Discussion: Did I Actually Keep My 2018 Resolutions?

The Discussion Challenge is hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction & It Starts At Midnight.

I’m a goal-oriented person, so I love New Year’s resolutions. I happily make them every January. I stick with them until March. Then I promptly forget them. Yep, go me. Luckily (or unluckily), I have a blog, so I can look back at my goals and see if I actually accomplished them. Okay. Deep breath. Let’s sort through the colossal mess that was 2018:

Did I Actually Keep My 2018 Resolutions?

The Books

Resolution #1: Read at least 100 books.

Result: Accomplished! It was a massive struggle, and I read a lot of short books, but I reached 100. I’m setting my goal lower in 2019. I don’t need any more stressful nonsense in my life. Goodreads is going to become more of a reading tracker and less of a reading challenge.

Resolution #2: Read more translations.

Result: Fail. I only read 6 translations. If it helps, I acquired a bunch of translated books. They’re all sitting on my shelf, unread. I think I need a do-over on this resolution.

Resolution #3: Read Newbery winners.

Result: Success! Sort of! I read 13 winners and 4 honor books. This is a little depressing because there are still so many winners left to read! The Newbery Award has been around since 1922. It’ll take me years to catch up on all of the past winners.

Resolution #4: Read more Stephen King.

Result: Fail. I read 1 King book. At least it was good. My Stephen King challenge is like my Newbery challenge. There are so many books that I can’t catch up. How can one dude write so much?

Resolution #5: O by 19. Get my to-be-read pile down to 0 books.

Result: Hahahahahahaha *deep breath* Hahahahahahaha. No. I failed. I did succeed at reducing the number of unread books I own. I started the year with 63. I ended the year with 43.

Resolution #6: Figure out the deal with Christianity.

Result: *Sigh.* Past me, why did you give us such a vague goal? How am I supposed to measure how much I learned? I know I mostly failed. I did read a lot of books that involve Christianity in some way. They either had Christian themes or Christian characters. I have a few more books about Christianity sitting on my shelf, so this is an ongoing goal. If I really want to learn, I should probably get one of those Bible for Dummies books and start with the basics.

The Blog And The Internet

Resolution #7: Shorten my book reviews.

Result: Accomplished! I occasionally still post reviews that are 1000+ words, but I mostly do mini reviews now. My mini reviews are 300-600 words. Small reviews aren’t as thorough as I’d like, but they’re much less time-consuming to write.

Resolution #8: Learn to use Instagram.

Result: Mostly success! I’m not good at Instagram, but I learned how to use it. I somehow even got 200 followers. (I apologize to those 200 people for having to put up with me.) I’m still baffled by Instagram Stories. I rarely look at people’s stories, and I got confused while trying to post my own. Creating a story made me feel like a technologically inept old woman. I was just waving my cane at the phone and screaming incoherently until my teeth fell out. Then I gave up on stories forever.

Resolution #9: Participate in a Twitter chat.

Result: Accomplished! It was fun and completely overwhelming. It’s like trying to keep up with 10 different conversations at once. Also, people kept forgetting to include the hashtags, which increased the difficulty level by 80%. Sometimes I had no idea what people were talking about. Still, I’d do it again.

Resolution #10: Figure out the deal with blog tours.

Result: Fail. I didn’t even start looking at blog tours. I have no idea which tour companies are good or how to get involved.

I accomplished 5/10 resolutions. If I was in resolution school, I would have gotten an F. Oh well, the good thing about resolutions is that you can always start over again next year.

Did you make 2018 resolutions? How did you do?