new year, new me?? || my bookish, blogging and personal goals for 2023

Well, this is straying from my normal content quite a bit.

Happy New Year everybody! I never consider a new year to really be a big thing for me unless there’s a big foreseeable event in it, example 2022 was the year I started high school so I had the tiniest feeling of excitement prickling inside of me. However, I don’t have any huge things happening in 2023 so I can’t say I’m all that bothered about the new year. I know, I know that’s a pretty terrible mindset to carry forward, (sorry if I’m out here dampening your holiday spirit) and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of changes in the new year but it’s not too big of a deal for me right now.

I also never seriously keep New Year’s Resolutions even after my mom’s constant nagging that I should try, I always forget about them one month into the year and after that I really don’t have any motivation left in me .

But I’ve decided it’s about time for a change in my unenthusiastic behaviour towards the new year, and that’s exactly why I’m writing this post.

This is going to be a little diary entry of sorts documenting my goals and resolutions for 2023, both book related , blogging related, and personal. I want to be able to reflect back on this after a while to see how I’ve personally progressed, plus I think it’d be really funny reading how cringy I was back in the day. This post is extremely different from my usual posts, and I hope you all don’t mind!

without further ado let us begin-

– Read 80 books (*cough* but in reality read 100)– listen, keeping it as 80 makes me feel much less intimidated than 100??Also, I don’t know if I can do 100 this year, I was STRUGGLING last year, but thankfully graphic novels helped me reach my goal. But still, I didn’t exactly like the pressure of that annoying goodreads challenge telling me I wasn’t on track 🙄 so hopefully 80 is a more manageable goal!

*update* -10 days into 2023 HAHAH I WON’T EVEN BE ABLE TO DO 80 AT THIS RATE, I may just reduce it to 50.

– Get back into YA Contemporary– I read a total of 4 YA contemporary books last year which is SO MISERABLE. I use to love the genre, and I still do, however I’ve completely fallen out of touch with it. And I miss it. A lot. The meet-cute summer romance with adorable happy endings are EXACTLY what I need in between all the emotionally wrecking books.

– Empty that physical TBR… well most of it- yes, yes okay perhaps this is a bit of a reach but I have to at least try since my physical TBR has definitely accumulated a bit too much, and it’s lowkey stressing me out. I have books from January 2021 I still haven’t picked up, and I’d like to get those out of the way before buying any more books

– Try to stop letting social media influence every book I read– here’s the thing, I do read most of my books because I get influenced by others, and I don’t mind it. Heck I’ve found so many good reads thanks to it! But I miss just witlessly roaming around the library picking up random books. I desperately want to do that again :,)

– FINISH THOSE INCOMPLETE SERIES! I have about ten book series which I’ve left midway and never returned to and it’s IMMENSELY irking me. Especially the raven cycle, it’s been two years and I’m still on the third book aghh

– Use the library more – I obviously love my local library however I have this really annoying habit when I borrow up to 5-6 books each library visit and never end up reading a single on of them. They either get overdue or I simply forget that I even borrowed them in the first place, so this year I’m going to start just borrowing 2-3 books at a time and slowly work my way through those first then proceed on if I really need to get through others. if i get too excited in the library though i will kindly ignore this goal.

–CONSUME MORE CLASSICS– I got into a classics rush by the end of last year, turns out I really like classics. I also have something exciting relating to classics planned with anoushka so stay tuned for that 👀

– Clean up my bookshelves– I got a new bookshelf at the beginning of 2022 and well….. it’s a mess. We’re back at the situation where I’m stacking up books in the corner and my shelves are CRAMMED so I have a lot of unhauling to get to soon. take a look for yourself below, fair warning it isn’t too pretty

– CONSISTENCY!!!! ah my greatest enemy. Consistency on my blog was really hard last year, especially during the later months. With barely a post coming out every month, it did affect this little place quite a bit. One of the main reasons for my inactivity was my preference to take up too many other side hobbies which took up a lot more time last year. and well, highschool proved to be harder than expected but that’s a story for another day. However, I think that I’ve finally sort of got my schedule cleared out to an extent? I’ve put aside some time weekly to writing blog posts so expect more content this year!

– GET THOSE BOOK REVIEWS OUT- fine i have a confession to make. I didn’t hate writing my first book review in over a year. I actually loved it. YEP I SAID IT, I now officially like writing book reviews. *GASPS* Now I’m not in any position to review every book I read but I think I’ll be posting reviews of books I either completely love or completely hate so I actually have content to write about lol.

– learn how to blog hop and talk to others on here again– I used to blog hop every other week and scroll through my wordpress reader every night, but what happened to those routines of late??? THEY’VE COMPLETELY BEEN ABANDONED. and now i don’t remember how to do either. I don’t think I’ll be able to dedicate time specifically in the night to read every post in my reader but I WILL definitely read your post and comment, maybe a week late but IT WILL HAPPEN! I miss talking with everyone on here so this is one of my most important goals for the new year

– respond to comments- no comment.

kidding kidding (not kidding) but i haven’t responded to comments from over 3 months ago and I’m so so SORRY!!! 2023 is gonna be the year I get through all of them I promise!

– POST MONTHLY WRAP UPS- I miss writing these so much aghhh. yes, they’re a bit time consuming but it’s amazing to just look back on my month so I NEED to get back into writing these.

I don’t like keeping personal goals for myself because I know for a fact that I’ll forget all about them and never get back to them again. But hey there’s a first time for everything so here’s a tiny lil personal goals section-

– STOP PROCRASTINATING– even though i’m currently doing that now oops. Procrastination and I are mortal enemies. We don’t get along, at all. Yet I always find myself doing it and in turn end up neglecting everything else. not okay.

– Try not to study one day before exams..? Yes I am guilty of being this person 🧍‍♀️AND IT’S BECAUSE OF PROCRASTINATION. I love putting studying off until it becomes the very last day and I’m crammed with work, and honestly it’s been such a regular routine for me now that I’m genuinely used to it. It doesn’t really affect my grades BUT it increases the stress on me which is not fun. I have an exam tomorrow and I’ve just realised how much I left for the last minute and well, let’s just say I’m not looking forward to the next few hours.

– redecorate my room– Since it’s exam season for me, my room ended up going kind of haywire. I don’t even study on my desk because of all the books I’ve dumped there. But even before that, I gave up on really maintaining any sort of aesthetic for my room and everything feels ‘2021-2022 suhani’ and I really want to leave that era behind lol.

–MAKE ART!! I love art, I love making it. I was pretty burnt out last year so the most I did was sketch and the occasional gouache painting but other than that the art supplies mostly stayed in the dusty old cabinet. This year’s goal is to paint, or sketch ANYTHING at least once a week, and hopefully use up all my large canvases too. I actually already started with this goal and I hope I can keep it going for the rest of the year *fingers crossed*

here’s my lil canvas painting I made !! it was before my math exam so the details aren’t the best but I loved the end result!

That’s it for this post, and it’s pretty short I KNOW I’M SORRY, but the looming threat of my exam tomorrow is scaring me so I need to end this one here :”(

anyways what are your goals of 2023? any exciting plans you have coming up? what’s your reading goal this year?

ALSO I’M GOING TO COMMENT ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR POSTS RIGHT AWAY I’M EXTREMELY BEHIND I’M SORRY