Tag: 2019 goals

The End of a Year, the End of a Decade

Well friends, 2019 is coming to a close, and with it a decade is ending.

For the record I fall on the side that 2020 starts a new decade rather than being the last year of this decade. It’s true that the first year of the calendar was year 1, not year 0, so the first ten year period would end after year 10 and the next would start with year 11, but culturally we’ve been grouping decades from 0 to 9 for a while now, and the idea that 1920 is not considered part of the ‘20s, or that 1940 is not considered part of the ‘40s, is ridiculous to me. So I’m calling it the end of the decade tonight, and if you disagree you can do so quietly because I also feel like this is a silly thing to argue about.

So today I want to reflect on not only this year but also this decade. I set a lot of goals for myself this year, and while I didn’t achieve all of them, so many incredible things happened that I’m totally okay with that.

For Christmas in 2009, I asked my parents for a subscription to Writers Market. I believed that the book I’d been working on all through high school was ready to be published. I cringe a little now writing this, because in 2010 I still did not understand plot,  but all publication journeys have to start somewhere, right? It took nine years, a lot of help, a lot of revisions, and a lot of rejections, but last January I signed with my awesome agent Laurel Symonds. While I’ve been working on the same book for the past ten years, more than that really if you go all the way back to the very first idea, it is an entirely different book than that terrible draft I started querying agents about back in 2010. Excuse me while I cringe some more. And this past year working on revisions with Laurel has transformed it yet again. I’ve learned so much about myself as a writer in the last ten years, and in this year in particular. I’m still revising, but I’m really happy with how things are shaping up, and I can’t wait for the day when I can finally share this project with all of you.

Also in 2010, I was entering my last semester of high school, breathlessly waiting on college application decisions, and planning to go to the Seeing Eye over the summer to train with my first guide dog. I had no idea how much I would love not only working with my Mopsy girl but also how much I would love having her with me all the time. Together we went to Kenyon for four years, lived in Italy for a year, and started law school at Harvard. Now Mopsy is living with my parents, and I get home as often as I can to see her. She’ll be twelve in June, so she enjoys more snoozles in front of the fire than she used to, but she’s still up for a trot through the snow. If she feels like it. And once Mopsy retired, I got matched with my little Neutron Star. He is very different from Mops, but just as delightful in his own way, and seven years working with Mopsy has made me a better handler when it comes to Neutron. We’ve adventured all over Boston, and now we’re working on D.C.

A lot has happened to me since 2010, and I feel like a lot of it has culminated in my accomplishments in 2019. This decade, I graduated high school; went to college; got a Fulbright and lived in Italy for a year; volunteered at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center; went to Harvard Law; decided I didn’t want to do disability rights law and wanted to be a space lawyer instead; and interned at the U.S. Department of Education, MIT, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Analytical Space, and participated in the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. And this year, I graduated from Harvard Law, got a job at the FCC as a space lawyer, and moved to D.C. In 2010, I started querying my book. I got rejected, got some helpful advice from the agent of a friend of a friend, revised, queried again, got rejected again, revised, revised, and revised some more. In the meantime, I attended the Alpha Young Writers Workshop, wrote a bunch of short stories, and started submitting them to magazines. I was twice a finalist in the Dell Award, and I’ve had six stories published so far, including one story published in 2019. I also have a poem coming out in an anthology this spring, which I’m really excited about. I also wrote 2.9 other books this decade: my memory-wiping musical academy novel, which I’m halfway through a third draft of; my WWII Italy novella which I wrote for my senior honors thesis back in 2014 and haven’t touched since; and my middle grade space adventure novel, which I’m so, so close to the end of a first draft of but have paused on because of other projects. I kept up this writing through college, Italy, and law school, and while I admit it’s hard to do the amount of writing that I want to be doing with a full-time job, I’m still plowing on ahead with revisions for my middle grade fantasy novel.

