My 2015 Goals

I wanted to post this with the Top Ten Tuesday last week, but I was just not in the right frame of mind to be coming up with goals.  But now I’m feeling it, so let’s go!

Reading Goals

1. Read 60 books.  This was also my goal for 2014 and it was manageable, yet challenging at times.  I think I’m just going to keep with that number as it seems to be realistic for my current reading life.

2. Attempt the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge.  I’ve actually never done a book challenge beyond the Goodreads one and this one sounds ridiculously hard.  But the more I think about it, the more I could use the challenge.  And this pretty much covers all the bases in terms of stretching myself.  I’ll be impressed if I can manage to complete 18 of the 24 challenge tasks… some are REALLY outside of my comfort zone (A book of poetry? Blech.)

Blogging Goals

1. Continue posting regularly. I don’t really want to put a metric of success on this, but I do enjoy my blog for the most part, so I want to keep up with it in the coming year.

2. Make better blogging connections.  I’ve been blogging for nearly 3 years now and people come and people go and it gets easy to fall behind on reading and commenting on other blogs and it can be hard to meet new bloggers who share your interests.  My interaction with the book blogging community has waned a bit and I would like to try to make a point to visit new blogs, tweet with new people, and just generally be a little more involved with the people in this world.  For me, this is one of the harder aspects of blogging.

Life Goals

1. Do some yoga.  I did quite a bit of yoga in 2014 and I just feel better all around when I am keeping up a practice.  I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon since Thanksgiving, but I’m already planning on signing up for some classes through the city, just to try to change up my routine.

2. Get organized at home.  I might be putting this on the list because I’ve been promising myself I will clean out my closet for over a year and it still hasn’t happened.  But also I have been thinking about reorganizing our dining room, getting rid of furniture to make room for toys, and on and on.  It’s time to tackle some of these projects.

3. Make a budget.  We paid off a lot of debt in 2014 and would like to make some progress in saving for a down payment towards a house.  I think it’s time to sit down, crunch the numbers, and come up with a plan we can live with that actually puts us on track towards our greater financial goals.

 

What are your goals for the upcoming year?  Are you participating in any crazy book challenges?

 

Revisiting My 2014 Goals

It’s time to take a look at how I did on my 2014 goals.  Please note that some of my numeric goals might be off as I drafted this post a couple weeks before posting.

Reading Goals

1. Read 60 books.  Done as of December 9!

2. Of those 60 books, 25 should be audio-ebooks or ebooks.  43 of the 61 books I’ve finished have been ebooks or audio-ebooks (33 ebooks and 10 audio).  So, knocked this one out of the park.

3. Read at least 1 classic.  I’m going to give myself credit for this one.  I read The Handmaid’s Tale earlier this year and a bunch of people on Goodreads say it’s a classic, so it’s a classic.

4. Participate in Dewey’s Readathon.  First goal on my list that I didn’t complete.  April Readathon I had company and October Readathon I was out of town visiting my sister, so I wasn’t able to participate in either one.  Maybe in 2015?

Blogging Goals

1. Post weekly.  I’ve definitely skipped a week here or there (I apparently only posted once in November), but I have made up for this with extra posts in other months, so I have averaged at least one post a week.  I’ll say I did it.

2. Get personal.  I did do a few more personal posts early on in the year, but I haven’t really kept up with it.  I wonder how much someone wants to read about my new yoga practice or how work is.  I’m ok with being somewhat informal and personal in reviews and on Twitter and in posting things like goals lists.  But most purely personal posts just don’t feel right to me.  So I tried it and didn’t love it.

3. Give the blog a facelift.  I chose a new template and updated my bio and contact pages early in the year.  I also recently revamped my review index.  I’m pretty happy with how things are looking around here.  Much neater than it was a year ago.

Other Goals

1. Master 5 new recipes.  Well.  I almost burned my kitchen down in February working on this goal and have been a bit gun-shy in the kitchen ever since.  I have been cooking a lot more, trying new recipes here and there, but still a lot of the meals I cook are convenience meals.  I wouldn’t label this a success, but it’s a work in progress.

2. Get some exercise.  I’ve done better on this point that I thought I would.  I’ve been practicing yoga semi-regularly since February.  Sometimes it was going to a class a week, sometimes it has been doing videos at home several mornings a week.  It’s not perfect.  I fall off the wagon sometimes (like right now, in fact!).  But I’m finding that exercise is itself a journey.  It’s not about perfection, it’s about trying to get some movement in my life.  And it’s ok to fall off track or push myself only 50% some days.  If I am only getting guilt and pain out of a process, I don’t want to (and won’t) keep doing it.  So this has really been about finding peace and acceptance in what I’m willing to give on a daily basis.

