Tag: goals

Entertainment Plans for the New Year – Blogmas 2025

~ Liz Harrison ~ Leave a comment

Let’s just say my plans for catching up with the movie and TV series I’m behind on this year didn’t work out. Like at all.

I had grand plans for 2025. Catch up on two series. Finally watch certain movies. Possibly get into a new show or three. And hell, maybe we’d be graced with The Old Guard 2 and I’d feel happiness again.

Well.

We got The Old Guard 2, and I still need another day before I talk about that. But that… that’s about it.

For some reason, this year is the year that I’ve basically watched nothing. Oh, sure. I watched the occasional episode of TV, or the random movie. And yes, I watched Survivor and The Amazing Race and Hell’s Kitchen. But that’s about it. It was like I just couldn’t sit down and focus on any of my goals. At least those goals.

So for 2026, I’m going to try again. Hopefully, with me attempting to commit to posting here at least once a week, I’ll be reminded of this. We shall see.

Rewatch the Marvel Cinematic Universe

One of the biggest goals my mom and I said this year was to finally rewatch a good majority of the MCU, and finally move forward. We haven’t done a damn thing. We actually stopped at Ms. Marvel (to my utter annoyance and fury) when it was first releasing, mostly because Mom was feeling really burnt out on marble. And I’ve been waiting for her.

Next year, all bets are off.

My goal is very simple. Rewatch a majority of the first three phases of the MCU. There’s certain films. I don’t feel like re-watching, such as the second Thor film, simply because I’m just not really in that type of mood. Others will be skipped for time. And I may not be able to watch Black Panther, but that’s just because I still cry about Chadwick passing. (That one, however, I will be trying.)

Once I get through Phase 3, I’m gonna skip a couple of the shows. I’ve seen WandaVision and loved it, as well as Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I don’t feel like I need to rewatch them again in their entirety. I may just look for clips online. I will rewatch the films, mostly because it feels like it has been a while since I’ve touched them. And of course, once I get to Ms. Marvel, I’m watching everything 100%.

Actually, this is another case of the “well, kinda.” I know that What If…? is canon, in some way. I won’t be watching it. It has nothing to do with the writing, where the voice cast or anything like that. It is simply because of the animation. It is just not an animation style that I enjoy watching, and it bothers my eyes. Don’t know why, don’t really care to find out. I will just have to make do with summaries. The same goes for Marvel Zombies, because again the animation bothers me, but also because I just don’t like zombies. Respect to anyone else who does, not for me.

I know there’s actually a lot that I have to catch up on. There’s been a decent amount of movies (of which I’ve managed to avoid most of the spoilers, shocker). And I know that some shows have been well received in others… Exist. But I do want to catch up. I may not make it by the time the new Spider-Man comes out, but I will make it for Doomsday.

I hope.

Catch Up on Everything Star Wars

I’m actually embarrassed by this.

I love Star Wars. I grew up with it. I watched the original trilogy many times, as well as the prequel trilogy, mostly because it was coming out while I was a teenager. Ensure, the animated clone war show was on TV right when I could’ve watched it.

Well… I basically only watched the nine main films and rogue one. That’s it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted to watch more. I just never got around to it. And I really hate saying that because I had every opportunity to. So, in 2026 I will correct a mistake. I will catch up.

I have already made a spreadsheet of everything by release order, separated by seasons or film. I may end up just main lining each show, but this way I can keep track a little bit. I would love to finally catch up at some point this year. I would love to be able to say that the next Star Wars release is my goal. But I am also realistic in knowing that I probably won’t make that.

But it’s a goal. And maybe I can get somewhat close.

Other Smaller Goals

I’ll be honest, with two major cinematic universes to try to catch up on, plus the random Disney movie thrown in here or there, I didn’t want to make any other humongous plants for 2026. But I did make some small smaller ones.

There are several film franchises where I only watched a few of the films and they have continued on into the current year. A great example would be Jurassic Park. I still haven’t seen the newest one. I’d like to rewatch all the films in order and enjoy the newest one.

I also have basically loaded up my streaming watchlists on all of the major sites. I want to cut those down by half. Now I do have a caveat. If I buy the film or TV show as physical media, it can come right off the list. I don’t have to immediately watch it. I’m trying to build up my physical media collection this year. It’s a decent incentive in my mind.

Another thing I’d like to do is finally watch some of the anime that I have been sitting on. There are several series, newer, and older, that I have wanted to watch and just never put any time into. Some of these are 12 episode Classics, others are… OK. I kind of want to watch my hero academia. Either way, I want to at least watch a couple of anime by the end of the year. Will I make it? This one I might let slip. But it’s allowed. I have a lot I wanna do in 2026.

