The idea of planning for this year makes me giggle because I’ve never mis-predicted a year’s activities to the extent that Me-looking-ahead-to-2021 did. Me-looking-back-at-2021 isn’t sure what to do with that development!

But I had a fantastic reading year last year, even if it didn’t take the kind of shape I’d anticipated. So Me-looking-ahead-to-2022 is going to make plans, knowing that Me-looking-back-at-2022 might be giggling a year from now again.

My goals are there to keep the idea of reaching and stretching front-of-mind. If my plans don’t match my reality, I re-think. Not in the moments when I’m thinking about setting the goals, which feel clear-headed and directed, but in the days and months that follow; if I want to spend less time doing one thing, more time doing another, that’s more to do with my thinking in May and August than it is about my thinking earlier on.

Stories

Usually I read a couple of collections each month, around 20-25 collections a year. This year, I always had a collection of stories on the go and, if the authors’ styles were disparate, I sometimes had a morning collection and an evening collection. Which worked out to 42 collections during the year.

So I’m not looking to change how many stories I read; I’d like to change how I explore them. Collections, yes, including the final seven stories in my Alistair MacLeod project, maybe some anthologies too (a couple of those work their way naturally into the mix), but I have lost the habit of reading standalone stories, from magazines and journals. Not travelling on public transit has definitely impacted this habit and I’ve missed the sense of encountering a story in the literary wild.

Poems

I’m not a confident poetry reader. When I started reading short stories, it was by reading the stories written by novelists I enjoyed: in time, with familiarity, I came to genuinely love reading stories. That’s worked for me with poetry, to some extent, like with Margaret Atwood and Michael Crummey, writers whose view of the world intrigues me, so form matters less. That, and some random discoveries while browsing, sparks interest.

Then, a couple of years ago, I discovered Reginald Dwayne Betts’ poetry: a poet first (memoirist next). And that’s the kind of voice I’d like to seek out more deliberately this year, by looking to the poetry shelves. I’m not sure I’ll be a more confident poetry reader on the other side of more deliberate explorations. But maybe that’s how it happens, or at least how it might begin to happen…by spending more time.

Drawings

Periodically, I revisit this intention. Beginning a couple of decades ago, when graphic novels were just emerging on the scene, when nobody knew where to shelve them. (I borrowed Maus from the children’s library: that’s where the graphic novels lived, behind the counter, available on request.) At another point, after discovering Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! series (14+ volumes), I declared that I’d be reading more illustrated stories including more manga.

Every few years I recognise that I’ve read fewer books with pictures (2021 was a slim year, definitely) and I remember how much I enjoy them and aim for more. So I’d like to finish a couple of the manga series that I’ve been dabbling in (Rachel always has great rec’s), I’d like to read the ones I’ve shelved on my library “saved” shelf, and I’d like to make more of an effort with some established figures I’ve either neglected or overlooked completely.

Because I read SO many books in 2021, I listened to fewer albums and fewer podcasts; I watched TV fewer series and films; I played fewer board games and video games; I did fewer puzzles and even shortened my exercise sessions as the year waned; I experimented with fewer recipes (but at-home fare 99% of the time translates into more recipes in general, so that’s not been too noticeable); and, I ignored most of my other interests completely.

As a writer, I expect I will always spend more time with words and books than most, but there are plenty of other narrative-driven pastimes I’ve been neglecting (particularly watching and playing)–let alone other ways of being (tending the plants on the balcony in the finer weather, for instance, or bench-sitting in a wilder space)–so I want to rediscover some of these pleasures in the days and evenings ahead.

Do you have any recommendations that you think would fit with Me-looking-ahead-to-2022’s ideas?

Are there any habits you’re looking to reestablish in the coming year? Bookish or otherwise?