Tag: Personal

2018 Reading Resolutions

2018 Reading Resolutions

Typing an ‘8’ at the end of the year is weird.

Hello! Welcome to the future! Today’s post is technically a Top 5 Wednesday post, but considering I have more than five and don’t want to limit them or make a separate post for the rest, they’re all going in here and that’s just how it’s goin’ down. I’m also going to post my non-book related resolutions, but I’ll separate that out into a different chunk so you don’t have to read it if you don’t wanna.

So without further blabbering:

2018 Reading Resolutions

Book Related:

  • Complete my Goodreads Challenge of 40 books

Last year, I set a goal of fifty books, which I achieved, but at this point in my life I don’t actually have too much time to read, which is a bummer. So to reach my goal this year, I found myself gravitating towards shorter books, just to hit the goal. I have so many huge, juicy fantasy novels I wanna read, so lowering my goal will allow me to mentally handle it better, hawhaw.

  • Complete my 10 in 2018 list of books (will be posted Jan 7th and retroactively linked here)

Last year, I made a 17 in 2017 list, which I finished about half of them. So, I’m going to transfer all the ones I didn’t finish onto this year’s list and add a couple more that are really speaking to me at the moment.

  • Keep book buying low – no more than 6-8 books every three months
    • Gifts do not count towards this.

This past year, I put myself on a buying ban for three months, cold turkey. So at this point I’m kind of used to having no new books, I guess. So now that I’m off the ban, I want to focus on lowering my TBR. This will only be helped by limiting how many books I buy. No more 10, 11, 12 books-per-month hauls!

  • Get my physical TBR down to 270 books. It currently sits at 301.

Yeah yeah I know. 270 is still a lot. At least if the apocalypse happens, I’ll have plenty to read while zombies swarm the streets.

I started this last year on April 1st. It’s part of reddit’s fantasy subreddit activities. It’s been lots of fun so far! 😀 And I hope to finish it up and start the next one as well.

I just found out about this today! It’s a challenge that has you focus on books that were not published in 2018… meaning literally everything on my shelves right now. For full details, click that linky I’ve put in the bullet point! Otherwise, as stated, I’ll post my ‘official’ participation thingy on Jan 6th. 😀

Blog Related:

  • Post seasonal (not monthly) book hauls

As stated earlier, I just can’t maintain the vast amount of books I was buying every month. Can’t do it.

  • Maintain a S-W-S posting schedule (with the occasional extra post if I’ve got neat things goin’ on)

I started this schedule mid way through 2017 and it has suited me well so far, minus November when I was doing nanowrimo. I like it.

  • Keep my To Do list of pending tags under five items at any one time

Currently it’s at zero (I think), which is good. I’m all caught up!

This is one I’ve had trouble with in the past. I’ll just let this list build up for like, six months without updating it, then I have to go through months of posts to do it. 😛 So doing this will help with my santiy, hawhaw.

  • Write blabbers for at least 1/3 of the books I read

I feel like I don’t write enough blabbers. This past year, my average rating of a book was 3.9. So like… meh to it was good. The books that really stuck out did get blabbers. There were just a lot that didn’t speak to me, though. -_- So I’m hoping to pick books that give me a lot to talk about.

And that’s it I think! This is a pretty good list, but it should be attainable with a little bit of self-discipline. I don’t think I’ve named anything too strenuous, which is the point: My goals should be realistic, otherwise I’m just gonna get discouraged. 😛

So if you’re just here for the books, this is where you pop out – I’m gonna switch to more personal resolutions now. 😀 Happy reading!

Personal Resolutions:

  • Exercise two times per week

This one is probably my most needed goal. Anyone who has met me knows that I could stand to exercise more. Currently, I’m lucky if I do once a week. So I figured picking a solid times-per-week to exercise will grow a habit if I can stick with it, and then I can increase from there. But I wanted to start slow so I’m not overwhelmed.

  • Log all meals in MyFitnessPal

I’m actually fairly decent at doing this already. I have a 700-something day streak going on at the moment, but I just need to get to actually logging all meals more consistently.

  • Make a wedding/honeymoon scrapbook

I bought the stuff to make this scrap book shortly after returning home from my honeymoon mid-August, but I have yet to actually put anything in it. I feel future-me will really appreciate it thirty years down the line.

  • Make a budget

With my husband’s and my paychecks coming in every month, at the moment we’re just kinda paying things as they come up. So far, with just the two of us, it’s going ok. But, we’ll need to do financial planning at some point in our future, so making a budget to start now will only help us. My student loans have just started coming in, too, so I need to look at how much money we actually have left every month now.

  • Start saving for a house

This one kinda goes hand in hand with the previous one. We’re renting, currently three months into an 18 month lease. I’d like to be able to put a down payment on a house by the time this lease is over… So that’ll be a 2019 thing. But I want to start saving now, if possible.

  • Take care of my health as issues arise

I recently was able to get health insurance again when I started my job, and as of Jan 1, I’ve switched onto my husband’s (his is decidedly better and cheaper), so I want to handle health issues as soon as they pop up, maybe even do preventative physicals and stuff. I’m definitely the ‘ignore it and hope it goes away’ kind of person, and I know that will eventually come to bite me in the butt. So I want to be more uh… on top of it, I guess.

  • Learn Python and R

This is a career-oriented goal. I’m a software developer, currently working in C# and .NET. I also know SQL, Java and C++. I’d really like to learn Python and R, though. I feel like the direction I want my career to go would benefit from those. Ideally this goal will go hand in hand with creating an online portfolio of projects and spiffing up my resume.

  • Maintain a Duolingo streak

Currently, I’m around a 50 day streak, I think. I’m refreshing my German, which I know a roughly tourist-level amount of. I’d like to be able to speak it conversationally though. Once I finish the Duo tree again (I’ve done it before but they added extra lessons) I want to branch into the translation side of the site and further my vocabulary.

And that’s it! I’m going to include little updates on all resolutions, booky and personal, in my monthly wrap-ups to keep myself accountable and let me know where to focus.

Happy reading!