Author: Richard Freeborn (Page 1 of 13)

I’m still putting the final touches to my 2025 goals. While doing that, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal about an executive who every year sits down and carries out what he calls a pre-mortem. He imagines he’s at the end of his life and reflecting on what he is pleased about having achieved, then he walks it back and makes it happen.

One of his comments was about having maybe 7,500 days left in his life and making sure each day counts.

I did some math on that one – 7,500 days is about twenty years and six months. That made me think about where I was twenty or so years ago, and how I felt about what I’ve done since. Some of it has been good – Twenty plus years married to a wonderful person, and actually getting my writing career started. Some of it not so good – a couple of failed investments that on reflection I should have stayed well away from, and spending too long with a company where the culture is best described as toxic.

Thinking about the next 7,500 days is maybe a stretch. I’m assuming I’ll still be alive. In which case what do I want to do to make every day one I’m pleased about? I’m going to give that some thought over the next week and I have a feeling it might change some of my thoughts on 2025.

Here we are, two days from the end of 2024, and nothing dramatic to change the results for this year.

Next year I expect to continue Morning Pages, and this blog. The big difference is I’m planning to move the blog to a Shopify store, which will ultimately replace this web site, and also give me the ability to manage a mailing list. Look for announcements on that in February or March. There are some other business goals, like building my mailing list, and at least one Kickstarter that are in my head, but not fully fleshed out yet.

I still have publishable word count goals for 2025, but the focus is going to be more on completed projects rather than just a raw number of words.

With that said, I’m still looking at what the publishing goal is for 2025. I’m rolling between something conservative, or a big wild crazy set of goals. I’m not making any decisions about what those stories will be at the moment, although the current work in progress is clearly the first. There’s a high probability the next Jacob and Miriam story is in there somewhere as well. 

Beyond that, I’m not making any predictions other than to wish everyone a safe, happy, and prosperous 2025.

If you’re anywhere near Auburn, Alabama you may have heard about the destruction of the eagles nest by a housing developer. The situation is now under official investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Apart from that it was a fairly quiet week. I did get The Head of the Serpent published but didn’t make much progress on the sequel. I expect this week to be better.