The subject for today’s post pretty much dictated itself, plans for the year ahead. The annual task of planning for the forthcoming year is always a fraught process and this time things were no different.

The biggest problem I have by far when putting together a new annual plan is that I always have waaaay too many ideas for things I’d like to do. New stories, new platforms, new formats. Worse still, the longer I spend thinking about it, the longer the list of ideas gets. And just about every last one of them seems to be either essential or highly desirous.

But the problems don’t stop there. You see, I am also always far too optimistic. An activity that I really ought to know will take me a few weeks, I reckon I can push through in a few days. The notion that I might encounter a problem or two as I work to complete something barely enters my mind; surely it will all be plain sailing?

Thus I find myself engaged in a long, frustrating process of prioritising and de-scoping. It’s painful. It’s frustrating. How can I be expected to leave anything out?

Despite all this, I did eventually manage to put together a plan. What I’ve finished up with is still what could be termed optimistic. OK, I admit it, there’s next to no chance of me delivering everything on the new list and that’s not even taking into account the opportunities that will inevitably crop up unexpectedly during the course of the year. What’s an optimistic author to do?

So, I set off into another year filled with enthusiasm and excitement. I will just need to make sure I remind myself at the end of the year, when I look back and see that I didn’t get everything on my list done, that I was overly optimistic in the first place.

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