My goals for 2022 were a bit of a mixed bag, and I can feel myself sort of resisting thinking about my goals for 2023 because I will inevitably forget about half of them. This is going to be a big year of change for me, since I’m leaving my day job to focus on writing. With such a massive shift coming in my work life, it’s hard to think about other goals.
And yet. I love setting goals for the start of the year. I’m more of a goals/intentions girl than a resolutions one, but boy do I love to set and forget about goals.
This year, I’m scaling back from going quite so hard on goals because I’d like to, you know, enjoy my reading. 2022 had a lot of not-so-great reads for me, particularly in the first half of the year, so I want to prioritize enjoyment out of my reading in 2023. Nevertheless, a few goals make things fun, so here are mine!
Increase My NetGalley Feedback Ratio
I’m not setting a specific number here, but I do want to end the year with a higher ratio than I started. I’m at 64% as of now and have a good number of books on my shelves to get through yet. By being more consistent with reading my eARCs before I request more, I think I can hit this goal.
Goodreads Goal: 80 Books
After much consideration, I’m going for 80 books on the Goodreads Challenge in 2023. This feels like a more realistic number than 100, so hopefully more aspirational as a result of seeming actually possible.
Read and Reduce my Physical TBR
Joining Bookstagram resulted in a massive uptick in book purchases for me. Never in my life have I felt overwhelmed by unread books before, but towards the end of the year I really started to feel hemmed in and trapped by the mouting stack of unread books in my spare room/office/witch lair. I already did some work to unhaul and cut back on the book stacks, keeping only the books I still feel interested in reading. There are still a ton of books in there, and I want to focus on actually reading the ones I have before I buy new ones.
Read Harder Challenge: 2023
Like every year, I begin 2023 knowing I will not do the entire challenge list. But I do like to refer back to this one whenever I feel like reading outside my usual comfort zone, so I’ll bring it along for 2023 as well.
Finish the Rough Draft of My Book
Forgive the non-reading goal here, but it is technically a book goal. I have been working on a memoir for a couple of years now, and one of the reasons I’m pivoting away from my emotionally demanding day job is to give myself more time and energy to actually finish the first draft of this book. So, I’m setting the 2023 goal of at least getting through the entire rough draft. The stretch goal is to also go through my first round of revisions, but I’ll honestly be really pleased with a finished draft given my slow progress on this work for the past couple of years.
So, there we have my pared-back list of bookish goals for 2023. More than anything, I want this to be a year of reading good books and heading outside the comfort zone to discover new favorites. I look forward to another year of sharing my reads with you and hearing about yours, book friends!
Your Book Friend 