Hi friends and happy new year! Can you believe we’re into a new year? I can’t! With a new year, comes new goals and challenges and things to do, see, watch, experience! Today I’m going to be sharing some of the goals I hope to keep for this new, fresh year!

Bookish Goals

Like every year I’m going to start with the bookish!

Read 100 books. This has been my goal for the past few years and every year I surpass it, so I figured this should be a pretty easy one to accomplish (I hope!).

Read More Diversely. Last year I finally started putting numbers to my reading and from start of the year to the end I saw a slight improvement, so I plan to continue to be more conscious with my reading so that’s why this goal is here again because I know I can still do better. I mean, if you saw my wrap up post you’ll see I’m still at 60% white authors, so if I can get it to 50% that would be positive improvement. If anyone has any diverse recommendations for me, put them in the comments!

Start doing challenges on StoryGraph. I wanted to do this last year… and I failed because I felt all the challenges were daunting. I did the reading goal, like I do on Goodreads, but I want to embrace StoryGraph more this year. I saw they have a January Pages Challenge and I signed up for that, so baby steps! Maybe I’ll join more, if this one is a success!

Use Twitter More. I had this on my goals last year… and failed super hard. I wanted to use it more than just tweeting out my blog links… I want to maybe talk about the books I’m reading, we’ll see what the year brings.

Use Instagram More. In the same vein as the goal above, I’d like to start posting regularly again. I know after posting every. single. day. in 2021 I got very burnt out and just didn’t post very much in 2022 – so for 2023 I’d like to get back in the swing again. I’ve got my classics project (more on that below) that has me at least posting once a week, which is a great start!

Continue to Make YouTube Videos. I was very successful with this last year, so I want to continue with it into this year. I don’t have too many plans to change the way I’m posting, or the content I’m creating, but I’d just like to keep at the rate I’m going.

Personal Goals

This first ‘goal’ is kinda a blend of bookish and personal because this number one goal for me is:
Keep Track of ALL My On-Going Projects. If you know me, you know I love a good project. So much so, every time a new idea pops into my head I start thinking… and thinking… and thinking about it and then, in the end, I decide to do it… so I have quite a few on the go, so here they are:

• My Stephen King Project. I want to continue reading a chapter (or more) of a King book a week. Every Sunday I love diving into a bit of his work; for me, I feel this is the best way for me to read his work, and not get tired or burnt out from it,
• My Classics Challenge. This one is new, I started this in November where I really wanted to read more classics because I feel like I’ve read none of them, so my decision was to read a chapter a day from one. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last, but I’ve been enjoying it so far! I might make this a series on the blog, but I haven’t 100% decided if I’m sold on it.
• The Canada Reads Challenge. For the past 2 years I’ve read the long list (15 books) that are nominated for Canada Reads. It’s a great way to: 1 read more Canadian authors and 2 read more diversely, which are both positives in my book. This year’s list won’t be announced until later in the month, but I’m looking forward to it.
• My Star Trek Journey. I talked about this last year, how I wanted to watch everything in the Star Trek universe… so far I’ve made a pretty good dent into the world, you can read more about it here if you’re interested. Every day (or I try to every day) watch an episode and it’s been working really well for me. I love Star Trek!
• My Disney Challenge. This one is also new, that I haven’t talked about (I hinted in my wrap-ups) on the blog. I’ve wanted to do this for the longest time, but I also didn’t have Disney+… now I do, SO, now I can watch every Disney movie in order of release date. This one is more casual, I watch when I can. I do want to start a series on my blog at some point (hopefully soon).

I feel like that’s a lot of projects, but also not? We’ll see how it goes this year.

Bake at Least Once a Month. In my wrap-up goals post I said I wanted to be more specific with this goal because I didn’t pace myself… I’d bake like crazy, then it would drop off. So, if I make it a goal to at least bake once a month, it will hopefully be more even.

Travel More. And this doesn’t even mean on planes to far away places, this includes day trips and just overall going places. I went on a girls trip to Niagara Falls last fall and it really sparked the travel bug in me, so hopefully this could be the year!

Continue to Knit. I did a really good job of this last year and I realized that I really love knitting blankets. Maybe at some point I should look to start selling them? I don’t even know how I’d go about doing that.

Continue Learning French and Italian on Duolingo. Last year my goal was to reach 1000 day streak, well I’ve surpassed that and so now I just want to keep going because it’s fun. It would be really cool to hit 2000, which I know isn’t for a loooong time. But 1500 would also be fun and I’m closer to that. I’m also really happy with the progress I’ve been making in both languages.

Continue to Drink More Water. I like having this as a goal because it’s a reminder that I need to constantly drink more. My Brita filtre has been my best friend when it comes to drinking more.

Start Stretching More. What I mean by this, since I already stretch, is that I want to be conscious of what muscles I’m stretching and try to get a good morning stretch routine going. Now that I’ll be entering a new decade I want to just be healthier this year and keep my body feeling good.

Continue to Grow and Be a Work In Progress. I had this on my list last year, and again I’m putting it here because every year I want to better myself and the people in my life. Last year was definitely a year of growth for me, I learned a lot about myself and I think I’m a better person because of it. So I want to continue growing, being me and being resilient.

I think I’m going to end it here because there’s a lot that I’ve got going on, haha! Check in on me in 6 months to see how I’m doing 😂. But before then, do you have any new year’s goals of your own? Let me know in the comments below!

Happy 2023!