In 2007, I undertook a little competition put on by my library called the 50 Book Challenge. The challenge is a simple one: read 50 books in a year. Audiobooks, podiobooks, and good old paper books all count. The only restriction is, if you have to ask yourself if it counts as a book, it probably isn’t one (like I wouldn’t count a single comic book but a longer graphic novel might totally count).

When I first decided to do this two years ago, I actually scoffed at my librarian and joked I probably read 50 books in a month. In turn, a lot of people that I talked to about this told me it was stupid for them as they always read more than 50 books in a year. To everyone who thinks that, let me just take this moment to tell you that 50 books is way more than you think it is. I speak as someone who reads both very fast and just about constantly and I was hard pressed to hit my 50 books within the mark. So don’t be so fast to assume you are already meeting it.

The main reason I didn’t do the challenge last year was because one of the “rules” set by my library for doing this is that you have to write a review of each of the books you read. I don’t always have much to say about a book and I really hated having to write even a few sentence reviews so that really deterred me last year and even the year I did do the challenge because I would stall listing the books I had read because I wasn’t in the mood to review it. But, this year, I have decided to just go ahead and do the challenge and just not write reviews of more than one word unless I feel really strongly about something. I reject your rules, library, and substitute my own.

Why do I want to take the challenge again this year?

• To read more. Pretty simple, that.
• To read different things. For some weird reason, when I feel like I am reading books for a reason like this challenge, I tend to read those kinds of books that I always put off that are either out of my comfort zone or that I suspect are just good for me. If makes me read a wider variety of things than I normally would for some odd reason.
• To keep track and count of what I read. By the end of the year, I have forgotten both what I read and when I read it. I liked having a record of everything I read over the last 12 months.

I only decided to do this a few days ago but, luckily, the extra long holiday vacation allowed me to front load this year with a lot of books so I am a little ahead of the game.

So far in 2009, I have read (in fancy widget form):

If you hover your mouse over the widget, you can read my comments (in pale blue) if I wrote any. I like this little widget because I can update it as I go so there is always a list of everything that I have read in this challenge so far.

I also cannot promise that I will be listing these books in order as I go. I have a habit of totally forgetting books and then adding them later out of order so, you know, sorry about that.

Anyway, I encourage you to take this challenge on, even if only to show me how many over 50 books you read in a year. I for one hope to be over 50 books when all is done but we’ll see. October through the end of the year tend to be brutal so I make no promises. But I am already 11 books in so its looking good at the moment.

If you are doing the challenge and posting your books on your blog or other website, throw the link in the comments so I can watch your progress and get some ideas for stuff to read.

I don’t make official, out loud New Years Resolutions, but I do make quiet little ones to myself. In terms of last year, I am proud of myself for:

• Keep all the weight I lost off
• Getting such a large chunk of my book done
• Making more money in my company than the last year
• Reading 50 books in one year

I was also a little disappointed in myself for:

• Not totally finishing my book
• Not doubling the amount I made the previous year as I had planned
• The amount of time I worked vs spent with friends and family

So what are the goals for this year (2008)? These are all things I want to do for myself as a little present to me.

• Read. While, I am not going to officially do the 50 Book Challenge this year, I am still going to try to read as much as possible. The reason for this is that 50 books is a lot of darn books and I just don’t physically have the time. But I am promising myself to keep reading in my life (which is what that exercise taught me) and that making time to read is easier than you might think if you leave books all over the house. Reading a few words while you wait for the microwave or toaster oven, brush your teeth or wait for something to download actually helps you turn some wasted time into reading time. Reading also keeps me on track with writing more than anything else so its important in that aspect.
• Finish my book. This has actually been on the list for a long time now but this time it is solemn and important. My goal is to have the whole book finished by the end of the month (March) and edited before NaNoWriMo starts again next year (so I can use NaNo to write the sequel). I have learned that deadlines are only meaningful if you make them so which is why there are unmovable.
• Finish something else (fiction) while book is being edited. I am not picky about this. Be it a play, short story or something else fiction-wise, I want to get something else done so I have two completed things by the end of this year. (Three if I do NaNo right this time out and actually finish something).
• Make writing (fiction and non) a more regular thing. I hope to start churning out monthly guides, ebooks and other short works instead of long dry spells with no writing at all.
• Work smarter, not harder. I still want to make as much money as I made last year or more and I have a lot of things that I want to get done at work. However, I don’t want to be as stressed out and overworked as I have been in the past so my goal is to re-evaluate how I work and figure out how to get more done in less time and with less stress. 
• More us time (for my husband and I). My husband and I both work well over a 40 hour week. Even if one of us isn’t working on the weekend (which is often) and we don’t have other commitments, we are both too tired to do much of anything other than sleep and food shop. Not to mention when work calls in the middle of meals and other things. We promised each other that, this year, we were more important than work.

In case you were curious, so far I have been doing pretty terrible on these resolutions.

I did manage to read 3 books already but that is mostly thanks to all the time I spent waiting in doctor’s offices because of my surgery.

I also did add two chapters to my book, which is good but not really enough to meet the goal on time (but still hopeful on this).

So far, I have written nothing other than the above too chapters.

I am still working way too much. I am, however, in the middle of the most important project possibly in the history of my company and my future so it’s pretty important. I think I will be able to stick to this better once this project is done.

The more "us" time is the thing that has suffered the most. My husband is rarely home before 8 PM (he gets into work at 6:30 AM) and his job is very stressful right now. I am no better, if anything, I am worse.

