2022 Wrap-Up | recaps, goals, and graphs galore

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m here with my wrap-up for 2022. I’ll be recapping my reading, blogging, writing, life, and goals. I put a table of contents below for easier navigation, since this post is going to be longer than normal.

Contents
★ reading
★ blogging
★ writing
★ life
★ goals

Books Read: 57 | DNFs: 1 | Rereads: 1 | Pages Read (excluding DNFs): 21,210

Top Three Best Books of the Year:

Related Post: My Favorite Reads of 2022

Top Three Worst Books of the Year:

My reading was somewhat consistent throughout the year. Better than 2021, but still not great. You can tell that my reading plummeted when school started in August. My average amount of books per month was 4.75 books, which increased 0.25 from 2021.

Average rating: 4.16 (+0.08 from 2021)

I had a lot of good reads last year! A majority of my reads were 4 stars, with only 6 books being 3 stars or below. I had more 5 star reads this year, which I’m happy about. I found a few favorites too! I had one DNF, the reason being that the characters were annoying me.

*unmarked piece is mythology

Fantasy takes first place, as usual. Contemporary and historical take second and third, respectively, which is how it was in 2021. I read more mystery and romance in 2022, which I’m happy about, but less science fiction. I read two nonfiction books, voluntarily, which doesn’t happen very often.

I did a lot better with reading from different age groups! In 2021, over 80% of my reading was young adult; last year, only 72% was. I’m hoping to continue to close the huge ratio of YA to other age groups.

*unmarked piece is memoir

I did much better on this as well! I’ve never really read poetry before and I read three books in verse last year. I also read more graphic novels. I find reading something other than a novel is a lot of fun. It breaks up the long, wordy books and gives us something different.

I read more ebooks and listened to more audiobooks in 2022 than I did in 2021, which isn’t something I cared about much, but it meant I didn’t buy as many physical books. My bookshelf is often filled up. I’d like to listen to more audiobooks as they’re super fun, but I never really have the right time to listen to them.

I didn’t read as many new authors, instead going back to some familiar ones and reading from their backlist or new releases. I always love discovering new authors; some that I’ve discovered from blogging have turned into auto-buy authors.

*romantic/sexual orientation is what it’s supposed to say

This is my favorite graph that I have! Out of the 57 books I read, 51 had some sort of diverse representation in them. The graph shows what kind was in a book. The largest category was race/ethnicity, with 36 books having some sort of racial diversity. Romantic/sexual orientation takes second place, while author descent takes third (an author who has non-white heritage).

Posts Published: 89 | Views: 6,336 | Visitors: 2,628 | Likes: 1,443 | Comments: 689

*unmarked piece is blogging

I didn’t publish as many posts last year as I did in 2021, but I focused on quality over quantity, which I think is more important. I also had more going on in 2022 so I didn’t post as often.

Discussions carried a majority of my posts. I’m not surprised by that as I did a lot of LTB posts. I didn’t do as many book reviews as I would’ve liked, but my photography and writing posts increased. I also added two new categories: “bookish fun” and “author spotlights.” I only did one author spotlight, so I’m hoping to do more this year.

My most popular posts–based on views, likes, and comments–are not ones I expected to be.

• Views – Review: A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson (165 views)
• Likes – July Wrap-Up|Summer Break is Already Over? (42 likes)
• Comments – Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Releases for the First Half of 2022 (30 comments)

Here are some of my favorite posts from the categories listed above. I excluded the “author spotlight” category, “wrap-ups” category, and “blogging” category.

• Book Reviews – The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang|Love Times Infinity by Lane Clarke
• Bookish Fun – 54 Thoughts I Had While Watching Heartstopper
• Discussions – The Benefits of Reading|Let’s Talk Bookish: Banning Books
• Lists & Recs – 16 Books for my 16th Birthday|My Favorite Opening Lines in Books
• Photography – Flowers of Spring
• Tags & Awards – 2022 Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag|The Marvel Avengers Book Tag
• Writing – Pretty Deadly Words #2|In Which I Ramble About my WIP

My writing has developed and changed over the past year. I mainly focused on my WIP, Of Moonflowers and Myths.

At the beginning of the year, I was on draft 2. I did it for NaNoWriMo 2020 and it was around 33k words. I spent time revising, and that summer, I wrote draft 3, during July Camp NaNoWriMo. For this one, I hand wrote it, because it’s said that you’re more creative when you handwrite. I added a prologue and changed a bunch of things. I revised major scenes to make them more realistic and less awkward.

I didn’t end up finishing draft 3. I worked on it a little after Camp ended, but got tired of it and wanted to start over again. I went on to draft 4, or 3.5, if you want to think about it that way. With this one, I focused on characterization, making sure that each character was distinct. I gave one of the characters a pet, to emphasize his Magic with animals. I also worked on cutting out filler scenes. There were a lot of scenes in drafts 1 and 2 that didn’t do anything to move the plot along and were boring, to be honest.

