Creativity Check-In: 🌟 "2024 Year in Review and 2025 Goals"

Share Your 2024 Highlights and Creative Goals for 2025

Welcome

Hello! I’m Emily Lupita. I’m a travel writer & artist from rural Iowa currently living between Iowa City and Ankara, the capital of Turkiye. I’m also a book series founder & editor.

Creativity Check-Ins are where we come together to share how our creative projects are going, what we’re working on, and stories from our daily lives as creative people. I’ll also share an activity for some self-care & to get our creative energy flowing.

This is a feature on - Emily Lupita Explores - a creativity journal where I share ​explorations from my writing desk & art projects, plus illustrated stories of travel adventures with my two Autistic sons.

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🌟 A special New Year check-in:

What were your creative highlights from 2024?

What are your 2025 creative goals?

Do you have an Instagram page I can follow?

Please share in the comments.

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👩🏻‍🎨 I’ll go first…check out the comments for my New Year Update. I also made this short video of my 2024 Year in Review for my Instagram page.

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🌟 Activity for New Year Resolutions / Yearly Goals

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Writing New Year Creative Goals

Today’s creative self-care activity is writing your own creative goals for the New Year 2025.

This time of year is perfect for reflection and envisioning the future. That said, there also seems to be a sort of pressure to declare New Year resolutions. I stopped using the word “resolutions” because it felt like too much pressure to put on myself. And I started writing “creative goals” instead, which are - just that - ideas and milestones I’m hoping to achieve in the coming year.

I give myself permission to dream big and come up with my loftiest ideas…and then try to figure out how to achieve those wild, creative dreams.

I've come across several cool techniques for this process lately that I love. I’m sharing a couple of them here. If you like, choose a style that speaks to you and give creating your 2025 creative goals a try. It helps me to write down my hopes and dreams on paper. It’s a joyful way for me to start my creative year. I hope you enjoy it as well.

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Practical Tips For Writing Creative Goals (Habits)

I like this article by artist Kristin Wauson, which outlines the details of her New Year goal (habit) setting. In summary, she recommends:

1. Defining your Resolution: Be Specific

Vague: Improve my drawing skills
Specific: Fill one 80-page sketchbook per month

2. Make a Plan with Tactics

Resolution: Sketch Instead of Scrolling Social Media
Tactics:
· Keep my sketchbook and phone together
· Carry a mechanical pencil that doesn’t need to be sharpened
· Set screen time limits for 15 minutes on social media

3. Set Short Term Goals to Pave the Way

Resolution: Write and Illustrate a Picture Book

Short-term goals
Step 1: Brainstorm ideas (two weeks)
Step 2: Choose a favorite idea and write a rough draft (three weeks)

Steps 3 & 4: Polish the manuscript (1 week) & make thumbnails (1 week)

Step 5: Make rough drawings for each spread from the thumbnails (2 pages per week)

Step 6: Make full color/finished art for each spread (2 weeks per spread)

4. Check in Regularly

Regular check-ins, perhaps every 6 or 12 weeks, will help you determine if you need new tactics to reach your goal.

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Writing A List From The Heart

Writer & comedian Alok Menon shared their New Year resolution lists from the past several years with their 1.4 million Instagram followers this week. I find these lists to be magical, spiritual, heartbreaking, inspiring, and full of creativity. It’s a different way of approaching a New Year list, and I love it.

Here are two examples:

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🎨 It doesn’t have to be anywhere close to perfect. Here’s the first draft of my list - as an example - of getting it on paper.

I’m using a method from Gillian McMichael on Instagram. Her strategy looks like this:

1. Set Clear, Achievable Goals

2. Consistency

3. Self-Care

4. Reflection & Adaption

5. Environment

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🌟 Which style did you choose? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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👩🏻‍💻 Social Media & 💌 Sharing

Connect with me…

• On LinkedIn - here.

• My Instagram @EmilyLupitaExplores and

• My Facebook page

• American Bardic Poet - A poetry newsletter that I edit.

Check out my…

• Current Art Projects

• Artwork & Story Books on Amazon USA

• Art Shop with Threadless

To help me reach out, please consider sharing this newsletter with someone you think may be interested. Refer a friend below. ⬇️

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❤️‍🔥