Looking Back On My 2022 Goals

We did it friends! We made it through the end of 2022! And as many do at the end of the year, I want to take a look back at how my goals for the year went. Firstly, because I’m genuinely interested in seeing the results, but also because I want to use what I’ve learned about what worked and didn’t work with the goals I set in 2022 to inform the goals I set for myself in 2023! So let’s see how I did on my goals, and more importantly, what I’ve learned, from both the successes and failures!

Blogging Goals

I had two blogging goals this year. The first was to take part in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight! And I definitely did that! I wrote 12 posts that I categorized as discussions on my blog. This will be the 13th, and likely the final post. Now, given that this is my 44th post this year, that means that almost 30% of my posts were discussions!

Weirdly though, I posted more reviews this year than discussions. I think it’s part of discussion I wrote about what it takes for me to write a discussion post. With not much time, comes not much energy, and that has made posting in general, but more specifically, writing discussions, to be a fairly difficult task for me!

Part two of wanting to take part in the Discussion Challenge was wanting to interact with other discussion posts. And I did this as much as I was able! I wasn’t at all consistent, but every few months I did make an effort to blog hop and go through posts from people I followed, of course, but also ones that were recommended in wrap ups or round ups! I missed a lot for sure, and I didn’t comment on as many as I would have liked to, but given the fact that I made the effort instead of just focusing on writing my own discussion posts or just reading from the blogs I follow, I consider this a job well done!

My second goal for the blog didn’t happen. I really wanted to have 950 followers by 2023. But with less than 48 hours to go until the new year, I don’t think I’ll magically be attracting 37 new follows in that time. My intention with this goal was actually to motivate myself to post and interact consistently because I know that helps attract new followers. And as the numbers reflect, I wasn’t very consistent this year, with posting, true, but more importantly with interacting. I did interact, like I just said. But in random spurts and bursts. And I was mostly visiting blogs I had visited before. So I didn’t achieve this goal, either in number or intention. And that saddens me, of course, but I’m proud of myself for doing what I can in a year that was busier than I expected, and I’m happy with the growth, posting, and interaction that I managed to achieve in this year because I put in as much effort as I was able to!

Buying Books

This year, I set the goal of purchasing at most 60 books in 2022. I wanted to start being more mindful about the books I was buying, and to try to prevent myself from going on book buying sprees. I’m once again going to be reviewing my book buying habits, like I did for 2021, so I won’t go into all of the details, but I will let you know that I succeeded! I purchased 59 books, so I cut it quite close, but I did it! I had thought I would try only buying 5 books a month, and that part didn’t happen, but that’s okay! I managed to start changing my book buying habits, as was the intention, and I’m proud of myself!

Culling the Bookshelves

Once again, I’ll be discussing this in more detail in a future post, but I definitely continued to unhaul my books! I continue to use Pango to sell my books, but my new library accepts donations as well, so I may start donating titles in 2023. This goal was a pretty easy one for me, since I’ve been unhauling books for a while now! But I’m still glad this trend of unhauling books I’m no longer interested in or haven’t enjoyed has continued through 2022!

NetGalley

Now this is going to be an interesting goal to discuss. In the beginning of 2022, I only had 7 books left to review on Goodreads, with only 1 title being a backlist title. So I set the goal of reaching the 100% NetGalley ratio at some point during the year. And that just didn’t happen. However, I don’t consider this one too bad a failure. Here’s why.

Take a look at the screenshot I included when I set my goals. At that point I had 83 books approved and a 92% ratio, since I still needed to review 7 books.

But now, take a look at a screenshot I took today.

There are two things I want you to notice. The first is that I have 95 books approved. That means I added an additional TWELVE books to my NetGalley TBR. AND YET. My current ration is at 96%. I have reviewed all but 4 of the books!

And of those 4 books? I’ve read one of them, but it’s a HarperCollins title, and since the HarperCollins strike is STILL ongoing because of management’s lack of response in over a MONTH, I’m obviously withholding my review as the union has asked reviewers to do so. So my review hasn’t been written, but I will do so as soon as HarperCollins workers get their fair wages.

As for the other 3 books, well, one is that backlist title I still haven’t touched. But the other two I’ve started! I had to put both down for various reasons, and I may even restart them, but still, I could technically start a review for both of them if I wanted to DNF them. (Which I don’t. I was just trying to prove a point!)

So no, I didn’t achieve this goal, but I made a LOT of progress, despite getting in my own way by requesting more books throughout the year. And while I still want to reach that 100% mark, I’m satisfied with the progress I made towards this goal this year!

Reading Experiments

Last year I wrote a mashup of a review and discussion post, where I created two bookish experiments for myself that I later set as goals for myself. These didn’t go too great, but let’s discuss in more detail!

Try New Genres

In my original post I said that I wanted to read 3 books from 3 genres that are not romance or graphic novels. And if we’re going by that strict definition, I definitely failed. However, if we get creative about the interpretation of this goal, I actually didn’t do so bad! Because I read 10 books that weren’t romance or graphic novels! In fact, I read from 5 genres I don’t tend to reach for by reading a poetry collection, an essay collection, a whole lot of sci-fi, a YA contemporary, and a fantasy book. Listen, 3 books times 3 genres equals 9 books out of my comfort zone. I read 10 books in 5 genres that I don’t tend to reach for, and I’m counting it! I branched out like I intended, even if my numbers are a bit wonky!

Writing Reviews for a Month

If you thought I was getting creative with my interpretation of the genre goal, just wait until you hear about this goal! For this goal, I wanted to “attempt to review all the books I read in one month over on Goodreads”. And I straight up did not do this. HOWEVER! This was my best reviewing year on the blog, with those 18 review posts I already mentioned. So yes, I ignored this goal, but I made up for it with all the random reviews posted throughout the year. Let’s pretend that’s what the intent always was, even though the actual intent was to review some books I didn’t get from publishers for once. But, shhhhh! We’re not going to talk about that. I was doing so well with my goals up until now. I will not let the reviews make me fail! So by completely misinterpreting this goal, I will allow myself to say that I did a good job!

How I’m sure you’re all looking at the screen right now

Quarterly Check In

My final goal was set for accountability purposes! I wanted to check in on how I was doing on my goals in my March, June, and September wrap ups. And I did! I honestly LOVED this goal, so don’t be surprised if you see it as one of my goals for 2023! It was just such a great way to make sure I didn’t forget what I set out to accomplish in the beginning of the year!

And there you have it! I’m honestly SO proud of what I managed to accomplish this year in terms of my goals. I may not have succeeded at them all, but I definitely made progress with them all, and that’s still a win in my eyes!

How did your 2022 goals go? Did we share any of the same goals in 2022? Do you plan on changing any of your 2023 goals?

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