Anything done twice on Barrayar is a tradition. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
In addition to my tradition of posting about the books I have read over the course of the year, I have a slightly younger annual habit of writing about my goals for the year (2022 and 2021). Putting them out in public, rather than restricting them to my journal, feels like a better way to keep them in front of me as I journey through the year.
I accomplished relatively little of what was on last year's lists, so I'm structuring things in a different way for 2023. Under each category, I'm permitting myself only three goals: small, medium, and large. The sizing is based on the amount of effort required to accomplish them. Hopefully this allows me to set goals I have a reasonable chance of achieving.
What are you hoping to do this year?
As a historian...
My SMALL goal is to attend at least one panel at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, in Kalamazoo Michigan, about medievalism and science fiction.
My MEDIUM goal is to finish my reading and notes for my two long-overdue book reviews,
organise those notes, send out the drafts of the reviews, and see them
published this year.
My LARGE goal is to submit
two articles for review.
One of the articles will be sent in to one of the following journals I admire:
Early Medieval Europe, Florilegium, Journal of Early Christian Studies,
Journal of Late Antiquity,
Journal of Roman Studies, Speculum,
Studies in Late Antiquity, or
Viator. These are traditional journals, which only allow libraries and individuals who pay for access to view the vast majority of work published in them; one of my long-term goals as a historian is to make my work freely available to anyone who wants it, without simply ignoring copyright law. (Which is titling at windmills in more ways that one.) To put my money where my mouth is, I also want to submit an article to an open-access journal:
Digital Medievalist, Fafnir, Medieval Worlds, Mittelalter, or
MOSF Journal of Science Fiction all seem like homes for the kind of work I want to do this year. Noting for future reference that a list of all the open access journals that come up in a subject search for medieval history on the Directory of Open Access Journals is available
here.
In teaching...
My SMALL goal is to read and reflect on Jennifer Guiliano's A Primer for Teaching Digital History.
My MEDIUM goal is to write a piece for a journal I greatly admire, the
Ancient Jew Review,
about the third-year module I teach on Ancient Graffiti. Their pieces on teaching are some of
the most fascinating and thought-provoking I've read, and I'd love to write
one.
My LARGE goal is to rewrite and revise my two modules. I'd like my third-year class on Ancient Graffiti to incorporate digital humanities ideas and methologies more explicitly, and I would like to fully work out my ideas of feminist approaches to teaching the stories of Roman women. Bonus points would be to explore departmental, university, or external pedagogy grants to do so.
In reading...
My SMALL goal is to read
one of the following
three books about writing and creativity.
- Twyla Tharp, the Creative Habit
- Ursula LeGuin, Steering the Craft
- John McPhee, Draft Four.
My second SMALL goal (I'm breaking my own rules and allowing myself two, because my because my eyes are always bigger than my stomach when it comes to books), is to read one of the following three books by Ukrainian authors.
- Vita
Nostra by Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko
- The Museum of
Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko
- Words for War ed Max Rosochinsky
and Oksana Maksymchuk
My MEDIUM goal is to read
three of the following
five nonfiction books. (Many of these come from the fantastic Public Books editors'
best of 2022 list and Dr Eric J. Harvey's
blog).
- Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse: the Art and Science of Survival
- Ruha Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want
- Gabrielle Blair, Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to think About Abortion
- Anton de Kom, We Slaves of Suriname, translated by David McKay
- Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
My LARGE goal is to finally finish reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a project I have been plugging away at since 2015.
As a writer...
Because so many of my goals as a historian, in teaching, and of course in blogging, feature lots and lots of writing and rewriting, setting a separate goal for writing feels risky. But I'll chance it anyway!
My SMALL goal is to pitch a guest post about library cataloguing systems or the care and keeping of manuscripts to Dan Koboldt's
Fact in Fantasy series.
My MEDIUM goal is to pitch a story about medieval mitten miracles to
Piecework, my favourite magazine, or
JSTOR Daily.
My LARGE goal is to get to 50,000+ words on my NaNoWriMo 2022 project, which was jointly inspired by my sister's sweetheart of a cat and the time one of my students asked if I'd ever heard of the Lincolnshire witches.
In knitting and sewing...
My SMALL goal is to try at least one new sock pattern, ideally the heart socks pattern from
Manmade by Jonne.
My MEDIUM goal is to knit a
ten-stitch blanket for myself. I have been repeatedly stealing the one I knitted for my mother during my visit to my parents' house; I love the pattern so much!
My LARGE goal is to my mother's long overdue and patiently awaited birthday afghan, which has been owed since, er, 2014. Ouch!
My second LARGE goal is one I am carrying over from last year. I want to learn
nålebinding and complete a small project using this technique. I'm mildly obsessed with late antique socks, and most of look knitted but are actually made by nålebinding; plus, last year I got the wonderful
The Witch's Heart as a Christmas present, and it features needle-binding, which made me want to learn how to do it. (Bookmarking
this blog and
this post for future reference!)
In running...
My SMALL goal is to try at least one new form of strength training for runners, at least four times over the course of the year.
My MEDIUM goal is to complete at least twelve parkruns in 2023 (I managed eleven in 2022, so one a month this year seems doable.) For bonus points, I'll try to beat my current best parkrun time of 24:36, which dates from 2021, and also visit at least one parkrun new to me.
My LARGE goal is to finish a marathon, smiling and uninjured, in under four hours.
In blogging...
My SMALL goal is to finish the series of posts I began writing for
#AHAReads--I have notes on the final book, C. Riley Snorton's
Black on Both Sides, all typed up so I'd like to finish off the challenge properly, if belatedly.
My
MEDIUM goal is to post at least one translation of a medieval Latin
text, ideally one for which an English translation is not readily
available.
My LARGE goal is to start, and hopefully finish, the series of posts I've been planning to write on history, historians, and the Middle Ages in modern science fiction and fantasy. (This has been creeping up on me as a possible new book project for the past eighteen months.) I'll consider this goal met if I manage to write up the three posts on Lois McMaster Bujold that I've had stubbed for well over a year. I'm excited to nerd out about Dr Duv Galeni and Professora Helen Vorthys, and why I love Bujold's take on the profession of history, in the coming months.
I'm not sure how well all of the above balances between my ambitions, my energies, and whatever this year holds, but as Gregor Vorbarra says, let's see what happens.
