Hi friends, happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well! At the beginning of the year I set myself some goals, so today I’m going to do a little check in to see how I’m doing with them. Let’s jump into it!

Most years I write this and never remember the goals I set for myself in January. I think this year I’ve actually remembered most of them and sorta kept track of them, so I don’t think things will be a shock to me.

Bookish Goals

Starting with the books, as always!

Read 100 books. Like every year, this is is my set goal… this year I don’t know. I’m still optimistic I’m going to reach it… but it might be a stretch. I’m at 44/100, that’s less than halfway at the halfway point of the year. This year I just haven’t been doing the reading like I have in past years. A lot has changed in my life and that’s what has led to the decrease in reading. I’m not giving up just yet… we’ll see how it goes by the end of the year.

Read More Diversely. I think I’m finally smashing this goal. I went from a 60/40 ratio on white authors to BIPOC authors, now I can confidently say that I’m at a good 50/50 spilt. I honestly didn’t think I’d get it here this quickly, I thought it might take more time, but I’m proud of how far I’ve come. Hopefully I can continue to keep this going for the rest of the year!

Start doing challenges on StoryGraph. I think I’ve been doing a good job of keeping track of StoryGraph challenges, sure I could probably join some more, but baby steps. In January I had 3 that I was focusing on, and those were:

• Participate in the January Pages Challenges – I smashed this and read every day for the month of January. This is just a fun challenge that I like to join in on ever year, even if I know I’m going to do well. Makes me feel on top of things.
• Continue my reading streak and hit 365 days – womp, womp, womp… this is where I come in with defeat. My streak got broken at day 360… but if I’m being honest, it broke long before that. I was literally adding 1 page just to keep it going… even if I didn’t read 😦 I know I’m bad and I think the app caught on too. I have a new streak, 44 days and I’m so happy with this one because I’ve actually been reading and putting a good amount of pages in daily. I hope I can keep this one up!
• Participate in the StoryGraph Reads the World Challenge – this one has been a slow go, but out of the 10 countries they’ve picked this year, I’ve read from 5, which is a good spot to be in halfway through the year. I think I can keep it going.

Continue my Classics Project. This has been a success. Since the start of the year I’ve read 5 classics and I’m soon to be finishing off a 6th. Last year I read 14; now I don’t think I’ll hit that number again, but if I can manage 10, I’ll be happy!

Continue my Stephen King Project. This has been going swimmingly, too! I’m just around the corner from finishing another book in this project, too. So far, I’ve only read 1 (soon to be 2) but this year has been full of longer books. My next read is IT… so yet another long book. I’ll be happy with 3 books read this year.

Read all the books on the Canada Reads longlist. I’m so close to finishing this. I just finished reading one, and then I have 2 more after that. I’m happy that I got most of them read in the first half of the year. I know there’s no rush to reading them, but it’s nice to have them read in preparation for next year!

Reread at least 5 books. Because my reading has been so slow this year, I haven’t really been able to do this. I’ve obviously done my annual re-read of the Picture of Dorian Gray, but that’s it. I did it on audio and it’s given me inspiration for other re-reads in the future. There are a few books on my list I want to re-read before I get to the next book, so I’m hoping my plans pan out.

Use Instagram More. Ehhhh well, this is a kinda yay I did it, but also a kinda nay that I haven’t either. At the beginning of the year I talked about using Instagram for me and not the algorithm and I’ve done just that… but I also set aside some ‘goals’ if you will, on what I wanted to post and they were:

• Dedicate a day to posting bookish content (which will usually be my classic updates) – *ding ding ding * I’ve done this! Every Friday (or mostly every Friday) I have a new post about the classic book I’m reading – proud of that.
• Dedicate a day to posting more life updates and photo dumps… I kinda want to get away from monthly wrap up reels because they can be so cumbersome to create – well, for 1) I’m still creating monthly wrap-up reels because I kinda like them again, and 2) I fell off on posting photos dumps. I thought about it the other day, telling myself I should start those back up… so maybe in the summer I will.

Continue to Make YouTube Videos. Somehow, someway, I’m still creating videos… I really thought I would be over making them, but I seem to keep coming back. I recently got back into making knitting updates, and that’s been a lot of fun, so we’ll see where the rest of the year goes.

Revamp the blog. Welp… that hasn’t happened yet. It’s in the back of my mind to do, but it’s also not a goal I feel I need to do. I do still hope to get to this by the end of the year, so fingers crossed!

Personal Goals

Finish watching all things Star Trek. I’m moving in the right direction with this one. I finished the last long series, Voyager back in March and I’m now working on the shorter series. I have 3 left, and I calculated I have roughly 95 more epiosdes of everything in total, plus 3 movies. So, if I keep going a day at a time I have a good feeling I’ll be done by the end of the year. I’ll be sad, but also kinda glad.

Continue with my Disney Challenge. At the start of the year I said I wanted to get to the year 1985… I started this year in 1970 and I’m only at 1975. Like my reading, my movie watching has gone down the toilet. But recently it’s gone back up a bit, so I’m hoping I can get back on some sort of track. I think I’ll be lucky to get to get to the year 1980 by the end of this year.

Bake at Least Once. This is a success… for the most part. I baked quite a bit in January… 3 times, which was crazy. Then I baked once in February for my brother’s birthday… and that’s the last time I baked this year. Again, I just haven’t had the time. But there is still a whole half of the year to bake again. Plus, my goal was only to bake once, which I did!

Travel at Least Twice this Year. I feel like I can count this as a success. I went to Niagara Falls in May and I went to Boston/Salem/Martha’s Vineyard in May, too. That should count as 4 trips if you ask me! I hope to go on a few more smaller trips this year, so we’ll see how the rest of the year goes.

Continue to Knit. This is a success! I’ve been able to complete 2 blankets! Now, I’m in the process of mapping out my next blanket.

Continue Learning French and Italian on Duolingo. This is a complete success! I’m on a 1685 day streak! I’m so close to 1700! I believe at the beginning of the year I said I wanted to get to 2000, so I’m hoping I can keep it going. It would be so disappointing to lose my streak at this point. On a side note, I’ve also been learning the music option they offer, which I’ve been finding a lot of fun!

Start Doing Yoga. I don’t even know why I added this to my list of goals because I haven’t done any yoga at all. I don’t even think I’ll do any this year, but never say never.

Be One Step Closer to My Own Place. I feel like this have gone off the way-side a bit this year, but it’s always in the back of my mind. We’ll see what the second half of this year has to bring.

Continue to Grow and Be a Work In Progress. I have to say that this has been a success. There have been a lot of things I’ve had to let go off, and to change the first half of the year that there’s been a lot of growing and learning to be a better person. I know I’m not perfect… and never will be, but I’d like to think I’m in a better spot than I was.

And there we have it, checking in on my goals for this year. I think I’m good shape! I have things I need to work on, but I feel like a lot of goals are still very accomplishable! What are some of your goals? Let me know in the comments below!