The Book Nerd’s Guide to Failing Your New Year’s Resolutions

Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. For past guides, click here.
Twice a year, I vow to pick up the moldering remnants of the half-begun novel that has occupied space on my hard drive since college. Twice a year, I drop the smoldering pile of my dreams into the proverbial dumpster again.
In January, inevitably, I exhort myself to work on my unfinished novel as part of my unattainable New Year’s resolutions. It always sounds good. There are 12 months in this brand new year; why wouldn’t I use them to chip away at the remaining word count that never seems to get smaller? I make a plan, set weekly goals. Sometimes I even redo an outline, despite the fact that I hate outlines. But without fail, the effort dies by February.
That is where November comes in, when the pressure cooker of NaNoWriMo rockets me back into writing mode. Somehow, I continually trick myself into believing that what I could not accomplish in the sum total of the year’s other 11 months, I can easily do in the span of little, tiny November. November, a month punctuated by a major holiday, no less. November, a month immediately preceded by another major holiday and succeeded by a host of others.
On November 1, fresh off the sugar high of Halloween, I’m excited, thrilled at the creative prospects. I churn out a couple of chapters, but quickly sabotage myself by editing as I write. The outline of which I was so proud now sits forgotten and crumpled beneath the kitchen table. By the start of the second week, I’m down to lurking on message boards, hoping to find fellow burnouts to buoy my fragile self-esteem. I’ve stopped using the #NaNoWriMo hashtag. I act as if it never happened.
This is the oppressive cycle New Year’s resolutions kick off, allowing me to do nothing but disappoint myself for the bulk of a calendar year. Nor is it just the one creative resolution at which I fail.
Like many a self-respecting reader, I set a goal each year for the number of books I plan to plow through, and for the remaining months on the calendar, that goal hangs like a Sword of Damocles.
“Seventy seems low,” January Me says. “I read 74 just last year, and that was without really trying.” January Me is similar to December Me, only with repetitive and incurable amnesia.
So I set my reading challenge to 80 books. Inevitably, I do not factor in the demands of my full-time job, significant other, needy pets, and various life commitments. By Thanksgiving, I’m subbing out my to-read pile with graphic novels, short story compilations, and several volumes of the ongoing adventures of Captain Underpants in order to make the reading move faster. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t.
And for what? What did I do all of that stressing and cramming and disappointing for? Just to do it all over again the next year? Well, not this time. This time, here in 2017, I’m setting goals for myself, ones that are attainable and more meaningful.
This year, I will read more works by authors who don’t look like me, about characters who don’t live where I do. I will try to balance my fiction and nonfiction reads more evenly. I will keep Post-it notes nearer to my person as I snuggle into my reading chair. And, of course, I’ll finish writing that novel.