 

All in all, I did pretty well.  I am actually quite proud of myself for trying some new things, sticking with blogging, and cutting myself some slack when it comes to how I live my life.  As I approach 30 (I will be 30 in May 2015), I find myself wanting to both be kinder to myself and to find some peace, contentment, and joy in how I live, work, and play.  I know this sounds cheesy, which is a thing I hate being, but my teens and 20s were (often) tumultuous and it’s nice to reach a more steady place.  Anyways, I am really looking forward to 2015 and what that will bring.

Revisiting My 2013 Goals

So… way back in January, I did a Top Ten Tuesday where I listed some bookish goals for the 2013 year.  Something made me think about this list the other day and I realized that I have two and a half months to try to wrap up some of these goals.  I figure revisiting these goals on my blog may actually provide some accountability for me to complete these before the year ends.

Goal #1: Read 50 books.
This is still within the realm of possibility.  I’ve read 39 books so far this year, so I will probably end up in the neighborhood of 50 books, though I may be shy by a book or two.  We’ll see.

Goal #2: Keep up the blog

Err… I’ve been terrible at blogging.  My free time is in short supply these days and I’ve mostly been focusing on other hobbies (read: staring blankly at the TV) when I do get free time.  I have vague notions of posting a few mini-reviews and perhaps keeping this as more of a reading journal than a review site, but I don’t know that you could hold me to that.  I’d consider this a success if I actually post a handful of posts before the year is up.

Goal #3: Read daily to Lydia

Here is one I feel pretty good about.  While we don’t read every day, I do read to her pretty often.  Currently, Lydia is mostly into books for their chewable properties, though, so we don’t get a lot of reading done.

Goal #4: Listen to audiobooks

Another one I have been doing really well with!  I quickly realized when I went back to work that one of the best windows for getting reading done was my commute, so I’ve been doing lots of audiobooks lately.  I also like how I can download them to my phone from the library, so I don’t even have to leave my house to check them out.

Goal #5: Read some of the books I own

Well… I haven’t made the sort of progress I’d hoped here, but I have made some baby steps.  I have bought or been gifted a few books and actually read them (there is one book I bought at the library book sale I haven’t started yet, though).  I also reread the first Harry Potter book, which I own, and have been trying to make it through Bridge to Terabithia, which I bought for my Kindle over a year ago.  Baby steps.

Goal #6: Get rid of books I own that I won’t read or reread

This hasn’t happened.  I also don’t think it will happen, but we did some rearranging and I actually have some free shelf space now, though my shelves are still a mess because I haven’t actually resorted them.  Not a real priority right now.

Goal #7: Read one classic

I began reading Villette by Charlotte Brontë on Kindle yesterday.  I also just started the audiobook of Jane Eyre.  I’m not sure Jane Eyre counts since I have read it innumerable times before, but I am really going to try to get through Villette, too.  I know I can do Brontë’s writing, so I am hopeful.

Goal #8: Read outside of the box

I’ve been better at this than I thought I would be.  I’ve actually read a tiny bit of non-fiction (though, to be honest, this was mostly pregnancy/childbirth books).  And while I don’t completely avoid sci-fi, it isn’t my usual fare and I really enjoyed the Across the Universe series this year.  I also tried The 5th Wave in that genre, but had to DNF it.  I also gave literary fiction a chance and tried listening to Swamplandia!, but that one also was a DNF.  I also did Historical Fantasy (is that what they call it?) with Grave Mercy, which was a pleasant surprise.  I’d like to listen to the sequel at some point.  And like I said, I’m currently doing some classics, so that is also outside the box for me.

Goal #9: Read something not set in the US/Western Europe or with non-white main characters

I haven’t accomplished this yet.  I am hoping to get through Sherman Alexie’s Blasphemy before the end of the year (I’ve just been reading a story here and there) and as this is mostly Native American characters, I will probably count it towards this goal.  I also hope to pick up the new Khaled Hosseini book at some point, so that would also count towards this goal.  I’m just not sure I’ll get to it in this calendar year.

Goal #10: Read a chunkster

I managed to make it through the audio of Grave Mercy which is 14 hours long (which for me, is a super long audiobook) and Villette is also known to be a chunkster, so I am maybe facing my fear of big books.  I also apparently read two 500+ page romance novels.

I am actually doing better than I thought I would be, so yay for me!  How has your 2013 reading year been so far?