And finally, I have a goal that I have promised my mom. I will watch one of “her” films a month. I may watch more than one, but I will watch at least one. She and I don’t exactly have the same taste in a lot of our films. But it’s a good thing for me to at least know it’s important to know. The movies that have withstood the test of time, the ones that help shape the entertainment industry to what it is today. I can give her that, especially since she has to suffer through giving up the TV to me when I want to watch Star Wars.

Until then, happy watching!

Let’s Talk: Animal Crossing New Horizons 2022 Goals

~ Liz Harrison ~ Leave a comment

So… I have a confession to make.

I restarted my Animal Crossing New Horizons island again. Well, technically I did it back in November and never mentioned it, but yeah. I’m a terrible person.

The reason why I did it was actually simple. I wanted to have a nice fresh island for the 2.0 update that was coming out in November. So, I obviously restarted only two weeks before the big update, played for like three days and promptly forgot about it until literally New Year’s Day (though not soon enough to get the New Year’s Eve Nook Mile Achievement). 

But on New Years Day, I made myself a promise for 2022: to complete the Nook Mile Achievements by New Years Eve 2022 to the best of my ability, because I absolutely have a good goal. 

Let me explain.

Within ACNH, the player character has a phone that keeps track of a lot of information, from what creatures have been donated to the museum, to shopping, to “achievements”. They’re called Nook Mile Achievements, and completing them gives you Nook Miles, which are used to purchase things or take a ride with Kapp’n, among a lot of other things.

The achievements cover pretty much everything. You get them for upgrading your house, for taking part in different events, catching 5000 insects or fish, completing the museum, getting all the golden tools… If it’s in the game, there’s probably an achievement.

I think as of now (mid-April), I’ve gotten about half of them? Maybe less. The reason is, there’s a bunch that are “use X for the first time” achievements, but also long progression ones, including one to do 100 KK Slider concerts, and those are only available Saturday nights, after you complete the main game’s storyline to bring him to your island in the first place.

Did I mention that every Animal Crossing game takes place in real time? Which means that I will be playing this for another 90 weeks until I get that last achievement. Yes, you read that number right. The longest achievement takes 100 weeks total, on top of however long it takes to even get KK to your island. Which for me was exactly ten weeks ago… and that was actually pretty fast.

I’m trying to do it without any help, for the most part. I mean, I do have to have ten people visit my island so that I can get that achievement completely done. But I mean that I’m not going to someone else’s island and getting all of the things to complete the museum or what not. I’m also not using time travel, or when you change the time on the Nintendo Switch to skip ahead. I’m trying to do everything as it comes.

What that means is that I’ve caught every insect, fish, and sea creature legitimately. Same with every piece of music and art (except one, but that’s because I accidentally trashed it, and someone had it available like five minutes later). And every fossil.

The only thing that I’ve used someone else’s island for is selling Turnips (which are something you buy on Sundays and sell later in the week for a profit, it’s literally called the Stalk Market, no I’m not making that up) and to get some extra crafting materials that are already easy to obtain, because sometimes I don’t want to shake a tree for 100 tree branches.

It’s actually been quite a lot of fun since restarting! My island is still pretty basic, but that’s because I just don’t take the time to really terraform it. I spend about a half hour or so daily doing the few tasks I have to do (fossil hunting, trying to get Redd to sell me real art, quick shopping, and hunting for that month’s insects and fish). On weekends I’ll play a bit longer, as that’s when events usually happen.

Like tomorrow’s Bunny Day, ACNH’s version of Easter, where I have to collect a lot of eggs.

But all in all, it’s been fun since I restarted. It’s given me another year long goal that’s actually attainable (ignoring the few things that will have to roll into 2023, simply due to timing, and I’m fine with that). If I can get my island cleaned up a bit more, I’ll do a follow up post and show off some parts of it.

It’s a fun game, and I’m glad that I’m still enjoying it! 🙂

Until next time!

(Also, sorry that this is posting so late today. I was watching the Dodger game, and then got distracted by some writing, and just realized that I never hit Publish. Whoops!)

Reading Goals for 2021

~ Liz Harrison ~ Leave a comment

I usually never set hard and fast reading goals for myself. It’s something that I had always hated when I was in school. We would always have to read a certain type of book, usually a classic or three, and that would be the focus of the year. Forget loving fantasy or sci-fi, they need not apply. Even in college, when I was on the English/Creative Writing track, we were heavily encouraged to only read what was assigned to us, and if we had any free time, to focus on literary fiction. Genre fiction need not apply.

Because of that, and being burned by Accelerated Reader so many times, I developed some really bad reading habits. I blast through books without taking the time to really focus on characters or anything besides the main plot. If I do slow down, I find myself bored. Another thing is, if I stop reading at any point, for more than a few hours (like, I went to bed or something), getting back into a book is an outright nightmare. I could only do that with rereads, and only certain ones at that.

