2024

I don’t expect to achieve greatness in the next year.

“Shoot for the moon, and you’ll land among the stars,” they say.

But they never mention the fall. The shattering, devastating plummet into the self-criticizing abyss of failure. Forever tumbling and smashing into the nightmares of your shortcomings, the descent to the stars is a crash landing when all hope for achieving the dream is lost.

For me, the mental price of failure is too high to justify a lofty dream. It is much easier to aim for the obtainable goals within my grasp, than to shoot for a one-off chance of “making it big”.

SMART goals are all the rage nowadays: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. People will spend a good amount of time mapping out a plan to achieve their goals. And I admire them for that.

I don’t think my goals for Vocal need to be quite so formally drawn out, though.

Last year was my first year writing stories on Vocal. Drawn by the monetary prizes for the varying challenges, I wrote in hopes of winning.

The prompts inspired stories I never would have thought to write, and I appreciated the chance to flex my creative writing skills. Words flowed into my fingertips and flitted against the promising white page. At times, I couldn’t type fast enough to keep up with all the ideas and imagery in my head. I would spend at least an hour proof-reading my work, and asked friends and family to give it a once over before submitting them. Of course, I received biased, complimentary feedback of which I appreciated immensely.

I felt creative, intelligent, and hopeful.

“This has to at least get an honorable mention,” I would tell myself after every submission.

And each time I was disappointed. Not disappointed in the choices Vocal made - the amount of talent in this community is phenomenal. The disappointment rested solely on my own hubris and overestimation of my work and abilities.

After eight submissions, I fell.

It seemed to be all for naught, and the words in my head no longer focused on creating a story. They only dragged me further into the bleak, self-deprecating recesses of my mind.

Then, I stopped writing.

Sure, I would still get a glimmer of an idea sparking in my mind, but I no longer had the motivation to complete it.

Recently, my mind was flooded with words that screamed to be put out to the world. So, I wrote it down. Those words were everything that I longed to hear. A story, just for me, was exactly what I needed to pull myself out of the self pity slump.

This year, I have a much more obtainable goal for Vocal. I’m going to write stories for me; and, if they happen to fit into a challenge, I’ll submit it.

I wrote eight pieces on Vocal last year, and this year I’m planning on writing at least twelve. One original story or poem a month is all I hope to achieve on Vocal this year. Anything else that I might accomplish would be an exciting bonus that I pick up along the way.

Yes, I know. This is already a contradictory goal seeing as I’m writing this now, specifically for a Vocal challenge.

Will it win?

This year, it doesn’t matter if it wins, if I win. I’m not expecting to win a challenge, make any money on here at all, or have my stories even read by other people.

Twelve, original works is something that I can reasonably achieve in 2024.

But, if other people don’t see my stories as worthy of winning a competition, are they even worth writing?

For 2024, a winning story is one that I am proud to have created. That’s it. The only qualification for my works will be if I like it.

I don’t expect to achieve greatness in the next year, but I do expect to find the joy in writing for myself again.

-Thank you, Vocal, for giving me a platform to work towards my dream of finding happiness in what I do.-