2019 Reading and Blogging Goals

So today I'm grumpy because here we are, in 2019, and I barely noticed when the old year passed. Normally I'm excited about the new year - a fresh start, new chance, all of that. It's a pretty arbitrary distinction really, but it's an arbitrary distinction of which I happily take advantage. Normally.

This year, I barely gave it a thought. Not intentionally. I'd meant to plan, and make goals, maybe a resolution, take stock of things that had worked for me the past year and what in my life could use improvement... And I did none of that. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and then the 31st rolled around and I hadn't thought about the new year at all. I didn't go out and watch the fireworks and after midnight passed it didn't really occur to me to even think about the new year. Which was strange! It's a little thing, yeah, and completely insignificant, but I always hate when I lose a little bit of joy over things that previously excited me, even if they're small. I don't want to lose my sense of wonder yet.

At any rate, the month's not over yet, so maybe I can recapture that feeling in February. I do, however, want to make a few goals for myself here, so hopefully this small step can help me feel back on track. Not caring about the new year has, maybe counter intuitively, made me feel very off-kilter.

NUMBER OF BOOKS I PLAN TO READ (GOODREADS GOAL): 50

I always do 50 books a year because it's a reasonable goal and I can always manage to meet it. I have thought about upping it to 52 (a book a week), but 50 is nice and round. Also, if you divide 50 into 5 sections of 10 books, and 365 into 5 sections of 73 days, then I only need to read 10 books every 73 days. Which is... not as neat, but I like having benchmarks. In my little bullet journal, I have every 73 days marked off so I can measure my progress and see how close I am to meeting my goal.

And, if you've read my TBR post then you might be asking why I would even want a goal. On the surface, it might look like it's reading just for the sake of having a number. But I get busy sometimes, and sometimes I'd rather be lazy than pick up a book, which is usually bad for my mental health, because except for one or two books that I really disliked, reading has always made me feel much better, and it's something that I genuinely want to commit to doing for my enjoyment as well as my health. So I always like to set a manageable goal and stick to it, and it has been extremely beneficial for me.

BLOGGING GOALS

I am especially excited about this, because as I've written a bit more here over that last few months of 2018, I've really enjoyed it. And I'd like to continue that! So my goals kind of reflect a new commitment to the blog.

1. Write MORE

One of my biggest issues is that often I feel silly writing, or I find myself unsure what to talk about. I worry that what I write sounds inauthentic, or it's silly, or it's bland and uninteresting. The most immediate way to solve this, I think, is just to practice. As a teenager I wrote all the time - not constantly, but I carried around a notebook everywhere I went (yes, especially school, ahem) and any time I had an interesting idea for a story, or something that happened in my life I wanted to dissect, I wrote it down. Because of that my voice grew stronger and I got more confident. For... a lot of reasons, that's not the case anymore, so what I really need to do is just build those muscles up again. Write. Keep writing. Write some more.

2. Write more thoughtful, critical reviews

I doubt my own opinions. Often, thought not always. I know whether I enjoyed something or not, but sometimes when it comes to why, I can become unsure. And because of that it's often hard to articulate my opinions. How can I make an argument for something that I'm only half sure about anyway? So as I am reading and analyzing books, I'd like to try to talk about them more thoughtfully, and review books with more confidence. I don't need to be the most eloquent and maybe my opinion will be very run-of-the-mill, or shared by hundreds of other people who've expressed it better. I still want to hone my skill in expressing my opinion, and I want to do it in a thoughtful way. I got a degree in english literature, I might as well use it, right?

3. Connect with other bloggers

So one of the reasons books was what I chose to blog about was because it's one of my biggest passions, and I want to share it with others. I want to try to get past my anxiety and maybe make a friend. Or at least an acquaintance. Or at least have a conversation with someone. That's basically what this goal boils down to: have at least one substantive conversation with someone I don't already know IRL.

4. Write more about libraries

While this is primarily a book blog, I want to also write about my field - from a professional standpoint, as a librarian, but maybe outside of the professional setting.

5. Have ten followers

I actually don't know how many people follow this blog, because I haven't checked (and I'm not going to, at least not for a little while), but I'm going to assume it's zero. Ahem. So, especially to help meet goal 3, I'm going to try to make my blog interesting and appealing and hopefully it might attract somebody interested in reading it! If not, that's okay, too, I'll keep writing anyway.

So those are my goals for 2019! I'm going to bookmark this post to help keep myself on track, and hopefully I'll actually make some progress towards these goals.

What are your reading goals for this year? Do you only set a number of books goal or do you like to try and set the types of books, too? Help me meet goal 3 early by letting me know! Also, I'm genuinely interested in what other people are reading and how they're reading.

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