For the past several years, I’ve signed up for the Goodreads Reading Challenge. My bad habits came out in a big way because of this. I’d read a bunch during the beginning of the year, taper off during summer, and blast through a lot of manga or graphic novels by November and December. Or I’d just lie. Because honesty doesn’t exist when a non-competing reading challenge is at stake. (That was sarcastic, I swear.)

This year, I decided to try to change things up a little bit.

I cut my Goodreads Reading Goal to almost in half. Instead of 100 books, I’m aiming for 52, which is amount of weeks in a year. So, if I miss a week or two (which I did at the beginning of the year), I can make it up pretty quickly. This has already lifted a weight off my shoulder, which is something that I was doing to myself.

Another goal for me is to review everything I read. I have this terrible habit of not talking about what I read, or just a one line little sentence. I miss discussions (and book club meetings). To compensate for that, I’m going to try to give at least a one hundred word review for what I read. Will I do it every time? Probably not. I’m totally gonna miss a book at least twice this year. I also want to give honest ranking. Not just giving everything that I’m okay with a 4-star. I want to be honest. I’ll go into that in more detail in another post.

A goal that came to mind when I decided to write this post is to not hold myself to finish a book. By that, I mean that if I’m truly not enjoying a book, I can set it down to return to it later or DNF it altogether. I usually hate doing this. I have so many books with sticky note bookmarks in them. And I just don’t like DNF’ing books. But I am giving myself permission to do that this year. I actually already did this, when I put down Rebel Rose, which was the first book I started reading in 2021. It just didn’t click with me, at least right now. With the world the way it is, I’m not going to force myself to do something that I just can’t get my heart into.

There is a goal, or rather two goals, that I would like to complete, though I’m not stressing about it. One is to read all the Owlcrate releases for 2021. I’m so behind in reading my Owlcrate books, it’s not even funny. They’re all sitting on my unorganized bookshelves, taunting me. I would really love to finish at least the next twelve. But I’m still going to follow my previous goal, so if it’s not clicking with me, I can set it down. (I did that with Everland in May 2016.)

I’d also like to catch up with the Barnes and Noble YA Book Club. I’m several books behind, even though I was so excited for so many books. I still am hoping for in person book club meetings to resume in summer/fall 2021, so I want to be caught up. That’s about a year’s worth of monthly releases, excluding December (that month was skipped).

The only other goal I have is to not force myself to read something because of #reasons. By that, I mean I want to read books as I get to them, not because it’s a certain month or because of some arbitrary reason. I’m not planning on taking part in any readathons, unless they are just for myself, for the same reason. By setting sometimes unrealistic goals for myself, I find myself beyond stressed out and just not happy with the results.

I do have a small list of books I want to get to this year, but as I said, no pressure. They include:

  • The Percy Jackson series (all books) by Rick Riordan. My cousin is slowly working his way through the series, and I want to be there for him as he finishes each part. This is a personal goal of mine, not something to speed to.
  • Hold Still by Nina LaCour (among other books by her). I loved her book We Are Okay, which actually destroyed me. I would love to read more from her.
  • Sarah Dessen. Look I just want to reread several of my favorite novels by her, including Lock and Key.
  • Manga: I want to finish Bloom into You and Our Wonderful Days, two absolutely beautiful yuri manga that caught my eye around last summer. I haven’t yet finished both of them (three left for Bloom, just the final volume for Wonderful Days), and I really want to see the conclusions. But that’s about it on manga, considering the amount I read last year.
  • The Sword Art Online light novels. I would love to reread Progressive, in light of the announcement of Sword Art Online the Movie – Progressive – Aria of a Starless Night. Progressive is a retelling of the beginning of the light novel series, with much more depth. There are six thus far, and I think it would be good to at least have that knowledge. I also want to read Moon Cradle and Unital Ring, both continuations of the original series, post Alicization. [And it is here, I realize, that I am a massive anime nerd and not many people would understand why I care about all this. But I do so shush. And yes, that all made sense to me.]

There are, of course, many books that I haven’t referenced here that I’m aiming to read this year. More specifically, Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson (the highly anticipated sequel to last year’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, finally releasing in the states almost four months after its UK release). Also, there is I Think I Love You by Auriane Desombre, which has been on my must read list since it was announced in early 2020, only to be delayed twice thanks to the pandemic (first to September 2020, now March 2021). And there is the book that might be a Peter Pan-retelling, though no one is quite sure. Lost in the Never Woods is by Aiden Thomas, coming off of his debut Cemetery Boys, which I’ll be reading hopefully this year (book club book).

And there are more. My shelves are lined with books I just haven’t gotten to yet, or ones that I want to return to. So here’s to that!

Until next time!