Goals for 2021

Hey all, Dani here.

Wow, hello everyone. Look at this…two days into the new year and this is my second blog post. That feels pretty good since I wasn’t blogging much at the end of last year. And if I manage to get my posts prepped up, I should have a post up every day this week…I hope? I’m going to be cautiously optimistic and say that yes, I will have a post up every day this week…but don’t expect that to last for too long. I did wonderful with a daily posting schedule at the beginning of last year, much to my surprise, but with all of my backlog and the other items on my to-do list…plus adjusting to our loveable new fur-child in the house (he is a bit of a handful, but I love him so much already), I don’t know that I have the time to dedicate to that intense of a posting schedule.

Anyway, I figured now would be a good time to highlight my overall goals for the year, and honestly they haven’t changed much from my goals in previous years. I also prefer to say goals instead of New Year’s Resolutions or whatever, because resolutions tend to break far too quickly for most people.

I hope the start to your 2021 has been pretty good so far. Now, let’s jump into the main part of today’s post.

Reading

The first goal to be made for the year, obviously, is my reading goal. Now, I’ve set my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal at 100 books, which I know I will end up succeeding in. I read 230 books in 2019 and 250 book in 2020. However, I wanted to set a goal that wouldn’t cause me any extra stress or worry, because I actually want to focus on a couple other goal areas more than my reading. If my progress in other areas is sufficient then I will even allow myself to increase this reading goal later in the year, but for now, I’m happy with this starting number.

Plus, you know, I had some periods of reading slumps in the last few months of 2020, so I definitely want to make sure that I have a goal that is attainable even if I slump a bit again.

Blogging

The second goal to be made is in the area of blogging. I was doing amazing with this area for the first half of 2020, but then things really started to slide, and by the end of the year I was barely posting at all. And I hated that, but I just felt no motivation at all to log in and prep up all the posts that I actually did want to write.

So I’m not putting a lot of pressure on myself for this category. I just want to maintain a somewhat regular blogging schedule in 2021. I have a bunch of reviews I still want/need to get up, and I’ll be trying to slowly get them posted over the next several months, and there are some new releases I want to read and review as well.

Of course, I hope to keep up with posting for Calendar Girls as well, but honestly that’s about it. If things go really well then I might try to bring back some of my blog series like Weekend Writer, Discussion posts, and Manga Monday, but those are not set in stone goals. We’ll just see what happens.

Writing

This is my big area of focus for 2021, the writing goal. I guess this goal is technically dual-pronged. Firstly, and the main importance for this is writing my novel. My D&D inspired contemporary romance novel, tentatively titled Roll for Romance, is something I really want to get finished, and so that is my primary writing focus. Depending on how the writing goes and all, I may share some snippets with all of you throughout the year…if you’re interested, anyway.

The other writing focus is also a bit of a challenge for me, and that is the Story a Month Challenge being hosted by author Susan Dennard. On the first day of each month in 2021, participants will get an e-mail from Sooz and it will have three different prompts: a text prompt, a photo prompt, and an audio prompt. The goal is to start and finish a story each month, no matter the length. You can use those prompts or not; the choice is yours. All that matters is that you write a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I’m pretty excited to see if I’m able to use those prompts to write a completed story each month. I’ve already gone over the prompts for January, and I’m thinking I’m going to utilize the audio prompt for this month. With any luck, I will share my completed stories here on the blog each month.

You can find out more about the #storyamonthchallenge by going to Sooz’s Twitter. Join in if you feel like it, because it seems pretty fun.

Conventions/Trips

Honestly I was a little uncertain about adding this category into my goals for 2021, because 2020 was horrid on the convention front. But Gen Con is currently hoping for an in-person event this year…and even if they aren’t able to, the online event was still something Damian and I enjoyed. Plus, we’re hoping by the fall that we’ll be able to go to the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

So I’m going to expand this section to be Conventions AND Trips. I know Damian and I are doing another cabin getaway at Hocking Hills for our honeymoon, because we sincerely hope we’ll actually be able to get married this year. And honestly, even if we did have to delay the wedding again, we’ll still do the vacation like we did last year. I’m kind of looking forward to a chilly fall cabin getaway…though I might also try to convince him to do a long weekend cabin escape in the spring or early summer. We’ll see what happens.

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Okay, well I think that’s all for my goals for 2021. Now to get back to work on reading and writing up reviews.