Hello 2017: On setting goals.

Hi.

My dear friend Callie has started doing "old-fashioned" blog posts, where she hearkens back to the good ol' days of blogging (ie before the days where you had to have a Pinterest-worthy image and when no one even knew what SEO was) (I still am a little hazy on that, to be honest). I know that 100% that's why I haven't been blogging over the last few years. I just don't care to have the buzziest, most beautiful blog with inspiring pictures and content that will change your life. I mean, that would be really cool, I guess, but that's not my aim. I just want this to be a space where I share thoughts about life. So, here we go. Back to old-fashioned blogging.

One of my goals for 2017 was to blog every week at least once, and we're on week 3 now with the first post. Oh well! I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

I like to set goals for myself at the beginning of every year. There's just something about that fresh start that I love. So I set myself goals, but at the same time, I'm not super hung up on them. I just think about things that I would like the year to hold, and then see what I can do to get there. 

Some of my goals for the year are:

- To buy a maximum of 24 books all year. Unless you are familiar with my YouTube channel, this is going to seem kind of silly. Like, really, how many books do you buy, Felicia? Well since I discovered the Booktube community over 2 years ago, my book buying has become ridiculous. I have over 200 unread books on my shelves. Now, here's a disclaimer - the majority of these books are not bought at full price. I buy mostly from thrift stores and Book Outlet. So it's about a quarter of what it would be if I was buying everything at full price. That being said, it's not actually that fun to have that many books that you haven't read on your shelves. The problem is that I still want to read all of these books, but the rate of books bought has long surpassed the rate of books read. I want to level the playing field again so that I actually have a chance of reading books within a couple months of buying them. I'm not telling myself no books all year, because that's just cruel and why would I do that to myself?? But buying only 2 books a month when I read at least 5 will at least have the total number of unread books still going down. Pray for me, guys.

- To organize my house using the KonMari method. Yes, I've read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Yes, I thought it was really helpful. No, I'm not saying "thank you" to my old socks for their service to my feet. But our house is small and things need to be organized better for the storage space we have. What I love is how simple her method is - organize by category, not by room. That makes so much sense to me. We have similar things in different places in our house, and I would like to get things in order. (If you're curious about the book, you can find plenty of articles and blog posts that contain all of the information you would need from the book without having to read it)

- To get caught up on my backlog of letters. For 3 years I have not really been into writing letters, so I have quite the pile of letters (probably 30+) that need to be responded to. But honestly, I'm not going to respond to every one of those letters. I'm going to respond to people that I had a good correspondence with, obviously, but I know there are a few letters from people that were first letters, or people that I didn't really enjoy writing to. I'm probably not going to respond to them, because why would I after all this time? I'm sure at this point they're not expecting me to reply. I know I had too many correspondences going on at the time, and I'd like to keep it at more of a manageable number. Quality over quantity.

As you can see, these goals are pretty flexible, and ongoing. The overall goal with them is to shift my mindset and my priorities behind them. I want buying books to be a treat again, not a routine. I want to be mindful of my possessions and what is actually in my house. I want to cultivate relationships and conversations, not collect pen pals like they're Pokémon.

So there it is. Some of my goals for the year. And my first blog post in months! Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this one and you'll be seeing more from me this year.