This decade hasn’t been all sunshine and butterflies. There was a lot of rejection letters to get where I am now, including rejections from all the MFA programs I applied to, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt. In 2013, I had to have my right eye removed because it basically exploded. My year in Italy was really hard emotionally, as was my time at Harvard. We lost my special education advocate and close family friend for many years to cancer. My grandmother also passed away, as did all but one of my great-aunts and uncles, and my sixth grade math and social studies teacher whom I was very close to. My childhood dog, Kokopelli, also died, and if you have a dog you understand how heartbreaking that is and why I’m including him here.

But here I am, at the end of the decade, looking back at who I was ten years ago and who I am now and all I have been through and accomplished, and I am really proud of myself. I have a full-time job I’m enjoying, more of a social life than I’ve had in years, an awesome writing group, some truly wonderful friends, and more adventures ahead of me.

This is not only the end of the decade, but it’s also the end of 2019. I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself, and before I sign off for the year, I want to give you a quick rundown of how I actually did. I did graduate, pass the bar, get a job, and move with as little stress as I could manage. After my series of illnesses and injuries through the summer, I joined a barre studio in D.C. and I’ve been going three or four times a week. I’d like to do better with my eating habits—I kind of fell off the wagon around the holidays—and I want to get to the gym in my apartment building and do some more aerobic exercise, but I feel stronger and fitter than I have in a while, so I’m counting this as mostly a win. I set out to read 100 books this year, and today I finished my 109th book. I’m not going to finish another book before midnight, so I’m calling it at 109. And while I didn’t get to new drafts of three distinct projects, I did do an awful lot of writing this year, and everything else was so crazy this year that I forgive myself. Oh, and I blogged more, realized I was blogging too much, and became a lot less regular about it again. I’m still working on finding that happy medium, but I’m moving in the right direction. I did pretty well with all these goals. I haven’t decided what exactly I want to shoot for next year, so I’ll get back to you on that.

So how are you feeling at the end of this year and this decade? Did you meet your 2019 goals? What are your plans for the new year?

2019 Check-In the Third

We are midway through October, friends, which means we are more than three quarters of the way through 2019. So it’s time to check in on the goals I made for myself at the beginning of the year.

I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself this year, and so far I’m doing pretty well. I got a job, graduated, studied for the bar and took the bar, moved to D.C., and started that new job, and while I wasn’t totally calm throughout all that, I didn’t completely lose my head either.

Before you ask, I get my bar results in less than two weeks. I’m trying not to think about it. Thinking about it is horrible.

Last time I checked in, I talked about how I hadn’t been doing well with my goal to exercise more. It seemed like every time I tried, I either got really, really sick, or I sprained my ankle. But my ankle is pretty much better now, and I haven’t been sick in weeks (knock on wood). Since I moved down here, I joined a barre studio, and I’ve been going at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week. I really like it, and I especially like how much progress I’ve made in just a few weeks. I certainly couldn’t do some of the moves I’m doing now. I’ve also been going to the gym in my apartment building, though I admit not as regularly as I would like. There’s just so much to do between work and making food and  writing and keeping my apartment reasonably clean that it’s hard to find time. It’s easier to go to a class that I signed up for and paid for than it is to find a random half hour to go downstairs to use the elliptical. I’m still working on that. I need to treat it like a class and go straight down there after work without starting some other project. But on the whole this is a massive improvement over my zero-exercise life during law school and while studying for the bar, and I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

I fell a little behind on my reading goal in August and September. I read three books in August and two in September. But I’ve already read five books in October, so I’m confident I’ll be able to pick up the slack and finish at 100 books for 2019. So far I’ve read a grand total of 73 books this year.

On the writing front, things are definitely going well. As I’ve said a million times, and probably will not tire of saying any time soon, I signed with a literary agent in February. It took me forever (thanks bar exam), but I finally finished the revisions to my middle grade fantasy novel last weekend. I set out to complete three drafts of major projects this year. So far I’ve completed one. There isn’t that much time left, but I’m pretty close to finishing my middle grade sci fi adventure book, which will make two projects. And November is NaNoWriMo, which should give me a boost. I’m pretty sure I can meet this goal, though if I don’t, I will still have accomplished a whole lot, and I’m proud of that.

