Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Happy New Year!

For the first time, I still have vacation reading notes to write up at the start of the new year. I really need to get those done, or it'll interfere with my ability to pick up where I left off during my next vacation.

One of the things I realized at the tail end of 2018 is that it has become really hard for me to force myself to write reviews. I'm not sure what's up. I don't want to stop blogging/reviewing, but I think I need to figure out a different way of doing things. Maybe I need to change my reviewing style.

I also realized that I need to actively work at offloading (donating, recycling, or selling) more of my collection, more regularly. In the past couple years, I haven't offloaded more than 30 items a year, whereas I've definitely purchased more than that. I just bought a new bookcase that's taller than me, and that's certainly helped a lot, but I can't keep adding and upgrading bookcases. So, one of the things I'm trying in 2019 is sticker rewards, since Booklikes Bingo has taught me that I apparently have an inner small child that still loves stickers. I have a sheet of paper with a blank table with 56 spots on it. For every item I offload in some way, I get to put one sticker on the sheet. Ideally, I should have the whole sheet filled up in a year. It's not much, but it'd be an improvement over previous years, if it works.

Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot of reading/reviewing goals. As far as goals not related to books go, I'd like to continue to go to the gym regularly and get back to my pre-Hep C medication weight. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but in the past few months I was diagnosed with mild arthritis in my right hip. After being referred to multiple doctors, each of whom thought surgery might be a good idea, I was finally reluctantly given a prescription for physical therapy, which I'm very happy to report worked wonders. Since then, I've been going to the gym regularly and doing my physical therapy exercises and stretches semi-regularly (yeah, I need to work on that). I've also made it a quarter of the way to my weight goal. My hip's still occasionally a bit stiff, and flexibility is still an issue, but things are so much better. I'd like my progress to continue into 2019.

2 comments:

  1. Happy New Year!

    I'd like to say how much I've enjoyed reading your blog the last couple of years. I especially like your in-depth reviews of manga and manga related media, since I would otherwise have to wade through a lot junk to find the good stuff.

    I'm sorry to hear that you've been having issues with your health. Perhaps it's time to take a short break? I've been collecting old SF magazines for decades and when it's not fun anymore and feels like work, I take a few years off.

    I've often wondered how you are able to do the reading and writing for this blog and hold down a full-time job.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! I'm glad my reviews are helpful.

      Part of the problem with taking a break is that the reviews are helpful for me, too. I'm always surprised at how much I forget in a couple years, and reading my old posts reminds me of where I left off in a series or why I should or shouldn't buy an on-sale copy of something I read or watched years ago via a library checkout.

      I'm thinking what I might try is to record gut level feelings of things I just finished over at LibraryThing (the place I use more as a review back-up rather than for anything even vaguely social). If I never end up fleshing them out, then I at least have something written down that I can consult later. If I do actually write something I consider to be a finished review, then I'll go to the effort of cross-posting it in all my usual places. I just finished an audiobook today that could be my first test of this system.

      As far as all the reading and writing (and gaming and TV watching) I manage to do goes, I used to have a nice system worked out where I did all my consumption (reading, etc.) on weekdays and all my production (review writing) on weekends. It's also probably helped, up to a point, that I don't sleep much. It's not exactly healthy, but reading/writing does fill up the time when I can't get my brain to be quiet and let me sleep.

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