Just what have you achieved this year?
I am generally in the ‘New Year is just another day’ camp. These days, I stay up because my husband likes to rather than for some pressing need to see the new year in. (I am very much in my valuing sleep over most other things stage of life.) That said, part of this is because the turning of another year tends to make me a little maudlin – the feeling of time marching on; the blank, untouched year ahead being both forbidding and exciting; and that need, no matter how much I try to fight it, of wanting to feel like I have achieved something for the year we’re losing.
But how do we measure a year’s worth of success? Over the course of a year you will have pitched countless articles and likely heard ‘no’ (or nothing at all) more than you’ve heard ‘yes’. Maybe you had more articles published than ever before – or maybe you had fewer. Maybe you still didn’t manage to crack that dream publication – or maybe you did. Perhaps you pitched a book idea and had nothing but tumbleweed back, tried to venture in a new direction to no avail or didn’t get shortlisted for any of the awards you entered.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the things you feel you didn’t achieve, and to not think about the (perhaps smaller) things that you did achieve. If you’re feeling like you haven’t had the success you wanted this year, then it’s worth remembering that not every year can be as good as or better than the last. Sometimes it feels like everything is conspiring against you, and at other times you just didn’t have enough time or brain space to fully put yourself out there, but these contextual things can get lost when we look back across a whole 12 months.
If you’re feeling a bit crap about how you’re ending this year, or thinking ahead to next year and wondering what you want to achieve, my advice is to start off by thinking small. Perhaps this year you pitched a new-to-you editor but didn’t get commissioned – but maybe they replied to you in such a way that it’s opened communication up for another pitch, one that could be more successful. Perhaps an editor thanked you for your excellent, clean copy – no small praise. Maybe you made a new travel-industry pal or got offered a press trip that you previously wouldn’t have had a look in on.
It is these little things that help make up a year. Sure, the big wins – the enviable press trips and big-name commissions – are the ones that we all love and want, but these little ones help pave the way towards them, usually in ways that we can’t see until we’ve achieved them.
So when you think about that blank slate of the year ahead, think about those small things that you can strive for – consider them easy building blocks for the bigger things. Big resolutions can be overwhelming and even limiting as we can easily focus too much on achieving them and fail to see the other opportunities that come our way – not to mention beat ourselves up when we don’t quite manage to hit them.
Whether you’re making resolutions or seeing where the year takes you, I hope 2026 is a great one for you!