A reflection on 2024, books, life and blogging goals

Today's prompt for Top 10 Tuesday was actually the most anticipated reads for the first half of 2025. I was not feeling like that, I am switching it out for reflecting on 2024 instead.

I thought it would be a fun experiment to look back at my goals post from January 16th and reflect on how the year has gone. Did I achieve any of the goals I set for myself this year? Let us get through them one by one.

Blogging goals

Write more posts and post more regularly

You might have figured this one out already: I did not post regularly, and there have been months when I did not post at all. This year has been challenging for me. I went through so many struggles, and in the end, I ended up overworking myself again, which landed me in a burnout. I have struggled to get myself back together for the last few months. I am pulling myself up, but I still have some ways to go. If I struggle with myself, the blog suffers instantly, I do not have the mental capacity to post or write when I am feeling burnt out.

Add translations to my posts

I did not get to this either, I sometimes wonder if it is even worth my time because nowadays, English seems to be the best language to post in. Especially on social media, it is a constant struggle for me because I do not want to forget my mother tongue either, I feel that since English is becoming more and more important we should not forget where we came from, it sounds a bit nationalistic but in the end, I did grow up speaking Dutch and not English. Let me know your thoughts on whether I should add the translations, I am curious to learn what my audience would prefer.

Include Witchy content

This is still something I want to do, I enjoyed making my Yule bread post so much and doing the research for it as well. I have a little bit of imposter syndrome around this topic though because I feel I do not yet have enough knowledge on the subject to write proper posts. So I do not know if this will be something I will be focussing on for 2025, but I think I will see where my inspiration takes me. I think my main focus will yet again be on posting frequently rather than adding Witchy content.

Personal goals

Be Nicer to myself

I will continue this goal in 2025, I can tell you that I have made progress on this even though I have burnt myself out through this year. I feel that was bound to happen. I have been working on my mental health for the entire year while working full-time and doing a lot of things I enjoy on the side.

I have taken time to spend with my fiancée, to go on vacation, and to do fun things like going to concerts and spending time with friends. However, I still have a lot of trauma to work through, this influences me in ways that I could not have imagined. Being nicer to myself will need to be a constant continuing effort, to not fall into the trap again of overworking, which is my coping mechanism. In conclusion, yes I made progress, but it will remain a goal for the new year.

Continue my musical journey

If you don't remember what this one was about, I want to learn how to play the guitar and see how I can improve my singing. I have made some progress on this as well, but as my mental health suffers, all the things I enjoy doing suffer as well. So this journey is also not ending in 2024, I am glad that I have taken some singing lessons and have practiced on the guitar. There is this nagging thought that I did not do this often enough. This last part is why I have to continue being nicer to myself. I did the best I could under the circumstances.

Reading goals

Finishing at least 1 book a month

I can proudly say, that at the moment of writing this, I have finished 13 books and I will finish book 14 before the end of the year as well. I am so proud that I have managed this, considering the year I have been having.

The longest book I have read was Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas with 648 pages. The shortest book was the short story Pages to Fill by Travis Baldree, with 33 pages. I have read 3253 pages, and at the moment I am writing this, I think that is a good achievement. Looking through my statistics, this is a lot better than I have done in 2023 and 2022. I am on the rise again, reading-wise, which is a good thing.

For the last few months, I have been trying out reading for an hour every single day, I have not managed to do this every day, but I have managed to do this at least a couple of times a week, this is how I have improved on my reading. It is of course not a competition for me to read, I will never get to 100 books a year, like some other readers do. I am fine with that, I did set this goal of reading every day to make sure I do something I enjoy every day.

Recently I have concluded that I love learning new things, so my hour reading also satisfies that desire, as I read a mix of non-fiction and fiction. Depending on my mood, I will pick up either, reading an hour does not have any restrictions, I can read non-fiction, blog articles or fiction. The goal is just to make sure I read something I enjoy every day.

Lower my physical TBR pile

I have read 4 books that I know were on my physical TBR at the start of 2024, however, I have also added to my TBR so I think there are now more books on my TBR than I have read. I am glad I finished at least 4, but this can be improved upon in 2025. I will need to go through my library to see what has been added, as I have not been keeping up with this. I might do a new post once I have done so. I think it would be interesting to see what the current status is.

Finishing old ARCs

During the year I changed my mind about this goal, the amount of ARC's was overwhelming furthermore, I had lost interest in several of them. Some fell outside the scope of this blog, and therefore I do not feel like reviewing them. I might still read them, but I will not write a review for them. My Netgalley account has been wiped clean, I have left notes for all the books I am not reviewing, with reasons why so that the publishers have at least that to go on. These were mostly books I requested back in 2013/4 I do not think it would be very relevant for them to still post a review on them now. During this year I have requested some new books. One of them I have not read and reviewed because it turned out to be a second book in a series, this was not clear to me when I requested it. I have one left outstanding to read a review, on which I confused the release date so it will be a late review. The other two books I was approved for were Evocation and Odd Spirits by S.T. Gibson, both of which I have reviewed here on the blog, click on the titles to read my reviews if you missed them. All in all, I think I have been doing well on my ARCs.

Finishing series or letting them go

This has not gone well, I have not finished any series at this point, and as I said in my Goals post I have continued the Throne of Glass series, I have finished and reviewed Queen of Shadows and that is it for this year, series-wise. I have decided to unhaul one series, the Hush Hush books by Becca Fitzpatrick. I do not feel like I will ever finish this series, I did not enjoy the main character back in the day when I read the first book. And never felt the need to finish this series, so it is going. You can find them in my webshop, Arcane Archives. I hope they will find a home with someone who will enjoy the series.

All other series are at this point remaining, I will have to go through them once more and decide if I want to continue them, I will continue with Throne of Glass next year, that is the one thing I can promise.

Buying the missing books of series I have started

I have not felt the urgency on this one, I do not think I managed to by a lot. From the top of my head, I think the only ones I have bought are The Merciless Ones and The Eternal Ones, by Namina Forna. I do not think this will be a goal for next year, I need to sort through my series first and see what I want to continue before adding more books to my shelves. So the priority will be finishing the series, of which I already own all the books.

That was the last one of the goals, how have you been doing in 2024? Are there any goals you are taking with you to 2025?