And here is the part where I share what my goals are for next year. I’m counting on all of you to ask me how I’m doing with these throughout the year; keep me accountable!

Social media

I want to try to limit my personal time on social media. I need them for work purposes, since it’s hard to create content and reach an audience without using them at all. But I use them too much for myself, and I want to limit that to one hour per day. If you’re a friend and you see me posting a lot? Do call me out on it. Social media is my procrastination of choice, and I want to get some work done sometimes.

Meeting more people

I’ve started using dating apps to broaden my circle of friends and paramours, and I have to say, I’ve never been so happy trying to date in my life. It probably has to do with the fact that dating is a lot less scary and a lot easier when you’re a man, but I think it mostly has to do with the fact that being my true self has made me a lot more confident and outgoing as a person. Whatever it is, it’s making me tremendously happy and I have resolved to keep meeting new people with an open mind and seeing where it goes.

Delegating

My work pace has slowed down dramatically over the past few months. Some of it has been depression, but most of it right now is that I am learning to enjoy life, because I’m finally at peace with who I am. So instead of working every waking moment to feel like my life has some worth, I’m just living, spending time with the people I love, doing the things I want to do, and keeping less busy than I used to, and I honestly like it like that. My relationship with work has never been exactly healthy, and I find that having more balance in my life actually makes me work better when I’m working. So with that in mind, I will be trying to delegate as much work as I can to others, so that the balance of who does what, mostly in Renaissance, gets a little bit more even.

Exercising

I’m starting testosterone at the end of this month, and I’m really concerned with my health. I know that weight gain is a definite possibility, so I’m trying to get back in shape so that my health is impacted as little as possible. I’ve already lost a considerable amount of weight in the past few months, and I am reaching my first plateau. I’m hoping to keep up the momentum so that I hit the ground running when I start, so to speak. If any of you are looking for gym and/or workout buddies, please let me know, I’m really looking to develop a new routine and having an accountabillabuddy is a pretty good way of not quitting.

Be an educator and an open book

I have a lot of invisible identities, most of which I’ve struggled with in my life because they are less socially acceptable (being transgender, sure, but being bisexual, polyamorous, and kinky are things I don’t discuss that much outside of strictly educational or dating settings). I want to change that, and be more of an open book; without sharing inappropriate information with relatives and coworkers, I want to make my identities more visible, and be a bit more casual about sharing the labels I have for myself. I want to do this because I don’t feel there is anything shameful in any of that, and I think people fear what they don’t understand. Being comfortable sharing things has not only led me to meet more nice people in my life, but I think it’s broadened the horizons of a few friends of mine who were less familiar with kink, bisexuality/pansexuality, or polyamory, for example.

Finish the first draft of Burdens of the Sons (finally)

I’ve been working on this story for close to twenty years now. It’s time I finished my (new new new) first draft. I also think it’s some of my best work, and I’m really hoping you agree.

Webcomics

I want to maybe try and change the schedule of Some Assembly Required to allow me to begin posting my graphic memoir without falling too far behind on either project. I’d love to hear what you all think about that.

Finish the colouring book

As you probably know, I’m working on a colouring book featuring people who have made significant contributions to science but are not as known because they are not straight white rich men. I know I printed a short run, sort of a mini-edition of this colouring book before, but I really want to get it done and properly printed this year. If you have any marginalized scientists you would like me to feature, please comment or get in touch with me, I’m very open to new ideas, especially if they’re queer or people of colour!

Exploring other avenues of expression

I’ve always wanted to do a podcast or a YouTube channel, and I’ve been playing around with this a long time. For those of you who have been following me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been trying to launch a YouTube book club where we discuss queer books / books by and with people with disabilities / graphic novels, as well as a podcast about queer pop culture with my good friend Derek Newman-Stille. Both of these projects are alive and well, I’m just going a bit slower than I thought I would be. You can look forward to these coming to fruition in 2018 as well!

Blog more

Finally, I want to be posting a lot more here. Posting these new year posts made me realize I have no less than four drafts of posts regarding subjects I needed to discuss, but never got around to finishing. I’m hereby committing to at least two posts a month – I know that’s not a lot, but it is what I know I can do right now, and I think consistency is better than frequency. Also, be prepared for some of the posts here to link back to other blogs, as I’ve started contributing to a few shared blogs.

Tune in tomorrow for my favourite reads of 2017!