It’s another year down here at Books, Boxes, and Baubles and we thought we would wrap things up and get the new year started right and fresh!

Kylana:

So this year has been a wild ride.  I won’t go into details but looking back it’s been a year of challenges in so many ways and I feel like this year has really tested me as a person to prove to myself that I’ll do what needs to be done even when it’s not easy. Pretty much right at the start of the year I had to make a hard choice and I’m blessed to have some amazing people in my life that supported me through it, especially since I lost some family in the process. I also had one of my cats get really sick fast and she ended up passing a few months after that.

The good! I got to see Neko for the first time in a few years! We got coffee, went on good walks, did some Pokemon hunting!  We are hoping to get another chance this coming year.  I also started a new job this year, primarily because I needed a bit more stability in my life and turned out to be one of the best choices I made. I’ve been a temp with them for about 5 months now and hoping they’ll hire me full time. It’s the first time in YEARS I’ve had coworkers that are nerdy. My industry isn’t known for having introverted nerdy people so it’s a breath of fresh air to have half my office be such.

Now onto my 2018 goals from the beginning of this year.  I’m wincing because I know I missed most of them.  This year will be different!

Total Books Goal: 150
This year I’ll do 200 books!  I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again but hey I exceeded!

Non-Fiction Goal: 48
I am so close for this one!  I’m at 45 books so all in all not bad.

Review Goal: 56-100
Major fail on this! So sorry guys!  I don’t know if I’ll have a number goal for this but this year will be more consistent.

Box Goal: 6
I reviewed zero boxes this year.  I don’t think I received any boxes this year in the book/nerd realm so that’s part of it.  I’ll look at changing that this year. Now that I have a day job and more steady income on top pet sitting I should have a bit more flexibility here.

Classic Book or Rory Gilmore Booklist: 12
Nope! I started off good on this but I think I only got maybe 3 in.

Blog: At least 3 posts a week.
Another fail here. 😦

All in all though I’m proud of this year and the big choices I had to make and the people I’ve surrounded myself with.  You guys are all amazing. Thanks for sticking with us and I look forward to being more social and chatting with more of you this coming year.

Side note!  If anyone plays pokemon go you should give me your friend code!

Neko:

I had a weird year to say the least XD. It was not a reading friendly one so I spent most of it with DNFs and playing video games… Which means that only one of my goals were met! Yay me. I did do 12 subscription boxes, mostly through Cratejoy, but wasn’t supper impressed with any them…

One cool thing though with the 2018 goals were the reading challenges! (Didn’t finish these either…) I had to force myself to find titles that fit the categories which led to some awesome authors and series! Will try again this year with more challenges but will also be focusing on my huge TBR pile! So many unread books that I own, fiction and non-fiction, that need to get read, also series to finish! So many choices it is hard to know where to start!!

2019 is going to be less aggressive, and hopefully more consistent. But more on that stuff later!!

Happy 2019 guys!