Goals for 2020

When thinking of goals for 2020, I wanted them to be simple. Much like my word of the year – to be present – I wanted something easy to fall back on. In the past, I’ve made really specific goals such as “read 12 nonfiction books,” and “write 3 blog posts a week.” Those are SMART goals – they are easily measurable and you know when and if you achieve them. But inevitably, I fall off track and some goals no longer make sense. So 2020 is going to be simple and will gently guide me towards the type of reader and blogger I want to be.

Goals

I’m going to stick with the 50 book challenge on Goodreads — I’m likely to read more, but I don’t want to focus on the total number of books that I finish. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I find myself avoiding books because I think they’ll take me forever and will slow me down. I don’t want that pressure – I want to feel comfortable taking on the hard stuff! So I’m sticking with 50.

I’d like to write something on Goodreads for every book that I finish. Not a whole book report or a whip-smart review, but just a couple of sentences that encapsulate what I felt about the book. Sometimes that’s really hard for me to do because I quickly move on to the next book without collecting my thoughts about what I’ve just finished. I’d like to slow down and take a bit of time to wrap it up more formally.

For my blog, I’d like to include more of my own pictures. I rely heavily on the free pictures from Canva and Pexels because they can quickly add that cozy element to my blog that I love so much. And while I do my best to make my life cozy, it’s not always picturesque. I’m going to try to snap more photos in 2020 and use those for my banner photos to personalize my blog even more.

And… no buying books! I’m serious about this. I’ll buy books for my children but not for myself. Two caveats: I will buy books by Wendell Berry and if Kate Morton happens to publish something. Other than that – no buying! I actually think this will be quite easy for me in 2020. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t actually like owning books (gasp! shock! horror! I know). I really like borrowing them from the library and releasing them back into the wild to be read again. I reread so few books that it doesn’t seem necessary to actually own any of them.

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That’s it! Easy, right? Have you been thinking about your goals for the new year? Have you written a post on them? Please let me know in the comments!