Finally, I fell off the blogging bandwagon a bit in July, August, and September (thanks again bar exam). I’ve started back up again, as you’ve no doubt noticed, and I’ve created a calendar through the rest of the year. I’ve also mapped out a regular schedule that I think will be helpful for everyone. First, I’m starting a new series of posts about blindness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I wrote this post about the #AbledsAreWeird hashtag last spring. I want to contribute to the conversation around blindness and how someone who isn’t blind can be helpful in a positive way. Also, October is Meet the Blind month, so now seems a good time to start. Don’t worry, we are definitely going to talk about that name. I have feelings. I’m going to put these posts up on Mondays, so look for one soon. I’m planning to post book reviews of the books I’m currently reading on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll use Wednesdays for catch-up days for books I read over the summer but haven’t reviewed yet. And I’ll write about writing on Fridays. My plan is to write the week’s posts over the weekend and schedule them, because I don’t have a lot of time on weeknights. We’ll see how well this goes. I’m not planning to post anything new on the weekends, unless I need to play catchup with my schedule like I did this week.

So as we’re heading into the home stretch of 2019, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve accomplished and what I can accomplish in the next few months. And I’m already considering what my goals for next year should be. After this year, I honestly don’t know.

2019 Check In the Second

Hey there friends. We have reached July, which means we are halfway through 2019, which means it’s time for another check-in on my 2019 goals. I set some pretty big goals for myself in 2019, and while I’ve had a few setbacks, I feel like I’m doing well, all things considered, and I’m confident I will achieve all these goals by the end of 2019. I will certainly start making more progress once I get past the bar at the end of this month.

  1. Don’t freak out.

Okay, so a few weeks ago, I had a minor mid bar-prep meltdown. It was late, I was tired, I was pretty sure I was going to fail the bar and never finish revising my book and be really, really bad at being an adult come September, but this was like a two hour minute in which our fire alarm ran out of batteries and would not stop beeping. I pulled myself together the next morning, and I have since learned not to take practice test scores seriously if I take the practice test after 6:00 PM.

But seriously, I think I’ve been managing all this pretty well. I’m studying for the bar, which is nine or ten hours a day, seven days a week. I’m packing up all my stuff to move out of my apartment at the end of July, and I’m getting ready to move down to Virginia at the end of August. I’m also revising my novel, one baby step at a time. And I’m managing to feed myself reasonably and get a reasonable amount of sleep. A lot has been going on, and I think I’ve been handling it really well.

Oh, and since my last check-in, my stress levels have been helped significantly by the fact that I got a job! I was accepted into the attorney honors program at the Federal Communications Commission, and I’ll be starting in the satellite division (as in satellites in space) in September. This is exactly where I wanted to be, and I am so excited and so relieved.

  1. Get in shape.

I’m pretty sure I’m cursed on this one. Every time I start going to the gym regularly, something happens to bring me to a grinding halt. I got very, very sick three times over the course of spring semester, and then after investing in a summer gym membership and managing to go almost every day for most of June, I tripped down the stairs and sprained my ankle pretty badly. Like I thought it was broken and went to urgent care kind of badly. I swear studying for the bar has diverted important brain function like balance and coordination away from my feet. It’s been a week, and I’m still barely able to walk, so I’m not going to the gym any time soon, much to my chagrin. See what I mean? I’m cursed.

We are still only halfway through 2019 though, and starting in August, I won’t have the bar to worry about. My new apartment in Virginia also has a gym and an indoor pool in the abuilding, so I’m not giving up yet.

  1. Read 100 books.

As of the end of June, I’ve read fifty-five books. So I’m right on track with this one.

  1. Finish the next draft for three projects:

As I said, I’m plugging away at revisions to my middle grade fantasy adventure novel with my agent. I’m also in the middle of writing the climax for my middle grade sci fi novel (admittedly I’ve been in the middle of the climax since March), so I almost have a first draft of that project. So while I haven’t finished a single project yet, I expect to start making a lot of progress on this once the bar is over.

