Goodbye 2018: Seeing How Well I Did on My Goals for the Year and Making New Resolutions for 2019!!

In case you didn’t know, I love to make goals!

I make them for every month, and I won’t say how successful I am (because I am very bad at them), but they’re always really fun for me to come up with and also hold me accountable! Even when I forget about them until the end of the month!

And this time, it’s no different: I have completely forgotten all of the goals I made for 2018 until this moment, when I look back on them. Like I said, love to make them, not the best at keeping them.

Today I’m going to be reviewing my 2018 goals and making new ones for 2019, aka looking at how badly I failed all my goals for the year and pathetically trying again for the new year. Proud of me!

2018 GOAL CHECKUP

 READING 

• Read 100 books. ✓ I’m at 97 books as of right now, but I have two poetry books and a short contemporary lined up for tonight/tomorrow and I’m actually pretty confident I’ll make my 100 book goal! (Me reading 9 books in the last week of 2018? A power move.)
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• Read more diversely. ✓ Yes! I was a bit lenient on what counted as “diverse” this year and next year I won’t be, but because of my leniency I read all but 2 diverse books.
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• Keep track of reading stats in a… spreadsheet. ✓ I did! I’ve been slacking with the end of the year since I’m in more of a rush to read than track, but I really love my spreadsheet (and you can read more about it here!).

let’s ignore the lack of page numbers and # of days read okay?

• Read more ARCs! ✓ Yup! I requested more ARCs this year and I think it’s definitely taken a bit of a toll on me (I still have two unread ARCs and many other unreviewed ARCs), but I did it.
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• WRITE. MY. REVIEWS. ㄨ Let’s just say I haven’t properly reviewed at least 70% of the books I read this year.

 WRITING 

• Rewrite Glittered Ghosts. ㄨ Well, I ditched the WIP but maybe it did the work for me and rewrote itself??
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• Write another novel! ✓ I don’t remember whether I intended to FINISH another novel or simply work on one… but I’m going to be nice and say that I did write another novel, just didn’t complete it.
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• Brainstorm & develop other plot bunnies. ✓ I barely have any recollection of what I did writing-wise this year (was NaNoWriMo only just a month ago) but let’s give myself the benefit of the doubt and say I did!
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• Write 5K in one day. ㄨ Yeah. Totally.

 BLOGGING 

• Reach… 1500 followers??!?!? ✓ Yes, I did!! I actually hit 1.6k followers and it means the world to me! I know last year I got 1000 followers in 10 months, and a year later I got 600 more, which definitely shows regression. But though I regret not interacting more this year, I’m happy that I prioritized myself over than blogging.

• Finish up my new blog design! ✓ Okay this is a bit of a cheat since I knew I was going to implement my new blog design, but yup, I completed this! And I’m still as in love with it as I was when I first got it.
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• Take all the breaks I need. ✓ I mean. I was on a break for pretty much the whole year, as in I took a break from interacting..?? I regret it a lot, and thinking about it makes me want to curl up and let myself rot away, but I’m focusing on improving for the new year.
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• Make a new blogging/internet friend. ✓ I did! I’ve made so many new friends, especially since I joined other social media platforms, and I’m so happy about it.

 LIFE 

• Exist more in the real world. ✓ I am super super proud to say that I’ve been doing this more. I don’t know if I did much of this in the beginning/middle of the year (I have no memory), but I can for sure say I existed more in real life and isolated myself less near the end of the year and I am so so happy about it!
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• Drink more water. ㄨ No. I did not.
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• Learn more things about myself. ✓ Yes! I said in 2017 that I discovered things about myself, and in 2018 I did more of that as well.
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• Take care of myself, not get so anxious, and de-stress. ㄨ Yeah… I definitely did not do a good job taking care of myself this year. It was hard to, since this year has been so so rough for me, but I’m hoping that next year will be different!

Me, realizing I actually manage to check off most of these goals:

NEW 2019 GOALS

(god it sounds so weird to be saying 2019)

 READING 

• Read 100 books. I’m probably going to make the same each year, because I think it pushes me to read a lot, but isn’t so overly ambitious that I can’t do it!
• Actually start writing reviews again! I don’t want to push myself to write reviews and neglect other things, but I do want to make review-writing a regular thing again! Maybe it’s not every book I read, but at least a few. I miss it a lot, actually!
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• Be more organized with ARCs. And by organized, I mean, actually read and review them before the release date, because I definitely didn’t do that this year.
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• Read more webcomics! I truly have loved reading webcomics these last two months of the year (in an attempt to hit my 100 books goal) and I definitely want to continue finding and reading more in the new year.

some of my recent reads, in which all but two are webcomics/graphic novels!

 WRITING 

• Continue working on my WIP! This is the first WIP I actually don’t want to abandon a month after I’ve worked on it, which I’m really happy about! I feel like I could turn this into something I truly want it to be, and that makes me excited.
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• Come up with other book ideas. Coming up with book premises is so exciting to me: the thrill of a new idea and feeling smart and getting excited. I haven’t been doing much of this lately and I miss it!
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• Write more poetry! I used to write poems a lot more in 2017, but this year I stopped. But I feel like my voice in poetry has developed into something I’ve proud of, and I want to use it more often!
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• Write 5K in one day. Using the same goal? Yes. Will I reach it? Probably not.

 BLOGGING 

• Reach… 2,000 followers?! Oh my god, typing that out makes it feel more real than ever. Because I think if I continue blogging, I really truly will hit it. But that’s such a surreal number to me and I’m getting all weird just thinking about it!
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• Actually interact. Meaning: Comment on other blogs! Reply to comments on my own blog! I just want to get back into the rhythm I had in 2017 because I lost it this year and I hate it so much.
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• Implement a cool feature or something. I don’t know I’ve been wanting to do some nice feature or blog series for a while now, but I don’t actually know WHAT, so hopefully I’ll figure something out for 2019??
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• Just. be good to myself. I beat myself up so much for my lack of interaction with other bloggers this year, and I just really don’t want it to happen again!!

 LIFE 

• Practice self-care. This is probably the biggest things I want to do in 2019, because this year was so bad for me because of the lack of care I showed myself, and I really want to take the necessary steps to make sure I’m okay!
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• Listen to more music and watch more shows! Most of the media I involve myself in is the written stuff, but I want to listen to more things and watch more things too! (Even though I got and lost my new earbuds within one day… it’s fine.)

 

• Do more dance stuff! I’m keeping this vague because I don’t really know what I want to do related to dance, but I feel like I’ve grown a lot more in dance and fallen more in love with it this year so I just want to involve myself more in it!
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• Prioritize my happiness. I want to do things that make me happy and avoid things that don’t. Because this year has been honestly bad for me, and I truly want to make sure that 2019 isn’t a repeat of it, because I deserve better.

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how did you do on your 2018 goals (if you made any)? have any resolutions for 2019?? if you’re doing the goodreads challenge tell me if you completed it ages ago or if you’re scrambling to finish like me??