazy. And I don’t want to work on this book by myself!
What have I learned? 1. Send your work to the best journal you think it can get published in. Every single time. 2. I need accountability structures for the book (working w friends is so much better). That’s why I hired Kelly Clancy of Epilogue Editing to help me! This is a privilege – I work at a place that will pay for this for me. And holy batman this is helping so much! Kelly worked with me to engage in a large reorganization of my work that let me move forward instead of being just STUCK in one place. 3. Working really hard on things with high levels of stress gives me no other mental space for anything. When I was working on those R&Rs, that’s ALL I could work on. I need to extend grace to myself for doing hard things.
Learning absolutely nothing (LOL) from last year, here’s where I’ll put this year’s goals. I can only hope to replicate 10% of my success from last year, so let’s barrel ahead, eyes closed, head first, can’t lose.
So – what can you do to set yourself up to have an absolutely kickass 2022 full of aggressive moves and so much success?
XOXOX
Mirya