  1. Blog more.

I’ve already been doing a lot of blogging. I’m really enjoying writing book reviews for all of you, but I’ve been missing talking about other things with you all, like my life and writing. So I’ve been making plans for new things to talk about come August, because nothing new is happening until August. If you have any ideas for things you’d like to see me talk about, do let me know.

And that’s where I’m at for my 2019 goals. I hope you’ve all been making as much progress on your goals so far.

I’ll be back  soon with the rest of the book reviews for what I read in June, and in the meantime, I’m off to study study study.

Favorite Books of 2018

I read 176 books in 2018, a number that still floors me. Here are my favorites. Since I’ve already talked about why I liked these books in my reading roundup posts each month, I’m just giving you a list here, sometimes with a quick note. This list does not include books I reread that are already on my book recs page.

My book recs page will be updated soon to include my 2018 favorites.

Favorite books of 2018, in no particular order:

  • The Children of the Red King books 6-8 by Jenny Nimmo (I read the first 5 in 2017, and while the series could have ended there, these rounded things off nicely)
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
  • Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel
  • Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See (Shanghai Girls is better , but you need to read them together)
  • Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil
  • See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
  • The True Meaning of Smekday and Smek for President by Adam Rex
  • War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars by Richard N. Haass
  • Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery (this is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series, and in my opinion the only one worth bothering with after the third one. Just skip the ones in the middle.)
  • The Sisters Grimm books 2-9 by Michael Buckley (I read the first book in 2017, and this whole series is just such fun)
  • Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver
  • Delirium series by Lauren Oliver
  • Slaughterhouse Five or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Giver series by Lois Lowry (The Giver is the best but the others are good too)
  • Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  • Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
  • Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan (if you like audiobooks, this is one to listen to, because it includes the music in the story and is really well-done)
  • The Breadwinner series by Deborah Ellis
  • Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Gingersnap by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Life After Life and A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
  • The Underland Chronicles series by Suzanne Collins
  • Saints and Misfits by S. K. Ali
  • Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (the plot is weird and just shouldn’t be there but I loved being in Aza’s head so much that it made my favorites)
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
  • The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (not as good as the first series but still a fun read)
  • Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (don’t bother with the rest of the trilogy they aren’t as good)
  • The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle by Janet Fox
  • Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon
  • Matilda by Roald Dahl
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (I’d skip the sequel. It’s weird.)
  • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  • Maximum Ride books 1-3 by James Patterson (stop after book 3. I really mean it.)
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
  • Rose series by Holly Webb (the last book isn’t what I wanted it to be but it’s still a delightful series)
  • And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
  • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (the sequels are fine but nowhere near as good as the first book)
  • Wren series books 1 and 2 by Sherwood Smith (I haven’t finished this series but loved the first two so much I had to include them here anyway)
  • The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis (these certainly have problems but nostalgia won the day.)
  • Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Another one where I haven’t finished the series but really liked the first one so here it is.)
  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  • Smoke in the Sun by Renee Ahdieh (not as good as the first one, the pacing is weird, but it completes the series nicely)
  • The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century by Amanda Hesser (lots of fun food history in here, and the recipes I’ve tried so far have been really good)
  • The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Nickerbocker Glory—More Than 150 Magical Recipes for Muggles and Wizards by Dinah Busholz (I can’t vouch for any of the recipes yet but it’s great for an HP nerd).
  • Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce

And here are a few books that I read and enjoyed but that I’m waiting to finish the series before I decide whether they’re favorites:

  • Lady Midnight and Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare (The Dark Artifices series)
  • The Magic Thief and Lost by Sarah Prineas (the Magic Thief series)
  • Caraval by Stephanie Garber (the Caraval series)
  • Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse series)

Stay tuned for how I feel about these books once I finish the series and/or once the rest of the books come out.

All in all, it was a pretty good reading year. I read so many books that I really, really loved. I’ve set a goal to read 100 books in 2019, and I hope I discover another abundance of good books. What are you planning to read in 2019?