I don't want to eat more greens, get on the treadmill after teaching all day, or lose thirty pounds before the same time next year.
I don't want a fancy new car because my red VW Beetle suits me just fine, and besides every girl needs a car to match her lipstick.
I don't want to set a specific number of books to read, for then I become more concerned about reaching a goal than remembering what I've read. Those years that I read only fifty books or so are remembered more clearly than the past few when I've read close to one hundred. Sometimes people ask me what I've read, and all I can give them is a blank stare, unable to pull a single title from the swirling depths of my mind.
So, what do I want? A few goals such as these:
1. If I could read every day it would be for at least an hour of uninterrupted time. Not checking my messages, surfing the web, being distracted with technology instead of paper.
2. I no longer want to be concerned about stats: number of visits, number of comments, number of followers.
3. My goal for this blog is to write posts that read more like a journal than an editorial.
4. I want my reading for 2014 to include many more classics than I have read the past few years.
5. It's important to me that I give myself permission not to finish a book.
6. An author I'd like to read more of would be Charles Dickens. I'm excited about rereading Great Expectations in January with Tom; I loved The Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House. But, I want to read much more of Dickens in 2014.
7. A genre I'd like to become more familiar with is children's literature. I read aloud to my class every day for at least thirty minutes, but I'd like to be more knowledgable about current authors for them. Besides the most wonderful Kate DiCamillo.
8. I'd like to leave more/less comments in the blog-o-sphere because it makes me feel connected with fellow readers. I've been far too slack about doing this in 2013.
9. When it comes to accepting Advanced Reader Copies I will probably decline. It's been too much of a good thing, where I now feel more obligated than honored.
10. When it comes to challenges I will participate in very few. Too many times a set list makes me feel confined, and just as I don't want to be bound to ARCs, I don't want to be bound to promised lists. Exceptions include the TBR Challenge, the Japanese Literature Challenge 7, January in Japan and Paris in July.
Do any of these goals sound realistic to you? Have you made your own set of goals, even unconsciously, for your year of reading in 2014?