When I first started working for myself, my only rules were that I stopped work when my husband got home and that, with a few exceptions for hair on fire type things, weekends were a no-work zone. Not only have I consistently been working on weekends, I work most nights as well now. Now, again, I have this huge and important project but all the same, its not good.

A few days ago, I ran into some tech difficulties and couldn’t work on a Saturday so I just hung out with my husband. Aside from a few calls from his work and my answering a few emails, we basically did nothing and it was amazing! We went food shopping, out to eat, played a video game and sat by the fire and talked about life. I imagine this is what it is like all the time when you are normal people!

When Sunday night came along and we both had to go back to work (him fielding calls, me just straight up working), it was like when they put that heavy blanket on you before an X-ray. It made me realize how much pressure we are both under and how important it is that we find time for each other. I’m not sure I know the solution, but we have to find it.

No one has really asked me this but I like to pretend that you all were weeping beside your computers all this time while there were no post from me and wondering bitterly where I had gone and why I wasn’t posting and were just to timid to ask. Don’t ruin my illusions, people, play along.

Well, the month of November was a bit of a struggle just to keep my head above water what with my usual job, busy eBay AND a little thing call NaNoWriMo that I kicked butt at. Then December came along and kicked my rear more than any month that I can remember in recent history. This was a fetal position weeping, "I just physically cannot work anymore but I cannot stop because I have too much to do!" kind of month and while it was profitable, it really took its toll. December is always the biggest eBay month of the year and to put it in perspective, at one point I had 500 listings going all at once which is a personal record for me.

Unfortunately, the week after Christmas was not as nothing filled as I would like because my in-laws are under the impression that nothing would be more enjoyable for us than to drive back and forth to their house as often as possible. They kept packaging it as "a nice vacation" but we were not fooled as we would prefer to be in the comfort of our own home, darn it. I did, however, manage to squeeze in a few video games and only worked a little (because I am physically incapable of stopping work altogether) and it was nice to try out this leisure time thing that I have heard so much about but seldom experience.

I have several New Years Resolutions this year but one joint one I made with my husband was to work less. This actually can be better put with the old Scrooge McDuck adage, "Work smarter, not harder." Both my husband and I work way more than the average human and we need to stop. I cannot speak for him but I know that there is a lot of what I like to call "time bleed" in my day where I will start obsessing over the look of an email signature, suddenly decide to find out whatever happened to such and such actor on some random show I used to watch and get trapped on IMDB for hours or something equally stupid and somehow waste a lot of time. Basically, I want to figure out how to make the same or more money next year without working myself to death. I think this is reasonable if I cut out the time bleed, but easier said than done, you know?

The sort of unique issue for me is that, unlike in a normal office job where the company pays you the same rate for that hour you were on facebook as the hour you spent writing that project, for me, that facebook generates no income and then I need to just work an extra hour. This is how I end up, like today, working until 2 am. I always feel like I still owe myself hours.

Anyway, I decided to put this into practice right out of the gate and the first two weeks of January tried to do less work. Somehow, my brain rejected this and I had a bit of a "Now, I am not getting enough done!" spaz and this week I dove back in head first with working like a fiend. I am still trying to take breaks though and we have been watching a lot of movies so I think it shows some progress.

It’s totally like there are two of me. One is rational and wants me to take nice breaks and have fun. The other wants to work all the time. They are at odds with each other and I cannot reconcile them.

My possible issues include:

• I am a night person and just work better at night. I suspect this might be something because it always seems like I really get into the swing of things right around when my husband gets home and then I work great until about 3 am when I start to get a little loopy. But I also suspect that if I just got up really early everyday I could force myself into becoming a morning person. Not sure I want to do this, though.
• I have poor time management. I tend to get totally obsessed with one project and want to work on it until it is totally done with I cannot do because I really need to work a little bit on everything each day. "Make yourself a schedule," has been on my To-Do list for about a year now. The odd thing about this though is that I am pretty organized in a lot of other ways so you would think this wouldn’t be so hard.
• I don’t like most things. That is mostly a joke but, honestly, I don’t really like watching TV unless its a specific show (and there is only one that I watch, Lost), I have to be in the right mood to want to watch a movie, play a game or read a book and The Sims always sucks up so much time that I only play it about once a month, if that. So many nights, when faced with my choices for leisure or work, I end up choosing work because nothing really strikes my fancy and if its between wasting a night in front of the TV or getting stuff done and freeing up time later for when I might be in the mood for something I really want to do, I will always pick the latter.

So, I am a whiner, apparently. A whiner who hasn’t blogged in a while.

Anyway, expect several woefully topically outdated posts over the next few weeks. There are a lot of things over the last few months that I wanted to blog about but I was too busy so expect those topics to resurface.

Future entries will include:

• The 50 Book Challenge: Did I make it? Will I do it next year? What did I read? Do you care? Find out either way!
• NaNoWriMo: Done but not dead. I have a lot of undigested thoughts about this that I will definitely be going on about in the near future.
• Reviews, reviews, reviews! I listened to a ton of music this year, read a lot of books and saw a large number of movies, some of which I really liked, some I was totally "eh" about, and some that were total crap (Spiderman 3 dance sequence, anyone?)
• A rant about being "Busy"
• A photograph of my garbage can

That’s all I have for now, folks. Hope you are all well and that you have neither impregnated a Nickelodeon star nor joined a cult about aliens thus far in 2008.

Smooches!