2011... One Month In

Hey, folks (if anyone's out there)... Yes, it is one month in to 2011, and I'm just now posting for the first time. Some personal issues have taken my attention away from, well, anything that didn't pertain to sustaining basic necessities of life, and blogging didn't make the grade. But I'm back now. I can't promise how frequent or regular, but I'll do what I can.

So, on to my goals of 2011.

1. No challenges. I enjoyed the couple that I participated in last year. They encouraged me to think about subtle connections among the books I read (theme challenge), to refrain from buying a book every time I walked into a bookstore (24 challenge), and to seek out new-to-me, award-winning authors. These are all good things. But this year, I'm taking a different approach to reading. You'll see.

2. Guilt-free blogging. I've done a good job so far this year. Ignore the blog, and don't feel guilty about it. I started this blog to force myself write more. It has done that. But my real goal is to work on my personal creative writing, and to do that, I'll have to blog less.

3. Re-brand the blog. I know this is going to seem counter to #2, but I want to re-brand the blog to include more of my two other hobbies - cooking and photography. I have some ideas, I've purchased a couple of domains, I just need the time to make it happen. 

4. Be more selective about my reading. Related to my desire to work more on my personal creative writing, I want to spend more time reading the quality of literature I aspire to write, which will probably mean that I read fewer books total. I also inundated myself with ARCs. I want to live up to as many of those commitments as I can, so while I won't say I'm not going to accept any ARCs this year, I know that I'll be more selective.