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I’m sort of so-so on New Year’s resolutions. It always sounds like a good idea, but then when I start to think about it, there are just so many things that I want to improve on (for myself) and experience that it can quickly become depressing.
Everywhere I turn there are articles about 2024 predictions: snow predictions, predictions about natural disasters and world geopolitics by a Bulgarian mystic, lists of what’s in and what’s out, and more.
While I’m certainly not ready for the presidential elections this year and I have yet to make sure that my snowblower is ready for a predicted storm this weekend, I have given some thought to some goals (not resolutions, those are far too set in concrete for me to feel comfortable with) that I hope to tackle this year.
Without further ado, here are my goals for 2024:
Write more and finish my novel. This is quite a lofty goal for me. I have never written a novel, and it has already taken me several months to even get to 10,000 words. But, I have really found joy in consistently sitting down every single day and spending at least 10 minutes writing and working on my novel. I have made the goal easier by setting my target as 50,000 words and by aiming to write at least 1,500 words per week. If I can commit to that, it will take me 33 weeks to get to that goal. I have been hitting close to 500 words per day, so this seems like a very attainable goal for me. Stephen King mentions aiming for 2,000 words per day in his writing how-to, On Writing, however, I’m not actually a full-time writer, so I simply don’t have the time to do that. My goal is much more attainable and far more than the 7 words James Joyce once eked out in a single day.
Read more often. Last year I completed 17 books, which was one more than the amount I completed the year before. Since King’s words on writing are still fresh in my mind ( “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”), I’m definitely going to try to up my goal this year. Maybe not as much as he reads (he said in his book that he was a slow reader and only read about 80 books a year — um…), but still I think that this is another goal that I can achieve. I can certainly read more than 17 I think, and the way that I’m going to do that is to set aside specific time each day after my workweek to read. I have been feeling that my evenings have slowly been eaten up by the ever-encroaching TikTok beast. It is so easy to mindlessly swipe up, allowing my dopamine receptors to feel flushes of pleasure with each entertaining mini-capsule, but I’m really going to take some time each day to relish in the quiet of a nightly read. This will help improve my mood, I’m sure, and improve my writing.
Visit the library more. Even though today’s NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast was a repeat, it was one that I hadn’t heard before. It was an already-produced episode of Life Kit, and it detailed the many ways that you can get value out of your local library. This truly astonishing resource exists in all of our towns and cities, and so many of the services it provides are free. My hometown library has a “library of things,” which includes sewing machines, projectors, board games, Instant Pots, things for crafting, and so much more. Not only can I get access to helpful things for free, but visiting the library will also help me with my read-more goal and break me out of my technology cocoon.
And three goals, my friends, are enough for me (for now). I’m sure that as the year progresses, I will encounter new goals (I already thought of another one—learn more about local politics by reading the local newspaper more often, but I hadn’t wanted to get into that because I simply don’t have the energy to engage in politics at the moment) and perhaps modify my current ones. I also wanted to specifically avoid weight-loss and health goals, because I already spend so much damn time thinking about those things. I do not want to spend any more of my life or energy worrying about those things.
The New Year is a wonderful time when you can make fresh starts and jettison old, unhelpful habits. What goals do you have for 2024? Share them in the comments below.
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