New year; New goals

 

1.6.24

    Happy new year! I totally ghosted for a minute...sorry. But I'm back now and I'm ready to spend more time with this blog. But first, how was everyone's holiday season? I spent mine at work and getting holiday pay, new years morning my family and I went to the beach and watched the sunrise. Usually we do this every year, unfortunately I worked an opening shift last year and we weren't able to see it but I feel like I made up for it this year. 

     Anyway, every year around the new year there's a whole lot of talk about resolutions and what habits people want to make or break. I honestly find it super intimidating and not very useful to try to force myself to jump head first into something, that I probably won't even be able to stick with. So this year in a totally revolutionary move (please note the sarcasm),  I have decided to set goals that I am going to work to achieve this year. 

    The point of my goals is to not beat myself up about it if I don't meet these goals 100%. The point is to push myself to try my best and to listen to my body about what it needs. So that being said let's talk a little bit about my new years goals. 

    ANNE'S 2024 GOALS 

    1) Read 100 books

Last year I rediscovered my love for reading and made some wonderful friends who share a love for reading.  I started sharing more on bookstagram and even joined a book club.  So this year, I want to challenge myself to see how many books I can read. Even if I don't make it to 100 books, I know that I will have enjoyed the time I spent reading and that I will have learned something about myself and the world.

    2) Go on more adventures

Even if it's just to go on a walk somewhere new, I want to try to go on more adventures. I want to go to more museums and learn more. I want to try to talk to new people and to travel as much as possible. Any outing can be an adventure if you think about it in that way, but I want to try to slowly push myself out of my comfort zone. 

    3) Learn more

This is super ambiguous but there's multiple ways for me to work towards this goal. I want to continue to  learn languages, primarily French and Welsh. I am pretty confident in my French at the moment but I know that I can always be better. I can continue to try courses on edX, though I haven't really enjoyed it very much so far. I also want to enter a masters program. Last year I ended up backing out of my program in Wales, but this year I want to get back into a program. I deferred my application for the program in Wales, so if my application is accepted, that would be my preferred option; I am also looking at a few online programs though so we'll see what happens. 

    4) Write more

Last year I made an attempt at nanowrimo and failed miserably at it. This year, I want to try my very best too write a book. Hopefully by next November, I will have something that I can edit during nanowrimo. I have something that I'm working on and I happy with where it's headed so far. I want to find joy in creative writing again. I also want to practice academic writing by doing my own research and writing papers for fun. 

    5) Work to be healthier

I want to put more effort into moving my body and exercising and to focus more on eating well. I find that while I'm working I tend to fall into unhealthy eating habits. I want to try to do some meal prep and to eat food that is good for me and that makes me happy. Cooking and baking makes me happy so I think this will serve a dual purpose.  I think that my primary exercise will probably be walking and hiking- both of which I find to be pretty enjoyable. 

    Besides all of that- I think I want to try a bit more in regards to content creation. A lot of people I know say that they think I would enjoy that avenue of sharing things that I care about. I will also be looking at potential jobs in the museum field. I've really found my niche in collections so I want to find something like that to do.  Overall, I am very excited about this year. I am going to be trying to put my best foot forward.  

    In the meantime I think I want to share my January TBR that I want to try to make my way through. 

I'm currently working through Babel by R.F. Kuang. My friends and I are doing a little book club and our January book is Babel, we've split it into four sections too have weekly goals and so far I'm on track. 

I'm also working through You Shouldn't Have Come Here by Jeneva Rose. So far I'm not super impressed but I have hope for this book and will have a full review when I finish it. 

The Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier will probably be read through February as it is quite a thick book. 

Lady MacBeth by Susan Fraser King will be a quicker read I think and I've been excited too read it since I heard about it in my Shakespeare course in college. 

The Husband Hunters by Anne De Courcy is a non fiction and the topic is one that I'm pretty interested in so I'm very excited to get into this one. 

I spent a lot of time in December putting together a reading journal and I'm very excited that I get to put it to use now! I was also gifted a mini book journal which I've been using to take notes at the end of chapters and sections in Babel so far.  I think that that's what I'll end up using it for.  A portable journal to take along with me.  I've also started trying Storygraph; at the same time I'm still using GoodReads. It's not super fun or easy going back and forth between the two but while I learn how to use Storygraph, I want to keep using what I'm familiar with. 

I think that this is where I'll leave you for now- But my goal is to do (at least) a post a month so at the very least, I'll talk to you in February!

Until then, keep learning and exploring!

- Anne