Success!!

I have always made a point of measuring success in my own way. For a lot of writers, anything short of getting trad published and writing for a living is failure. I've been more realistic I feel, accepting that it is unlikely that I will ever reach those storied heights. Trad published is within my reach I feel, but doing this full time...have you seen American health care costs?

So I have always used different goal posts to establish what success might look like. Usually it is in the context of my next goal. For example, for a couple of years now I have thought success for me would be getting to do a panel at Dragon Con. And if you've been paying attention, you'll probably know that at the last D-con I was successful in that!

The overall goal of course is to make a decent amount of money doing this. Not a livable amount, though that would be nice, but enough to be able to afford to travel more. I prefer experiences to things, so for me success means getting my career to a point that I can travel wherever I want (within reason) whenever I want (also within reason). Since my day job gives me a nice chunk of vacation time, enough that I could be traveling a good bit, the real difference maker will be making more money.

I haven't tried to map out success for myself in a more concrete fashion however. I make a lot of goals, sure, but I am trying to think about it more in tiers. Once I tick x number of boxes, I will have essentially leveled up on my path to success. To that end, I have mapped out what I think my next two 'tiers' will be. Short term, here are my goals. They are items I would like to accomplish within a year or two. They are:

Next, here are my longer term goals. The goal here is within four or five years to be at this point. They are:

I feel like the short term goals set me up to nicely to really start expanding and growing my author brand. And fulfilling all the second batch of items will have me just where I want to be to be able to see the world with the LadyFriend! And that, to me, is the very definition of success!