Kate Waffles about Goals

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I’m so excited to head to my New Year’s fun! Still, have a bit before I can leave, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m curious to see what the traffic is like. I feel like people don’t traditionally do a lot of traveling for New Year’s so while I’m leaving at 5 pm I’m hoping that enough people are off and staying home that there isn’t a lot of traffic and I can get there pretty quickly. It’s a pretty straightforward drive, thankfully, but it is a few hours without traffic, so I’m hoping that there isn’t the added frustration.

I’ve been thinking about my goals for next year a lot, especially the reading goals, and I think maybe it is time to change things up a little—at least for this coming year. The past couple of years I’ve been really pushing myself goal-wise. Last year (2016) I wanted to read 366 books, novellas, graphic novels, comics, etc. This year I wanted to beat my page numbers (2016 was right over 45,000 pages) by reaching 50,000. And once I got close to that, I stretched for 55,000 and once I reached that, the plan was to read 60,000 pages.

What I found in the last few days is that I’ve been reading through the books, but I haven’t enjoyed them as much as I might otherwise. I’ve just been reading the pages, and I don’t like it.

As much as I read, why is it I think that I’m going to need a reading goal, really? I mean, the book challenges make sense because that will push me to be creative and also to read things outside of “my usual,” but that’s not the same thing as a page or book goal. I love to read, and there is never going to be a year that I don’t read a bunch of books—there just isn’t.

I guess I like knowing that there is a goal that I’m pretty much guaranteed to meet. It’s a lot like making a to-do list with an item (or items) that you’re finished with, nearly finished with, or you know will only take five minutes so that your list doesn’t feel as overwhelming and you can feel accomplished when you cross them off. There’s nothing wrong with that. There really, really isn’t. But what’s happened is that it’s morphed reading into a chore to be done on a schedule—which is just wrong! Reading is my passion, but I need to stop feeling like I’m a failure every time I have to say “no” when someone asks if I’ve read a particular book that they happen to think is all the rage (or whatever). I’ve let the idea that Jeff has been able to read over 90,000 pages in a year make me feel like 45,000 isn’t enough. It’s all well and good for me to keep track of my books and my pages or even the amount of time I’m reading if it’s about me and not about crazy outside goals.

I started my working towards my goal for 2017 on December 29th of 2016 so I think I need to just accept the fact that I've read 58,932 pages plus whatever I've read in fanfic and stories that goodreads didn't recognize. It's a new year now and I'll read whatever I want.  

I think if I’m going to have a reading goal for next year it needs to be something like 1 nonfiction book a month and six books in genres outside of my contemporary romance and paranormal romance fiction stories. 

I don't know. Maybe, just for this year, I won't have a reading goal or a reading challenge or anything else. I want to continue the requirement of that I write to buy books though I may in time adjust that. Instead of doing 1,000 words per $1 doing something like 3000 words for a book. I don't know. Maybe I'll leave it as it is since it does seem to be helpful so far and adjusting it would either make things too easy or too complicated. The system is working, and I have the equations in my spreadsheets set up already. 

I do want to have some good goals for next year. But I think those goals need to be about my writing and exercise habits. I'm thinking that I may do a word count goal for the year. Some months are more successful than others, but I think it would probably balance out at the end of the year. I think maybe one day this weekend, I'll go through my statistics for each month and tally that up for the year. Whatever that number is, I'll aim for just a little bit more. I had several fantastic months writing-wise, but I also had quite a few not-so-successful writing months. Maybe next year things can be a little more... even-keeled.

 

Pardon the quick change of topic, but I'm tired today. I did get a little more sleep last night--a little over 7 hours if I'm not mistaken--but with a good bit less sleep on the other nights this week, I'm a little deprived. It's funny to me because I used to get that little sleep on a regular basis, and often I get even less. That was just how I operated. I was tired all the time of course. Now that I've gotten used to being a reasonable well-rested individual, I am not digging being tired. It's amazing what your body can get used to when it's required. Now that I'm not used to it, it's kicking my ass. It probably was kicking my ass before too, but in the haze of that being an everyday thing, it wasn't something I noticed quite as much as I do now. And I definitely notice it now. I'm going to need to get some caffeine and shake myself around a bit before I start that drive.