KATIE MARIE

What’s coming in 2025

As always, I’m going to start the year off by setting myself some pretty epic goals.

Before I get into that though I would like to recommend something, this blog post is not sponsored btw, this is just a product I’ve found and it’s super useful.

Clever Fox planners.

These planners are awesome, I used one in 2023 and bought another one for this year.

They start by asking you some pretty big questions, such as what is the vision you have for the life you want etc, they get you thinking about what really matters to you and get you to do a little vision board, they even give you little stickers to help visualise (I’m a sucker for this kind of thing). Then they get you to break those big ideas down into small manageable goals for the year with stickers, then you break it down again into quarterly goals, then monthly and finally weekly, with stickers.

They make goal setting a sinch.

They also, without labelling it, encourage you to do mini PDSA (plan, do, study, act) cycles. So, every week you review, see what worked and what didn’t and re-plan for the next week. Every month you do a bigger review and re-plan for the coming month and the same quarterly. You’re constantly reviewing and making micro changes to get things to work better.  

Did I mention they have stickers?

Anyway, what am I intending for next year, a summary. Serious stuff right here.

Fitness

This is going to be a major goal this year, I’ll explain why later. But Mr Sherlock and I are in this one together, we will be exercising every week day and at least one weekend day as well. We’re both in OK shape, but we need to be better. We figured consistency is going to be the best bet for us, so we will be doing gentle exercise almost daily.  

The Day Job

My main goal here is to keep my momentum going. There are whispers of a re-shuffle in my department and that could be a good opportunity for me to reach a more central role. So yeah, keep building that good reputation.

PhD

I’m so excited for this. I’ve already got several campus days on the calendar and from Feb I’ll be going onto campus at least once a month. I’m aiming to attend more conferences, travel more and make good use of the resources available to get myself and my research ‘out there’.

Japan

So remember the fitness goal, this is why. We have a two week holiday planed in Japan. We will be doing a ton of walking and want to be in good shape for it. Also I’m vain and want to look nice, or as nice as I can.

Writing

I’ve got some serious goals here.

Big project-wise, I want to get my current work in progress fully edited and then look at sending it over to my agent. Once that’s done I have a few ideas for the next big project in mind for the latter half of the year.

I want to start writing more short stories and getting them out into the world, hopefully in anthologies and magazines.

I am increasing the posting schedule of my letters, there will be four posts a week. I will also continue to make very short videos and maintain the activity on my social media pages.

I’m also going to be attending more in-person gigs, such as writing conferences and events. I’m hoping to make it to at least one of the big horror conventions in the UK this year too.

Everything else

Naturally I will be maintaining the cozy stuff. I will still be playing lots of games, going to monthly theatre shows, I hope to get the garden a bit nicer this year and will be doing lots of walking! I’ll make a point of going to more of the haunted Norfolk locations and sharing some spooky folklore and history with you all.