New Year New Goals.

So we are into our third week of the new year. This millennium is now an adult! Last year felt like it lasted only a month. I remember New Years Eve 2016 like it was yesterday. Years are weird like that. Time is weird like that. In the past twelve months so much happened and yet nothing much changed and also some things changed in every way imaginable. Life is weird like that.

I still live at home. I'm creeping up on 27 years old and I never thought I would be living at home as an adult, but here I am. And I like it fine, although I really need to find a new adventure. I've promised myself I'll live somewhere new in 2018. I'm not sure yet what that will look like, but it may look like the Peace Corps (if I ever finish and submit an application *eye roll*), it may look like moving somewhere warmer but still in the United States. Really, I have no idea what I'm going to do yet. But it's time to do something.

I have something close to a "grown up job" but not quite. I'm still a temp. But I did sign up for health insurance this year, so now I have that again, which is cool. That's pretty grown up! Maybe?

Anyway, as with every year, I took the first couple of weeks thinking about what I want my goals for the year to be. I figure there's no rush to have them all sorted for January first and then stop even trying before the month is over. Instead, right around when everybody else is moving on from their goals, I am getting ready to dive in.

So over the weekend I spent some time going over, refining, and adding to my list of goals for this year. Then last night, I typed them up on my trusty typewriter (probably the first time I've used it since I typed up my 2017 goals...whoops. Gonna try to type out more things this year! Though that's not one of my official goals...) and changed out last year's list for this year's on the back of my bedroom door. It's all about visibility, ya know?

I'm not going to post my full list here, but I will say that my number one goal is to look for wonder moments. I decided my hashtag theme for the year is going to be #everythingismagic. I've been trying to appreciate the little moments of beauty in my days, especially in the winter, because it's easy to not notice things. I've been hyper aware lately of how much wonder people seem to have for the world around them and how much I'm missing. I'm trying to be amazed again. I'm trying to notice things. I'm trying to remind myself that it's okay to be easily amused.

Here are some things that have caught my eye as being wonder full and aesthetically lovely lately.

Did You Hear Oprah's Speech?

Did you all watch the Golden Globes last night? Cause I didn't. I'm not really an awards show sort of person, and also I spent most of yesterday in my bed because it was so blasted cold outside. But I kind of was keeping up on what was happening during the Golden Globes because people who were watching were live posting instagram stories about it and I knew before I went to bed that Oprah gave an epic speech that had lots of people in tears. So this morning I watched it. And it was really good.

Then, because I'm such a good friend, I transcribed part of it out for you all:

What I I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have, and I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell and this year we became the story. But it’s not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. it’s one that transcends and culture, geography, race religion, politics, or workplace. So I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia and engineering and medicine and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. There are athletes in the the Olympics and there are soldiers in the military. And there’s someone else: Recy Taylor.

And that's about all the transcribing I could do, but you should definitely watch the whole thing. Especially if the name Recy Taylor means nothing to you, because her story is powerful. It's almost ten minutes long, but it's so so worth it. Here it is. You're welcome.

In other news, I have a good feeling about 2018. Despite the horrifically cold days we've been having here in Maine. I think it's going to be a good year.

Still working on my 2018 goals, but one of them is to write 26 blog posts. That's six more than I wrote in 2017 (also, did you all catch that I totally wrote 20 last year?? Goal achieved!), but it's also only one every two weeks. I can do that, right?! RIGHT. So here you have blog post number one for this year. See you all again within the next two weeks. Maybe.

My Favorite Books of the Year.

Howdy! Christmas is one week from today! (Are you freaking out now? Sorry. I literally bought ZERO Christmas presents this year. I'm not sorry about it, either. And though I was going to make presents for my friends, since I've only gotten two done that seems like kind of a fail, too. So I've basically just given up on the present thing for this year. Whatever.) And there are only two weeks left of this year...praise the lord! 

One of my goals for this year was to read 50 physical books. That totally didn't happen. I only read about 27. But I did listen to approximately a zillion audiobooks, so my book total for the year is currently 109. You can see all the books I read in 2017 here. 

I keep track of everything I read and everything I want to read on Goodreads, which is a really awesome social media for books, basically. I don't actually know anyone who uses it as much as I do, but I have no regrets about it either, so whatever. Anyway, Goodreads holds the "Goodreads Choice Awards" every year, and all the users can vote for their favorite books published that year in several different categories. It's pretty fun, though I've usually only read a few nominees in any given category, and there are many categories that I've read none of the nominees for. But this year I was PISSED about the results. Because there was a book that I thought absolutely should have won for the Nonfiction category and it didn't. It was in the semifinal round and then got eliminated in the final round of voting. And it felt like a cataclysmic tragedy that it didn't win.

