Happy Monday, Reader,

Dear reader, first I want to apologize for missing last week’s newsletter. I've been scatter-minded for a few weeks now and totally forgot to send it, which is ridiculous considering I had it written. It's been sitting in my documents folder waiting for me to schedule it. Which is why, today you are getting last week’s newsletter, and tomorrow you are getting this week’s newsletter. Did I mention ADHD sucks at times? No? Well, then it does.

We've spent the last three newsletters doing the hard part. We looked at where you actually are. We sorted through which goals were yours and which ones you inherited. We faced the unfinished work and made peace with what it means. Now we get to the part that most people want to skip to immediately: setting new goals for the rest of the year.

I understand the impulse. After a month of looking at what didn't work, the desire to start fresh is strong. Clean slate, new plan, this time it'll be different. I've done it. Every January I do it. Every mid-year I do it again. The cycle of resetting and replanning feels productive in a way that looking backward doesn't, and there's something satisfying about a new list with new dates and new intentions. It feels like progress even when it isn't.

Here's the problem. Most writers set goals based on who they want to be, on the version of themselves who wakes up early and writes before the day starts, who has energy in the afternoon and focus in the evening, who builds systems and then follows them consistently because that's what disciplined people do. That version sounds great on paper. She just doesn't exist.

The person who actually exists is the one who stays up late, who gets pulled in five directions by a business that's still finding its shape, by a brain that doesn't run on schedules no matter how many I try to impose, by a life that has more competing demands than available hours. And when I set goals that only work for the version of me who doesn't exist, those goals will fail. They fail by design, because I aimed at a person who isn't here and then blamed myself for being her instead of accepting who actually showed up.

So what does it look like to set goals for the person you actually are? It starts with something I almost never see in goal-setting advice: asking what your real capacity is. Your actual capacity. The amount of creative energy you have on a day when things go about as well as they normally do. The amount of writing time that exists in your actual schedule, the one you live inside, the one with the appointments and the fatigue and the interruptions built in.

When I did my own audit, one of the things I had to face was that my goals didn't account for my ADHD brain at all. I set goals as if I could maintain the same level of focus and output every day, as if my attention worked like a faucet I could just turn on, as if the way my brain shifts between priorities is a character flaw I could fix with the right system. I set ten goals for a year, ten, and then acted surprised when I couldn't give all of them equal attention at the same time. That's a design problem. You build around the foundation you have, and you set writing goals around the brain that has to do the work.

Here's what working goals look like instead. Working goals assume that some weeks will be bad weeks. They assume that your energy will fluctuate. They assume that life will interrupt your writing schedule and that the interruption means you're a person living in the world, doing what people do. Working goals are goals you can meet on a day when everything takes twice as long as it should and you still feel like you did something real.

For me, that meant reducing the number of things I'm actively pursuing at one time. The other goals still matter, but I can't do ten things at once and no amount of reorganizing my priorities is going to give me a brain that can hold ten things at once. So I'm picking the things that matter most right now, the ones that come from my identity, and I'm giving those my actual capacity, the real amount I have, what's left after I've tried to do everything else.

Working goals also have what I'm going to call a floor and a ceiling. The ceiling is what you do on your best day, when the words are flowing and the focus is sharp and you have time and nothing interrupts you. The floor is what you do on a day when you can barely focus, when you're tired, when the most you can manage is showing up and doing the minimum that still counts as doing the work. A goal that only has a ceiling fails the first time you have a bad week. A goal with a floor gives you something to land on, and landing on the floor is still progress. It's still you, doing the work, on a day when it would have been easier to skip it.

The other thing working goals do, and this is the part that makes the most difference and is the hardest to do, is they include what you're saying no to. Every yes costs something. Every goal you set, every project you commit to, every deadline you put on your calendar, is a yes that requires a corresponding no somewhere else. And most of us don't figure out what the no is until we're already overcommitted and wondering why we can't keep up. If you're saying yes to writing five days a week, what are you saying no to? If you're saying yes to a revision deadline, what are you saying no to? As an actual, specific, I-am-going-to-do-this-instead-of-that answer. Because until you know what you're giving up, you don't actually know what you're committing to. You're just adding something to a list and hoping there's enough time for everything, and there never is.

I'm going to be honest about what this looks like for me right now because I think the real version matters more than the polished one. My floor for the rest of the year is the newsletter, because that's the commitment I've already been keeping and it's connected to something real in me. My ceiling includes the digital products I've already built and need to market, the coaching work I'm continuing, and the job search that creates the runway for everything else. But my floor is showing up for you every week and showing up for my own writing when I can. Everything above that is progress. Reality is where goals have to live if they're going to survive.

Tomorrow we're going to close out this arc with the part that matters most: what it actually means to reset. Because a reset is a decision, and making it stick requires something other than inspiration.

Maria Acosta Ramirez Alpha & Beta Reader, MAR Literary Services Florida, USA gravatar.com/unabashedd4deba3b56 Maria Acosta Ramirez Accountability & Mindset Coach | Alpha Reader, MAR Literary Services Florida, USA gravatar.com/unabashedd4deba3b56 ​

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PS: This month marks one year of this newsletter, and I want to thank you for being here. It's been an honor to write for you every week. I'm also recognizing that the weekly rhythm is creatively draining right now, and I need to listen to that. So I'm taking July to rest and recharge. I'll be back in August with a full tank. I might pop into your inbox with an update here and there, but my fully written essays and arcs will wait until August. Thank you for your understanding and for being here with me during this amazing year.