Tag: setting goals

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Writing on a Budget: Happy 2020

By Lisbeth Coiman

May your 2020 be filled with regular celebrations of small accomplishments towards an overall goal.

Tree next to shrine in a forest in China
Year of planting

As a person who suffers from a mental disability, I often speak in public about how I live a regular life while coping with the challenges of my condition. The audience often expects me to speak about dreams for the future. Instead, I say that I don’t dream anymore because I am actually pursuing my goals.

During the last decade, I have approached every new year with an overall theme to guide my planning for the year. This practice has helped me make life changing decisions. It hasn’t prevented me from some unexpected turns on the road, but it has served as a light in times of difficulty.

My approach has been to set an overall theme for each year and goals around that theme. When the theme was “survival,” my goal was to complete requirement to find a reliable job, find an affordable place to live, and well, there is no other way to put it, to not kill myself. There was a year of “reinvention,” and a last year of  “presence.”

When I think of my goals I write achievable, specific, and measurable objectives, in which the different aspects of my life are interconnected. For instance, achieving a financial or professional goal may open time and space to reach a creative goal. I also set a timeline for milestones, so I give myself a sense of urgency. Finally, I post this yearly plan where I HAVE TO SEE it every day, reminding myself that I have to work daily to accomplish what I want.

In the few days before to return to work, I will prepare my vision board with those specific goals and activities I want to achieve by the end of 2020.

I invite you to do the same. Think of an overall theme with all the aspects of your life you want to improve. Set specific goals, and a time line to achieve them. And then keep the focus while going through 2020 like a woman on a mission, achieving one small step at the time.

And enjoy the ride.

Writer Lisbeth Coiman from the shoulders up, standing in front of a flower bush
Lisbeth Coiman is an emerging, bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator, and adult teacher. Her work has been published in Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant.
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Six Rules to Write on a Budget

By Lisbeth Coiman

Taking the first steps into writing demands an immediate assessment of your finances. The cost of regularly submitting work for publication, attending conferences, or workshops, subscribing to publications, supplies, and other unforeseen expenses consume the usually limited resources of an unprepared emergent writer. Even those who live on writing have to approach their job with a thrifty mentality. Organization and careful planning are the fundamentals principles of writing on a budget.

1. Track every penny

I start my year with an expense tracker on an excel sheet. If your income this year barely makes it above poverty level, be thrifty and watch every penny. If you decide to report your writing as a business, it is mandatory that both income and expenses be carefully recorded for tax purposes. A spreadsheet is easy to prepare and must include mileage, supplies, gasoline, submissions, memberships, subscriptions, and can even cover charge to attend poetry readings. For a complete list of tax deductible items for writers see. Here is another. Continue reading “Six Rules to Write on a Budget”