I still haven’t finished the fourth draft–I’m having a bit of writer’s block with the last chapter–but I’m close and am hoping to finish it in the near future. Right now, it’s around 28.5k words, which is less than I was expecting. But I guess it means I got rid of unnecessary aspects and kept the most valuable ones. My goals after I finish the draft are to get outside opinions on it. I’m not sure how that’ll go–I’ve never willingly shared my creative writing with others–but we’ll deal with that when we come to it.

A lot happened in 2022. So many things have changed since this time last year. I can barely comprehend that I’m already over halfway through high school! It felt like it just started. Here are a few highlights from my year:

📚 I participated in a reading program for elementary school kids, mentoring them in reading. I did it three times throughout the year and had a range of kids, from kindergarten to third grade. It was so fun every time I did it, even when there were technical difficulties–the kids were a blast to work with.

🎻 Orchestra has been a big part of my high school experience. In the second half of sophomore year, I had three concerts. Two of them had the same music (one was a fundraiser, the other a competition) and then our final concert, which we did quartets for. During the first half of junior year, the most recent semester, I moved up to first violin! We had a fall concert, which I was acting concertmaster for because our teacher hadn’t picked one yet, and a winter concert, which I unfortunately missed because I had COVID 😭. It sucked to miss the concert, but my friends had recordings of the pieces, so I got to hear what we sounded like.

🏕 I went on a few camping trips that were all really fun. The big ones were Anza-Borrego during spring break, with my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side; the Russian River for Father’s Day weekend, with a friend; and a week in Yosemite during summer break with my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side.

🚗 I got my drivers license! I got my permit in June and had driving lessons throughout the rest of 2022. The behind-the-wheel test gave me trouble. My test was scheduled for December 21, but I was a little unorganized and forgot to bring the certificate that proves I did behind-the-wheel lessons with a professional. So they told me to reschedule. I managed to get an appointment for the week after, at a different DMV. I’d heard that this DMV was harder, but it was what I could get without having to wait a long time. The next appointment rolls around and I check in and am prepared to take my test. When we’re doing the pre-drive safety checklist, I find out that my brake lights haven’t been working and I have to reschedule again. Miraculously, I get an appointment for that next Friday. And I passed with only 2 errors!

2022 Goals Review

Reading:

• Read 60 books ❌ I was so close, with 57 books!
• Read 10 books outside my usual genres ✅ I read 17 books that were outside my usual genres! (Those being fantasy, contemporary, and historical fiction.) I’m really happy that I branched out more; I even discovered some favorites in the genres I don’t read as much.
• Branch out to different types of books ✅ In addition to novels, I read 5 graphic novels, 3 books of poetry, 1 anthology, and 1 memoir. In 2021, the only other types of books I read were 2 memoirs and 1 anthology. I improved a lot!

Blogging:

• Reach 200 followers ❌ We were close, at 191 followers.
• Complete and publish all my drafts ❌ When I set this goal at the beginning of 2022, I had 13 drafts; now I have 10, which is an improvement, but I still have drafts that were there when I created the goal.

Writing:

• Finish third draft of WIP 🤔 Technically, I didn’t complete the third draft, I just stopped working on it and started over with the fourth draft. I’m not sure if it counts.
  • Improve dialogue ✅️ The dialogue isn’t perfect yet, but it’s improved.
  • Work on characterization ✅️ I did a little of this. My characters still need work, but it’s getting there.

Personal:

• Learn to cook some new dinners ❌️ I don’t think I did this. I really need to work on my meal cooking. I bake often, but I need to work on cooking meals.
• Spend more time outdoors 🤔 Ehh, did I? I don’t really know.
• Get my driver’s license ✅ As of December 2022, I am a licensed driver!

5 out of 11 goals completed. That’s not great.

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2023 Goals

Reading:

• Read 60 books – Since I didn’t reach my goal last year, I’m going to set this year’s for the same amount and see if I can get to it.
• Participate in 3 reading challenges – If you saw my post last week, I went through my picks for the three reading challenges I’m participating in this year: The 12 Reading Challenge, Beat the Backlist, and Let Us Read Middle Grade.

Blogging:

• Reach 250 followers – I’m lowering the number since we didn’t quite make it last year.
• Review at least 30% of books read – I didn’t write as many reviews as I would’ve liked and only ended up reviewing 26% of the books I read. I want to work on increasing that number.

Writing:

• Complete the fourth draft of OMaM and get opinions on it – Since starting OMaM, I haven’t had anyone read it besides my mom. I want to get outside opinions this year.
• Journal a few times a week – I started journaling again at the end of November and have kept it up a bit. I’m saying a few times a week because sometimes I don’t feel like journaling or don’t have anything to say.

Personal:

• Learn to cook some meals – Since I didn’t really do this last year, we’re going to try again.
• Deepen my friendships – I’m introverted and a lot of my friendships are surface level. I need to work of furthering those relationships. I’ve been in high school for two and a half years already (granted my first was online), it’s time.

I have less goals this year, but I want to accomplish all of them, so I think two for each category is a good set.

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How was your New Year’s? Did you reach your goals for 2022?
Do you have any goals for 2023?