Discussion: 2019 Goals (because resolutions are garbage)

Because New Year's Resolutions are something I tend to stick to for maaaaaybe 2-3 weeks (if that...), I'm not making any this year. I am making a list of goals/things I want to accomplish in the coming year, though. (It is a totally different thing, I swear!) So without further ago, here are five things I plan to accomplish in 2019.

1. Attend a book convention

I've got big plans to go to KISSCON Weekend Affair on April 5-7 in Chicago with my bookish BFF's Ariel (whom you may also know as Peekaboo) and Annie. My amazing Mom got my the French Kiss ticket, which is basically the VIP Friday-Sunday ticket, and I'm SUPER excited. Three of my top five favorite historical romance authors are going to be there (if you were going to twist me arm and force me to limit myself and pick a top five, that is), and also SALLY THORNE WILL BE THERE, making her US author visit debut. The only thing that would make it *more* perfect is if Tessa Dare and Lenora Bell were there (the other two historical romance authors in my theoretical top five, along with Vivienne Lorret, Cat Sebastian, and Julia Quinn), but I guess you can't have everything.

2. Be more active on Instagram

OK, this one is sort of resolution-y, I'll admit it. I've gotten more regular with posting on my blog and Twitter, so I want to try to do more with Instagram. I'm going to start small and try to post once a week - that shouldn't be too hard, right? I even bought myself a cute little clip on light thinger for my cell phone to help with some of my lighting issues, because there just is no good natural light in my split level house where my book room is on the lower level. So all of those tips about finding natural light? Sorry, no. And besides, Minnesota in December/January? We get all of maybe 7-8 hours of daylight as it is, and it's not very bright most of the time anyway, haha. But I digress - Instagram more, aiming for once a week. Preferably featuring books, but it might also be pics of whatever craft project I'm working on, whatever latest recipe I'm trying out for dinner, or my kids doing something weird. The goal is simply to *post*.

3. Read the books on my shelves/Get caught up on ARCs

Right now I'm sitting at 73 unread ARCs, as well as 4 non-ARC books that I got review copies from publishers for. Then there are somewhere over 400 books on the physical TBR shelves in my bedroom - I repeat in my bedroom - that I haven't read yet. That's not including the books on the shelves in my library (which is what I'm going to call the room where the computers and elliptical live along with my many bookcases). I shouldn't probably set myself a book buying ban and stop requesting ARCs until I hit some sort of arbitrary milestone, but I already know I'd be no good at that so I'm not going to bother (ha!). I do want to get my ARCs down to 25 by the end of 2019, however that needs to happen (keeping up better, not requesting new ones until I'm there - that's a problem for future me). This also leads me into my next goal -

4. Organize my bookshelves/library

I have several cube shelves and two bookcases in my bedroom, and then in the library have several full bookcases as well as built-in shelving all along one wall. Right now it's a hot mess (and there are spider webs all over the built-in shelving - ew!!) My goal for 2019 is to go through ALL. OF. THE. BOOKS. and organize them. Weed out what to get rid of, trying to be realistic about what I will actually reread and what I won't, what I will actually read of the unread and what I probably won't make time for considering the literally HUNDREDS OF UNREAD BOOKS I OWN, and get rid of literally boxes of books. If I don't need to make at least two trips to Half Price Books, then I'll know I didn't do a very good job. (Oh God, that hurts so much just to write!! How am I going to *DO* it?!)

Then I plan to organize them by non-fiction vs fiction, genre, and author. (Hey, all those old textbooks from college should be easy to get rid of anyway. That'll fill a good part of one load, yessss.) Right now those cube shelves in my room are all unread TBR, and I'd like to make them more cute/decorative and conducive to bookstagram and fill them with more of my favorites as well as with cute accessories and funkos and things. I'm still not sure if the unread books will be shelved in with the read ones, or if I'll keep them on a separate unread/TBR bookcase (or two... maybe three... there are, like, 400 of them), so I have some decisions to make on how I'm going to do this. I'd also like to have some more space to fit some of my crafting stuff in storage bins on my cube shelf, for which I'll need to move some books off, so... we'll see. Plan to see posts around my reorg project under the tag/header "Re-Shelf Yourself" and about my attempts to unhaul an ungodly number of books under "Rehome Your Tomes"!

5. Read 10 nonfiction books

10! I'm not a really big nonfiction person, but I do have a couple nonfic books on that ARC backlog I was talking about (5 of them, actually) as well as on my physical bookshelves (at least another 5) so I've definitely got 10 of them to read as part of Goal #3. It's good to set yourself stretch goals, right? ;)

Do you make New Year's Resolutions? How about setting goals for the new year? What are your goals (or resolutions) for 2019? And do you have any great tips on how to accomplish mine? Because now that I've written it all out, I'm a little intimidated... haha!