Happy New Year!

I know everyone’s saying it, but wow, 2020, am I right? That was–something. And that’s all I really want to say about it. ICYMI, I wrapped up my 2020 goals a couple days ago, so make sure to check that out, and I’ve got some big plans, as always, for the year. There will just be three categories this year–fitness, reading, writing–because I really settled into blogging over the last year, and there are no huge steps I want to take with the blog this year. I’d like to maintain my schedule, keep writing discussions, and review as often as possible, but nothing that I’m going to have to actively work toward.

Otherwise, buckle in, folks! We’ve got a lot to do.

fitness

For two years now, I’ve been making it my goal to accomplish a forearm stand & handstand away from the wall. It’s been frustrating to not see that happening as quickly as I’d like, and then, at the end of the year, I was reminded that inversions take a long time. It took me five years to get comfortable in a headstand, and thus, I’m no longer listing those as a goal. I’m still actively working on them, but I’m not going to make it my end all be all for the year. Instead, I’ve got more realistic ones!

1. Find a split on my right side again.
2. Practice more backbends!
3. Work on arm balances.

I had a split on both sides for a long time, and then I pushed myself way too hard two years ago, and I lost it on my right side. My hamstring is in way better shape than it was two years ago, but my split is nowhere near what it used to be on the right side, and I’d like to get it in balance with the left. I also have a hard time practicing backbends because of some serious personal issues that left me feeling dangerously vulnerable anytime I did heart openers, but I’ve worked through a lot in the past year, and I’d like to start threading them back into my daily practice rather than just something I do occasionally. And arm balances! I rarely practice them, even though I love them, and I’d like to get good on a solid few that I can just pop into at the end of my practice.

reading

ICYMI, I just posted my Top 10 Reads of 2020, and I was actually pretty damn surprised at a lot of them. I had a good reading year, and I’ve got plans for an even better one in 2021.

1. Read 100 books. Part of me wanted to make this 150, but I only managed 122 last year, and we’re all about no stress reading.
2. Catch up on all currently published Shadowhunters books. Oh look, it makes an appearance again because I am The Worst. I will do it this year, damn it.
3. Read one classic OR nonfiction per month. I really want to accomplish this, and I’ve hopefully got a plan for it. I’ve got two Austens left, I’m not going to force myself to read any other Brontës, I have a bunch of space memoirs, and I’d like to reread The Divine Comedy, so I should be all set.
4. Review volumes 3-7 of History of Middle-earth. This will get me halfway through the 13-volume set, and since I’ve got no other LOTR books to read, it’ll be nice to keep myself in this world.
5. Stick to my monthly TBRs! As always, I love having monthly TBRs, not because I’m trying to accomplish reading certain books, but just because I flounder without them and end up reading way less. I’d like to make a real effort to not wait until the last week to read my TBR books, though, or even to not miss any, so we’ll see how that goes.

And I’m leaving it at five this year. This list has continued to go down over the years, when it used to be 10 and shifted to 7 last year, but I recently wrote about how my reading has changed, and it’s meant setting a lot less goals around books, and I’m enjoying it a lot.

writing

As always, this is where it gets truly nuts.

1. Rewrite sister witches 2 & edit into a final draft.
2. Edit researcher & librarian 1 & 2 into final drafts.
3. Write the first draft vampire detective.
4. Get crazy, and write something unexpected.

Ah, sim, here we are again, trying to write three books in one year. I live for this nonsense. A couple of these will depend on other people, but I’m hoping to get things moving right at the beginning of the year. SW2 will hopefully be happening pretty immediately after the new year given how much I’ve been thinking about it, and once that’s rewritten, I’ll hand it off to my CPs. When they get it back to me, it’s time to edit! And fingers crossed this time those edits aren’t a rewrite.

Freddie’s story will also need to wait until my CPs have had a chance to look at them, but I’m not anticipating any huge revisions, so I’ll probably work on this in between other projects. My two main projects, though, will be Andrew’s story and whatever that fourth goal is, and I’m hella excited. I made some huge strides on the structure of Andrew’s story at the end of 2020, and it’s made the possibility of his novel so much more immediate. As for the fourth goal, I usually do this anyway, so thought I’d just stick it into the goals, and I’m swaying wildly between Mason, a brand new idea, and my space thieves, so we’ll see which one happens!

My plan is to work on SW2 from January-March, take a little break around my birthday, and then probably Andrew from April-June even though he’s such a summer story, but I just know it’s going to be screaming at me by then. All told, that means I’m only plotting out half of the year, but I’ve got a lot of revisions planned, I’ll probably drift into SW3, and who knows what the wild card will be? These things never really work out like I plan, so I’m sure something will come up unexpectedly and demand my attention, which is why I’m giving myself a wiggle room of six months to play with, but we’ll see!

I have to start giving them senior food this year? They turn seven in April, which means they’re officially out of the 1-6 adult mark, and that’s just baffling to me. As long as we’re still in quarantine, I think it’s going to be pretty easy to accomplish my goal of loving them even more than usual, but who knows, I can always figure out how to snuggle them more.

Are you setting any 2020 goals?