Monday, December 31, 2012

2012 Wrap-Up and Goals for 2013

So this year I participated in 2 year-long challenges:  The TBR Pile Reading Challenge and the A-Z Book Challenge.  Both of which I completed!!!  The TBR pile should have been easy, yet as I got new books, those sounded better than the ones I'd already had sitting on my shelves, even though I'd been so excited for those books too!  The A-Z challenge was more difficult, finding books to go with Q, X, Y, and Z was not easy, and so I stretched a bit on those. You can see how I did if you go to the links above for those posts.  Because I have such a big TBR pile, I've chosen to participate in that one again this year, and you can see my post for that here.  I also started my own 1 month challenge, that I plan to run again this year, maybe even in conjunction with a blog that does a lot of giveaway hops holding one week of a hop during that month, it is my September is for Sequels Challenge.  I think I had about 10 people participate this year, I'm hoping to get more next year!  And talking about getting more, my blog following is up over 1000!!  Which means to expect a giveaway in January!  I'm thinking either a gift card, or maybe a choice of book from the Book Depository.  
I set my reading goal with Goodreads at 125.  But as I got later in the year, I think around September, I realized I might not quite make the 125.  For many reasons, so I decided to drop my total.  First I dropped it to 105.  I figured that would be a 5% increase over last year, so that would be good.  But then, I started being ahead of my goal, so I bumped it up to 110.  Then to 115.  And now, I'm one book away from that, so by midnight tonight, I must finish my current book to reach my goal!  And as my New Year's Eve plans involve a quiet day at home while it snows outside, I see no problem in completing the goal.  I plan to set my goal for 2013 at 120.  I'm hoping to go to 125, but for now I'm being realistic with 120.  Blog goals, hmm.  I'm hoping to maybe do a re-design on my blog sometime this year.  Probably save some money and have someone do it as I do not really know how to do that kind of stuff.  But I have some ideas I need to write down to share with whoever I get to do it.  
My personal goals for 2013 are to get back to the walking I was doing.  I was doing anywhere from 3-5 miles almost every day.  Then I worked 3 jobs for awhile, and that killed any time I had, or energy to actually leave the house.  Which then lead to my bad eating habits, feeling too lazy to cook, just running through the fast food drive thru on the way home from work. So I plan to work on that as well.  My goal as a teacher, besides continuing to look for a library job, is to keep up on my grading.  Try to stay an extra hour after school and get the current day's grading done that day if possible.  Although, with the new puppy, I may have to run home, let the dogs out, then go back to school to work for an hour.  But getting into that habit will be great for getting ready for the good weather when I can start walking again.
Other great things this year, I continued meeting awesome authors.  In fact, going to BEA was so much fun!  I wish I could afford to go again this year, but I just can't.  And my principal did let me teach a Communication Arts class this year, so that is a bit of a step closer to my goal of being a school librarian.
So, now I'd like to hear from my followers.  How did you do with your goals and challenges this year?  What are your goals for 2013?  And, what would you most like to see for my 1000 follower giveaway this January?  (Be reasonable, I'm working on finances, and we do have the big fiscal cliff that we may be going over soon in America!)