Last December I made a list of things I’d like to do before my 30th birthday in early January. (The 7th, if you like keeping track of these things.) How’d I do?

Read 250 books. Check! I finished this one in October, and I’m ending the year with 275 books read. I also finished reading the entire Baby-Sitters Club series, which is where over half those books came from.

Write 500k words. Check! 250k of those words are from NaNo, as planned, and I sailed past 500k total for 2016 at the end of November. I also reached 2 million lifetime November NaNoWriMo words this year. I forgot about redrafting something outside of November, although I did write a second draft for NaNo this year.

Continue running/staying in shape. I fell off the wagon a little during NaNo, but for the most part, I consider this a success. As for the quantifiable goal, I ran six races, including four 5K races (one in April, two in May, and one in October where I beat my personal best by two minutes), one 5-mile race (April, where I got third in my age bracket), and one half marathon (December).

Decrease my debt. I don’t have actual numbers on this yet, but I have paid everything on time this year (that I know of), so I consider this a success.

Go back to Night of Writing Dangerously. Check! And had the time of my life.

Travel somewhere new. I went to a new Georgia mountain in March, Washington DC in June, a cabin in a new-to-me North Carolina town in November, and a few Bay Area suburbs that were new to me in November. Check.

Take a class of some kind. I dropped the ball on this one. Oops.

Be awesome. Looking at all the above accomplishments, I’d say this one wasn’t a failure at least.

Despite 2016 being a dumpster fire for many people, this year was a good one for me on a personal level. I accomplished a lot of things that I’ve been wanting to do. I’ve settled into a nice groove when it comes to work and paying my bills in a timely fashion.

So what would I like to do in 2017? Let’s see.

Sushi’s 2017 Goals

Read 100 books. Yes, this is way less than my 2016 total, but I currently have no plans to read entire children’s book series in 2017… yet. I’ve read at roughly this pace for the past couple of years after subtracting the BSC books, so this should be challenging but doable.

Start editing a book. This can include a rewrite of an existing book.

Publish something. This can be a short story, an essay, or even a novel, but I do want to have something published by the end of 2017.

Go back to Night of Writing Dangerously. This is going to stay here forever, let’s be honest.

Travel somewhere new. I’m not particularly well-traveled, so this stays on the list.

Learn basic Korean. My mom keeps talking about going to Korea to visit some of her family. I don’t want to go to a new place and not speak the language, so getting started on learning the language will be my 2017 mission.

Stay employed and decrease debt. Because this has been a challenge some years, it stays.

Begin training for a marathon. I was considering running a full marathon in 2017, but most of the ones I could get to easily are in March (meaning lots of winter training) or October/November (NaNo season and summer training). Running a marathon has been on my bucket list for years, and while I could theoretically start training now for a March 2017 marathon, I’d much rather do a little more winter training so I can learn to adapt first. In either case, something has to give, and I need to figure out what.

You might notice that there’s no yearlong word count tracker on the goal list like there was in 2016. There’s a good reason for that: I want to concentrate more on editing than pure output this year. Tracking all my writing this year has taught me a lot, but now it’s time for more dedicated, refined writing practice.

Here’s hoping that 2017 will be even better, both for me and on a worldwide scale.