I’m resolved to …..

It’s that ‘turning over a new leaf’, ‘making a fresh start’ time of the year. You can hardly open a newspaper at the moment without finding an article about how to lose weight, take up a new hobby, get yourself super fit. Have you noticed too how the publishing houses are heavily promoting self help books right now? Book bloggers are also, it seems, giving a lot of thought to the twelve months ahead – I’ve lost track of the number of posts I’ve seen in the last few weeks talking about reading plans for 2015 and new challenges.

I’m keeping my own plans very simple this year. As simple as they can possibly get.

1. I am resolved to enjoy the reading experience……..

Lest you think I have completely lost the plot, let me explain. When I first started blogging three years ago I got carried away with all the opportunities for challenges and readalongs. I ended up doing far too many and consequently hardly made progress with any of them. It also began to feel that I was reading just to tick a box instead of what I really wanted to read. I gradually weaned myself away and last year I cut them out all together, focusing instead on my own projects. That worked well. Ok I didn’t read as many titles from my Booker Prize winners list as I expected, or from the classics club list. And I never did get all the way along the Equator. In the last couple of days I’ve come to appreciate how little it really matters whether I read 5 or 15 from those lists. I’m not in a race, not even with myself. And so I’ve decided to keep pootling along with those projects this year. in case you’re wondering, pootling is a word we use a lot in our family. I love the sound of that word.  It means to move along at a leisurely pace, a bit like Mole and Ratty in Wind in the Willows.

2. I am resolved to make space on my bookshelves

I joined the TBR Challenge that Adam runs at Roof Beam Reader. There are many similar challenges around but I chose this one because it’s simple and very manageable. Just 12 books from the TBR pile in a year. Even I can do that one.

That’s it. I told you it was simple didn’t I?

The only other thing I’ll be doing this year is trying to get back to the level of fitness I had two years ago when I was going to the gym four times a week. Last year I was lucky if I made it twice a week.  Fortunately there are some like-minded bookish people in the blogosphere who in the form of #Fitreaders. Although this is called a challenge I see it more as a online support network.  Whether it’s walking, dancing, golf, etc etc, you decide individually on your fitness goal and just share your progress. I bought a Fitbit device last year but it’s been gathering dust for a while. Time to re-activate it. My initial target is a very modest 5,000 steps per day on 5 days of the week. I’ll see how that goes before planning the next phase.

What are your plans for 2015?