I know it's February but like... stuff happened and it keeps happening. Or maybe it's the perfect time. Lunar new year just passed not too long so maybe this is good timing. Who knows, time is a concept.

SO, I made goals for the year. How unique of me, I know I know. Goals that I feel like I'll achieve with low effort on my part so if I get exhausted, I don't feel shame for not reaching a goal. Enough to make me feel productive, but not too much to make me last minute panic by the end of the year which results in worse mental health.

The first time I did a reading in a year challenge I set my goal to read 50 books in 2022 and overshot it with 98 books. Last year I aimed for 20 and overdid it with 53 books. Now that I know my reading habits I'm sticking to 50 books especially since I count picture books, graphic novels, and manga into my yearly reading total and they are valid literature especially since my job is to sell books. If I sell a picture book without knowing the contents, it would look really bad on me. I already am at 19 books for the year (though one book is under St. Martin's Press so it will not show up on any of my social media involving reading books until St. Martin's Press takes proper accountability.)

Now... writing. I am focusing on a lot of offline projects in all honesty. I have a particular project I would really love to finish ideally by the end of the year and I, of course, still have ongoing works that are being posted online. "Write Off" may not be touched much this year. I love the concept but in all honesty, writing contemporary stories is less natural to me despite it being a staple from my teen years (which we will never speak of). I would like to say "Slow and Speedy Win the Fight" will be finished this year, but it's actually a duology technically speaking (doesn't really make sense on Tapas and I don't need to explain this but this is for me) and I'm only nearly done the first book. Now... that calls into question if I'll start the second book this year if I finish the first. My answer is; I don't know, we get there when we get there. I finish two books this year hopefully, one offline and one online and then we all celebrate and have a party.

How is everyone else doing? Do you set goals for yourself? Let me know!

That's all from me, a little bit of a boring update but I keep getting ideas to write about for this ramble book but I keep forgetting what I was gonna write, end up with multiple drafts that make no coherent sense. If you wanna suggest a topic for me to talk about, feel free to suggest some topics/questions and I'll answer them!

That's all, I'll see ya later.

- Joy

Also, Free Palestine.