Happy New Year, all! Especially to those of you on the other side of the pond where it is rapidly approaching midnight. 🙂
New Year’s Eve is pretty low-key around here. My family and I usually have a nice dinner and watch fireworks on TV (or drone shows… impressive but prosaic). Sometimes I like to read some F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is about as much partying as I can muster. I far more enjoy the list-making aspect of a new year, always trying to make a few goals.
2022 Recap
Let’s see how I did this past year, based on my goals for 2022…
- ❌ Read lighter books on purpose – HAHAHAHA. I mean. Uh, no. It was a year of Dark and Dreary Tomes, to match my mood. The funniest story I read was “Shoddy Lands” by C.S. Lewis, which wasn’t even supposed to be funny. It’s ok though… it was easier to tackle some heavy topics while I was feeling somber than to force myself to read lighter fare. I learned so much from all of them, and being at this point in my life, I was better able to empathize with the themes.
- ✅ Find a good RSS reader and update my blog list – I gave up on finding a good desktop RSS reader for Linux and just use Feedly (online) now. It works well, though I still dream of coding the “perfect RSS reader” someday.
- ❌ Read more books recommended to me by others – Alas no. But 10+ books that I was reading this year were for readalongs, so that was cool.
- ❌ Read more books I own – The spirit of this goal was “books I own already” so I can’t really give this one a pass. However, there were quite a few books I bought and read immediately, so I am glad about that.
- ✅ Continue Reading the World – Yep! Not as many this year, but good progress was made.
- ✅ Read Dune with my brother – We started it!
Bookish Goals for 2023
My goals for the new year are pretty simple this time:
- Finish Dune
- Finish Kristin Lavransdatter (!!!)
- Travel to the next stops on my Voyages
- Keep improving my YouTube setup
A thin list this time, but I have a ton of other projects going on outside of reading…
I didn’t have the focus this year to apply to writing like I wanted to, but in 2023, I intend to rewrite the novel a couple of you proof-read back in 2019 (oof, 4 years ago already). Ironically, everything I have experienced since then has illuminated what needs to change in that book for it to be really good, and one of my good friends is holding me accountable for working on it. 🙂 So let us hope that this time next year (or sooner), I will be announcing a final draft complete! There won’t be a lot of updates here (in an attempt to avoid self-promotion), but I’m going to try to be more active on my author’s blog and Instagram.