So I decided that I was going to make my own collection of the best books I've read this year. Mine were not all published within the past twelve months, which is the stipulation of the contestants for the Goodreads Choice Awards, but they were all books that I read within the past year. So there you have it. And, to rectify the grievous error that was made in the Nonfiction category of the Goodreads Choice Awards, let's start off with:

Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown (2017)

If there is one book to read in the current world climate, this is the book. Brené Brown talks sense into a world that feels like it makes no sense at all these days. This animated video of her ted talk about empathy vs. sympathy is one of my favorite things to watch over and over and over. Anyway, Braving the Wilderness is about how important it is to treat people with decency and respect even when we find it exceptionally challenging, even when we disagree with them politically, even when we find their opinions on things completely abhorrent. It’s also about calling out bullshit in a way that is productive and beneficial to everyone involved. It is absolutely worth reading.

The Moth Presents: All These Wonders (2017)

Have you heard of the Moth? It’s an ongoing live storytelling event. So people get up on stage and tell stories about their real life experiences without using notes or anything. They are gritty and real and emotional. They are powerful and unbelievable. This story by Ed Gavagan is the most powerful story I’ve ever heard in my life. Though it’s not in this collection of transcribed Moth stories, you should totes take 17 minutes out of your day and listen to it. And then you should read this book because there are lots of other great stories in it. 

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai (2017)

Imagine a world where the energy crisis was solved before it ever began to be an issue and how much time and energy that would have freed up for people to invent newer, greater things. That is the world that All Our Wrong Todays begins in. This book is written very much in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, who is one of my favorite authors, and it was really great to read a book that evoked that same feeling I had the first time I read one of his books. I loved every minute of reading it, and was very satisfied with the story in its entirety. The ending did not disappoint, and the action throughout was really engrossing.

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay (2012)

Obviously this was geared toward people my age, and I don’t think it would be particularly beneficial to, say, people my parents’ age, but if you’re currently in your twenties or even early thirties, it is worth reading, I think.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)

I’ve already written a blog post about why I loved this book, which you can go read if you want to find out more about why I loved it so much. It is a timely novel. It is important in the America of 2017. It is important. It also won the Goodreads Choice Awards for the categories “Debut Goodreads Author” and “Young Adult Fiction”. Obviously other people loved it, too.

Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur (2014)

So, funny story, in high school I liked poetry a lot. Then I went to college and found out that you’re supposed to read poems like 30 times and pick them apart to find the six different meanings that the poet buried into the words and it killed poetry for me. I was like “Oh, actually, maybe I hate poetry. Huh!” And then I read this book. And I decided again that I do, in fact, love poetry. Just maybe not the really highbrow, stuffy stuff. And that’s okay. It’s okay to like the poetry that is immediately relatable and evocative and makes me think YESSSSSS every time I turn a page. It’s okay that there aren’t six different meanings behind every line. That doesn’t make it less powerful, less true, less important. After this book, I also read “The Princess Saves Herself In This One” By Amanda Lovelace, and then “The Sun and Her Flowers” came out this fall, and both of those were also wonderful. But Milk & Honey, being the book that convinced me to like poetry again, will always have a special place in my heart. I also started following more short form poets on Instagram, like Nayyirah Waheed, and  Rudy Francisco, then started following Button Poetry too, and found people like Melissa Lozda-Oliva and Sabrina Benaim. It’s been a good year for me and poetry.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

This book is excellent. That’s really all I have to say about it. It’s kinda long but it didn’t even take me long to read because it was so damn good.

Colors of Madeleine Trilogy by Jaclyn Moriarty (2012, 2014, 2016)

Jaclyn Moriarty has written a several other books, a few of which I’ve read and really enjoyed, but this trilogy is definitely my favorite of her work. It is fantasy and really very well done. The world she created was completely believable and I got fully pulled into the story and was intensely invested into listening to the audiobooks, even when I was on vacation in Europe.

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory (2017)

Spoonbenders is about a family of people with supernatural abilities who all find themselves in various predicaments throughout the story. In a lot of ways it was a very normal, average sort of story, but it was also one of those books where you don’t figure out exactly what is happening until the very end because there are all sorts of pieces that you can’t really figure out how to fit together. You follow all of the different family members at different points, and their stories weave and intersect really interestingly and it was overall a really excellent read.