I’ve been considering what sorts of goals to set for 2020, both in life and in reading. Some of the ideas I came up with– like eating more healthfully and spending less time staring at my smartphone– are habits I should be aiming for all the time, and not something I should hang around waiting for an arbitrary start date. Other things– like using less plastic and using cruelty-free beauty products– are goals I set down for myself in 2019, and I want to continue them in 2020.

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Life:

• Continue reducing the amount of plastic I use. Food packaging is awful about plastic, so finding foods that don’t come in plastic packaging is a definite goal. I want to start crocheting more, too, so I want to find yarns that aren’t acrylic, which is just another form of plastic.
• Continue using cruelty-free beauty products. Most of my makeup, lotion, and soaps are cruelty-free, but I have had trouble finding sunblock and facial moisturizers that do the job without irritating my skin or, in the cast of sunblock, not being strong enough.
• Do more yoga. While cat yoga (yoga with cats in the studio) sounds like fun, the reality is less cute. I run into it whenever I practice yoga at home thanks to Mina. But a friend is in a program to become a yoga instructor and has to teach a six-lesson beginner’s course to a small group of people (which includes me), so that will really help me get back into a daily routine.
• Less screen time. I don’t think I spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at my smartphone, but I could still be better about it. Less phone time, more real-world time is never a bad thing.
• Improve my crochet skills. I enjoy crocheting, but I have a hard time reading crochet patterns. Also, I don’t know many stitches. Fortunately, I found a great book that explains all sorts of stitches in clear terms with illustrations, so I’m hoping that will help me get beyond the very basics.
• Photo 366. I plan to take a photo every day in 2020. Normally this is a Photo365, but 2020 is a Leap Year, so I have an extra day. The challenge is harder than it seems, as the goal is to make 366 well-composed and interesting photographs. No snapping a random photo of your shoes and counting that for the day.

Reading:

• Finish more series than I start. Science fiction and fantasy are notorious for their series, and I am in the midst of so many of them. Some are trilogies, while others run much longer. I am going to make an effort to finish as many of them as I can– especially the short ones.
• Read more of the unread books I already own. This is an ongoing task, and while I don’t feel bad about the number of unread books on my shelves, I am starting to run out of shelf space. I need to get to the unread books so I’ll know whether or not I want to keep them, or if they will go to the used bookstore to make room for other books.
• Read more nonfiction. I love nonfiction, and it’s a shame that I don’t read more of it. Well-written nonfiction is just as exciting as fiction and has the advantage of being real.
• Read more diversely. I already read pretty diversely, but I could read more books from around the world and by authors from different cultures and social groups than my own. It’s not that difficult to do in this day and age.
• Write more book reviews. I haven’t bothered to look back to see how many reviews I wrote in 2019, but given the number of books I read, I could have written reviews for a lot more of them. This calls for better scheduling!

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