I totally had this finished, saved, and scheduled to post on Saturday. I swear.
Anyway.
Happy Epiphany/12th Day of Christmas!
Yay Resolutions (and not just because I'd already typed and written most of these out for Tumblr)!
My goals for the coming year are seven-fold:
1. Reading
As you lovely ladies probably know, I keep track of my reading every year, and I set myself a goal to reach. Last year, my goal was 120 books, which I met, barely. But the sad reality of my life at the moment is that I am no longer working a job/jobs where I am paid to read a crap ton of books, like I was as a librarian and teacher of Story Theatre classes. Instead, I am working a job where I’m lucky if I have the energy at the end of the day to pick up my book. So I’m scaling back my goal to 100 books, 50 of which must be books I haven’t read before. This averages out to about two books a week, which is absolutely obtainable for me if I manage my time efficiently (which will be a recurring theme in the goals for the year).
2. Writing
I prove every November that I am fully capable of writing 50,000 words in a month, 10,000 words in a weekend, and, when pushed to the max, 8,000 words in five hours. So there is absolutely no reason beyond poor self-motivation and time management for so many of my story ideas to remain unwritten. Therefore, this year, I will write a story or at least 15,000 words of a story each month. If I meet this for a month in a timely fashion, I should feel free to write two stories. Six of these stories I work on must be original, the other six can be fanfiction. I have a list of short story ideas that is currently nine items long, and I have three unfinished novels on my hard drive, to say nothing of all my fanfiction plot bunnies. I want to significantly reduce that number by the end of the year.
3. Cooking
So, I’m a very timid cook. I have about six
4. Money
I’m getting married in a year and a half. Two months ago, I drained my savings to make my portion of the safety deposit on this townhouse, which was a necessary expense, but it means that I have $2 in my
5.
I’m getting married in a year and a half. I would like to be thinner when that happens. I’m not setting a specific goal because I don’t want to fixate on a number, but I do need to develop an exercise schedule and then keep to it. I started doing that in September and did really well until the move, at which point it fell by the wayside, so I'd like to pick it up again. I’m getting married using my grandmother’s wedding ring, and my goal at this point is to lose enough weight so that it fits. Beyond that, I just want to live a little healthier.
6. The Book World
I realized the other day, while visiting the bookstore, that the Caldecott and Newbery and Printz awards are being announced in like a month, and for the first time in two years, I haven’t the slightest idea what books are in the running or considered to be favorites. Since I moved and am no longer working at a library, I’m so out of touch with the publishing world, and that’s really sad to me. I want to get back on top of the literature coming out in children’s and YA genres, in knowing about it, and in having read it.
7. Project Commitment
So, I'm currently contributing in some way to three blog projects. One, of course, is this blog. The second is a teen lit review blog, and the third is a blog adaptation of Persuasion called Only Annie. The first two, I submit posts and reviews to, the third I serve as a beta reader for, and as you all have noticed recently, I'm really bad about fulfilling my commitments in a timely fashion. I can and do make all the excuses in the world, but the truth is, any and all of these commitments only take 20-45 minutes of my time if I would just sit down and be disciplined about doing them. So I'm going to be better this year.
Basically, what my goals come down to is really the same common theme: I'm 25 years old. I'm officially an adult. I've been reliably told that you never really reach a point where you actually feel like an adult, but I can at least start faking it better! :)
Have you read Rocco DiSpirito's Now Eat This cookbooks? They're two of my favorites. They're fun just to read through and drool over lol.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, that would be my advice for becoming a less timid cook - go to your local library and find some cookbooks that look fun to just READ. I basically learned to cook by doing this, and then sitting down with post-it flags and reading a cookbook cover to cover, marking the ones I wanted to try. Then, each week I would refer to those post-its to plan a week's worth of meals/shopping. Keep a slip of paper with the ones you like on it, and if you like enough of them, put the cookbook on a list of ones you want to own. It makes learning to cook much less daunting when you set out with the purpose of "experimenting" and you know that some of the recipes won't work out (there's always a few :/ ). Eventually you'll get a pretty good idea of what kinds of cookbooks/recipes you'll tend to like, and have less... shall we say "unusual" experiments :)