Looking forward at 2016, albeit with little formality
I don't make resolutions, and don't tend to do much in the way of setting new goals at this time of year, but this year goal-setting seems to be striking more of a chord with me.
When I started thinking about a word/phrase for 2016, the first one that came to mind was "openness".
bluemeridian (who does epic rec lists), with whom I've exchanged a few thoughts here and there on hanging onto links and FOMO and digital clutter, mentioned choosing "be more selective" for this year, which would also be an excellent thing for me to focus on. I'm now visualizing (literally! How out of character!) wanting to concentrate on trying to let things flow more, both in and out--letting go of more clutter (which could mean physical/digital/mental/emotional) and being less anxious about not having something I want/need on hand, and also trying to be more open to...change? Influx of unexpected things? I'm not sure. (And even if I don't necessarily want an Official Word of the Year, I can't help trying to find the perfect word/phrase for this, because this "visualizing" thing is hard for me to pin down. Which could be the point? IDK.)
In case anyone's interested, The Sarcastic Muse posted their 2016 word tracker spreadsheets today--the plural is because there's a version with a separate tab for each month! I've downloaded both and haven't looked at them yet, but the site's 2015 tracker is the one I settled on for last year after looking at several options. (I still want to look at the ones from GYWO and
inkingitout, though, because I don't remember if I considered those ones when choosing last year.)
So here's what I've got right now. The degree to which any of these are concrete goals varies rather a lot, but hey.
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/658839.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
When I started thinking about a word/phrase for 2016, the first one that came to mind was "openness".
bluemeridian (who does epic rec lists), with whom I've exchanged a few thoughts here and there on hanging onto links and FOMO and digital clutter, mentioned choosing "be more selective" for this year, which would also be an excellent thing for me to focus on. I'm now visualizing (literally! How out of character!) wanting to concentrate on trying to let things flow more, both in and out--letting go of more clutter (which could mean physical/digital/mental/emotional) and being less anxious about not having something I want/need on hand, and also trying to be more open to...change? Influx of unexpected things? I'm not sure. (And even if I don't necessarily want an Official Word of the Year, I can't help trying to find the perfect word/phrase for this, because this "visualizing" thing is hard for me to pin down. Which could be the point? IDK.)
In case anyone's interested, The Sarcastic Muse posted their 2016 word tracker spreadsheets today--the plural is because there's a version with a separate tab for each month! I've downloaded both and haven't looked at them yet, but the site's 2015 tracker is the one I settled on for last year after looking at several options. (I still want to look at the ones from GYWO and
inkingitout, though, because I don't remember if I considered those ones when choosing last year.)
So here's what I've got right now. The degree to which any of these are concrete goals varies rather a lot, but hey.
- I want to write a minimum of 75,000 words. [see also:
inkingitout and
getyourwordsout] - I would really like to finish both of my "very different world" Newsflesh AUs (psychic wolves & mermaid--not to be confused with the "things happen very differently at the end of Feed AU", which I would also really like to have done but which hasn't been getting much focus in the past year); that said, at this point, I have to admit that the odds of getting the psychic wolves one done by mid-February (in case Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia happens again) are very, very low. Woe.
- I want to read more. I still haven't nailed down a number of books to aim for (and thus haven't signed up [yet?] for the 2016 Reading Challenge on Goodreads), largely because I haven't decided whether or not to count graphic novels/manga. When I threw the question out to my Twitter feed, nearly everyone who responded said they do count those, but for some reason I feel weird about it. And my vague impression is that if I don't count them, signing up for the Goodreads challenge may not make sense, since the site will factor them in automatically (? if I use the date started/finished fields, at least? And I like those). Either way, right now my nebulous mental goal is to read something like 75 novels this year.
- In keeping with my not-yet-in-possession-of-a-word visualization, I'd like to at least try to be more willing to not finish every book I read. It traditionally takes a lot for me to set a book aside. (And so I'm weirdly proud that I DNFed a graphic novel yesterday.)
- I'd also like to read more non-fiction, although "more" is an incredibly low bar. (I think I read three non-fiction books last year. Having an anthology open in my phone's Kobo app for months threw off my vague notion of having a non-fiction book open there for reading in bits here and there.) For about five minutes I considered aiming to read one non-fiction book per month, but given a) how little I read when Casual Job is in and b) that I find non-fiction takes me way longer than fiction, that seems depressingly unfeasible.
- I'm going to continue reading mainly from my purchased-but-unread bookcase. I did that last year with great success, although the success isn't visible, since I think I probably bought as many new books as I read. ^^; IIRC I read only two novels from the library in 2015 (manga/graphic novels were another story--nearly all came from the library, which means my pattern of not reading the ones I actually bought continued). The first was because I read my purchased copy of the first book in a trilogy and wanted to read on before deciding whether to buy more, and the second was because I wanted to read something on my tablet to help me decide what to do with Maggie. (Maggie=my old Sony ereader, which I've hung onto largely because she let me get ebooks from the library directly, as opposed to all the fuss you have to go through with a Kobo--which has prevented me from ever getting a library book via Elliot [said Kobo].) Verdict: using Overdrive on Becks, the tablet, was painless, and the reading experience was fine, although I much prefer reading on Elliot.
[ETA: Actually, technically that second book--Seraphina--only sort of counts as "from the library", since I own a hard copy. I deliberately chose to borrow an ebook of something I owned. I don't feel like deleting what I wrote about the ebook-borrowing experience, though.] - One somewhat-random thing: since I bought a few "adult coloring books" (what? Start with one? Nonsense!)--which is something I've been meaning to write about--I should actually try using one. It's occurred to me that if I actually took that up, it would finally give me something to do with my hands while listening to audiobooks, which could finally mean actually trying audiobooks. (The only one I actually have is Feed--it was on sale!--but that really might not be a good place for me to start, personally. >.>)
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/658839.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: