{"id":1846,"date":"2019-01-01T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=1846"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:18:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:18:12","slug":"new-years-resolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/new-years-resolution\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year’s Resolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
“The beautiful people wish you a Happy New Year once again! Last year we lost our jobs, had to move back in with our parents, and currently share a room with Skittles the pug – who my parents refer to as their “real” baby – but at least we’re still good-looking! Thank God beauty lasts forever.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Happy New Year! It\u2019s time once again to put away all your\nChristmas crap, cringe as you step on the scale for the first time in forever, steel\nyourself for the real <\/em>winter, and\nconsider changing something about your life. Yep\u2014it\u2019s resolutions time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m all about New Year\u2019s resolutions. A lot of people make\nthem, but not many stick to them, like all those people who sign up for gym\nmemberships in January only to promptly stop going by February. But I\u2019m decent\nat forcing myself to meet my goals; otherwise I\u2019d never finish a novel, and the\nworld would be that much worse (or better??…quiet naysayers, or I\u2019ll sick my\nfan mob on you, all ten of them!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, my resolution was to learn to speak Spanish well\nenough to have basic conversations. And, well, I didn\u2019t meet that goal (my\nlistening comprehension is still terrible). BUT. I did practice Spanish every\nday (via Duolingo) and am a lot better than I used to be! So I made significant\nprogress toward my goal, and plan to continue into 2019; therefore, I consider\nit a success. \u2026Hey, you take your wins where you can get \u2018em.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019ve thought long and hard about what my resolution should\nbe this year, focusing on achievable goals that contribute to some kind of\nself-improvement or greater good, and decided the following: I resolve to read\nat least one fiction book a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I know this resolution sounds kinda lame, especially\ncoming from an author who should be reading all the time anyway. And I realize one\nbook a month is not that many; voracious readers can read several books per week.<\/em> But here\u2019s my deal: I\u2019ve been\nin a reading slump since about September. After slogging through several so-so\nbooks and more than a few absolutely awful ones, I just stopped reading fiction\nbecause I couldn\u2019t take the disappointment anymore. Even recommendations I got\nfrom other people about some good reads turned out to be not my thing. For\ninstance: several people told me The Way\nof Kings,<\/em> a fantasy book by Brandon Sanderson, was really good. It had a\nhigh rating on Amazon, and I loved his previous Limelight series (about evil\nsuperheroes and the regular people trying to fight them\u2014it\u2019s awesome, check it\nout!), so I picked it up. But when I got over 100 pages into it(the whole novel is over 1,000 pages,\nand is the first in a trilogy) and there STILL wasn\u2019t any discernable plot, I\nfinally asked a guy I know who\u2019d read it what the deal was. \u201cThe first book is\nmostly worldbuilding,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe main characters don\u2019t even meet until\nthe second book. But then it gets really good.\u201d So, in roughly 3,000 pages, I\ncould expect things to get good. I noped out of that noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started to have the irrational feeling I was doomed to\nalways pick novels I hated, so I took a break from reading fiction altogether.\nBut I knew that was an untenable long-term solution (\u201cYou might forget how to\nread,\u201d hubby helpfully advised me). I\u2019d need to get back on my pink fluffy unicorn\nand ride that reading rainbow eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, with this resolution I commit to reading at least one fiction book a month. If I hate it, I give myself permission to take a break until the following month, but then I must try again. Basically, my resolution is to not get so jaded I give up on reading, because the less you read, the worse of a writer you become. In other words: I commit to finding those diamonds in the rough\u2026and then liberally borrowing their ideas and verbiage! All great writers do it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year! It\u2019s time once again to put away all your Christmas crap, cringe as you step on the scale for the first time in forever, steel yourself for the real winter, and consider changing something about your life. Yep\u2014it\u2019s resolutions time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[401,403,48,47,404,400,402],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-true-confessions","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-duolingo","tag-goals","tag-new-years-resolution","tag-reading-habits","tag-spanish","tag-the-way-of-kings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-tM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1847,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}