How did it get to be December 4th?  Wasn’t it just… June?  *sigh*  Well, despite my wishes it is indeed the final month of 2021 and time for some reflection and, perhaps even more importantly, some plans on how to approach 2022 a bit wiser, and more thoughtful of a rare commodity — time.

I could come up with all types of reasons as to why time got so badly away from me this year.  But, truthfully, why bother because time did get away, I didn’t accomplish half of what I’d hoped to not only online but in my home life as well.  No excuses, I simply let the upheaval that COVID has had on all of us, some major life changes, and frankly, the fact that I just put things off until later when I could deal with or had the time to deal with “whatever” I’d dropped the ball on have too much of an impact on my time, my emotions, my energy, and my confidence.  It’s really that simple.

The rest of December will be spent trying to get somewhat caught up on the blog(s) hoping for a clean slate to begin the new year.  I know that’s probably not completely possible but it is a goal that I can be working toward in the meantime.  At least, getting that huge “to-do” pile lowered just a bit to manageable would be a relief.

I believe in 2022 I’ll be requesting ARCs less frequently, keeping a stricter reading schedule will help with that and I can always add additional ARCs onto my schedule as time opens up.

I’m going to allow for more personal enjoyments that aren’t the least bit book-related.  I know, shocking isn’t it?  I want to tend to my collection of plants a bit better — to stop replacing plants that I’ve managed to kill and keep them healthy enough to last years (as I once upon a time was able to do).  I’d like to get back into gaming a bit more.  Oh, I’ve dipped back into my World of Warcraft addiction, but in 2022 I’d like to try some newer games that stretch my comfort zone a bit.

The truth is — I’m approaching a milestone birthday, and that’s reminded me more sharply of time passing than anything else.  After all, my own mother passed away at my soon-to-be age plus three months.  I’m very aware of that, and it’s playing a bit of havoc with my emotions, my brain won’t shut down about the upcoming timing.  Do I think that I have any chance of following in her footsteps?  Honestly, no.  But that doesn’t stop the “what ifs” from playing around with my emotions now does it?

So, I believe Keeper Bookshelf is going to be a gift that I give to myself in 2022 but on another level.  I’ll never walk away from this blog, I love reading far too much.  But I can (and will) stop agonizing over time as much as I’m doing right now.  I’ll still be giving you my thoughts on new releases, but they’ll be on books that I really want to read instead of ones that I feel I “should” read to make some other invisible entity happy.

There will probably be another year-ending post the last week of December to outline how the year went book-wise and will, hopefully, go into the new year.  But for now, I’m off to get some reviews up, do some reading, putter with my plants a bit, and maybe this afternoon spend some time in Azeroth.  Sounds like a plan to me.  🙂