The Only Professional Goal I Want To Accomplish This Year — Day 8

I can’t work so my only professional endeavors are from writing on Medium

I don’t know if I could ever thank Dr. Tracy Davis enough for this amazing self-reflective writing challenge. I have been taking breaks in between days but I’ve found it rejuvenating to reflect on each one of the questions for each day of the writing challenge.

Thinking about my professional goals, I thought back to the last time I was able to work in August 2018. I was at Verizon Wireless and my goal then was to be in management. I had already learned the customer service side of the business. I moved to Erie, Pennsylvania to work in a retail store and try to learn the sales side of the business. I was moving rapidly in the few years that I had worked for the company.

Then in the blink of an eye, my goal and my dreams were shattered. I fell at work. I couldn’t get up. I had to stay on the ground for a bit to get my bearings. That was the very last day that I could work. I didn’t know it at the time but I haven’t worked since and there’s no relief in sight.

I started writing on Medium to find a new hobby in August 2021. Since then, I’ve accomplished more than I ever dreamed that I could. I’m sure that if I were making money from this, I would be in the top tier of earners at this point just based on my views and reading time.

My goal now going into the end of the year for writing is to just continue growing my audience. I want to continue to share stories that relate to people and that people will enjoy. The biggest professional goal for this year is to reach at least 750 stories by the end of the year.

I’ve written a lot but there’s still a lot that I haven’t shared yet. I have experienced a lot and have overcome a lot but there are stories from times when I didn’t have to struggle as much and I just want to share some joys and highs from my life as well as the lowlights.

As I said before, I had a decent-paying job at Verizon Wireless before I couldn’t work anymore. I lived in Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States. I had some memorable and unique experiences living there. I know that I can find some more stories from my great experiences in the “Windy City”.

In terms of other goals for my writing this year, I want to try writing about topics that I would love to research and share the information with everyone else. These topics may be things that I’m vaguely familiar with or not at all familiar with. I think that I want to challenge myself sometimes when it comes to writing at this point.

In terms of audience, I don’t have any specific goals for the number of followers. Honestly, when I see my numbers growing every day, I continue to be surprised that my audience is coming to me more than the other way around. When I started, I did start reaching out to a lot of people and following everyone that I saw on the platform.

I no longer feel the need to follow everyone and anyone here. I haven’t gone in and cleaned out my list of people I’m following yet but I definitely know that many of those people are probably just random people and many either don’t write much or haven’t written in a long time. I just wanted to cast a large shadow to gain attention to start. The organization here will also need to be applied to indexing my extensive catalog of stories.

All right, I know I’m scattered all over the place, so in conclusion, I’ll bring it back a bit and organize all of the thoughts here. I want to write at least 750 stories. I’m at 545 stories now. That would mean that I’d need another 205 from August 25 to December 31. That’s 128 days. That’s just over 1.6 stories a day until the end of the year. I was averaging over 2.5 stories a day at the peak of my writing so I know I could slide right into that pace.

Also, I want to continue to grow my audience and write about more topics that will challenge me and help my writing grow. I can do this by researching and writing about topics that I want to learn more about.

And finally, I need to clean my list. I have so many people that I’m following that I’m sure are either inactive or won’t bother to follow me back so it’s better to make that look a lot cleaner now. I’ll need to organize my stories as well so it’s easier for people to find them. Since writing has become my professional pursuit, I want to be as successful as I was working for corporate America.

Day 7: