2015 & Goals

The market thrive outside under a warm winter sun. It is not as crowded as other days because it’s just Tuesday. But it is still nice to watch the people passing by for their errands. This is quite a busy area during daytime, whilst peacefully quiet at night. We are adjusting to our new life in this new city and as a new year comes I decided to set myself some goals.

GOAL #1: Read all of the J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings books.

As much as I dread them, I know they are well written. I know they are good stories and characters. However, much of it was killed during the hype about 10 years ago when the movies came out. During that time I would have read them if it wasn’t for those movies. After all, I read all of the Dune saga in a sitting and began with Game of Thrones. Before my taste in literature changed towards the more feminine side.
However, these are a few of the books that are important to my boyfriend. And seeing how most of the books I want to read are not released yet, I decided to start on this challenge to read them all. They are not my sort of stories, but it is quite embarrassing to say you read up to 40 books a year and responding “no” when asked if I have read J.R.R.Tolkien. So these are the 2 reasons for this goal.

GOAL #2: Continue developing my writing skills inclusive of blogging.

I am a very lazy person when it comes to blogging. I blog about once a month if not at all. While in the past I was blogging almost everyday. The difference being that back then I was an invisible teenager relating her life online. That is not the case now, and as such I need to choose my ideas and words carefully. What to share and what not to share. So this limits my daily writing. However, I will write on a weekly basis again. My novel, my stories, books I read, inspirations and ideas. I will write each day in any way and I will write here or the other blog each week.

GOAL #3: complete the Dutch language test successfully.

I am inclined to the easy and the lazy version ‘I’ of the test. As I know I can complete it and I have no need for level II in my current employment. Not that I wish to stop my learning process there, but more as to complete the test as requirement and then take my time with more advance levels  in the language. However I am also inclined to take the test level ‘II’ as I feel I need to prove myself that I am able to accomplish fluency in the language. At this moment I can hold any kind of daily life conversations in broken Dutch. My goal is to be able to read also Dutch novels to their full understanding. It is not like I hold scientific or philosophical conversations in English or Spanish anyway. Why should I learn to do that in Dutch? I leave that to my English writing.
So those are my 3 goals of this year. They are not resolutions. They are goals, something I will be working towards this year. Resolutions are life altering goals. My goals have a dead line, 2016. Except for number #2, which might evolve after 2016 into something else.