Happy New Year! Wishing you good health, wealth, and reading in 2022!  I wish people a happy new year up to the end of the month of January. Although, I hear some people are superstitious about when to quit wishing people happy new year. Surprisingly, we are already 22 days into the New Year and I’m finally attempting to get back to writing on this blog. Lately I’ve been feeling more and more like writing which I think is a good thing. For the longest, I’ve been fearful and unmotivated about writing, but I know to improve I’ve got to get off my butt and get back to doing it no matter how uncomfortable. I need to take the advice I give my English learners. I always tell them that learning a language, especially in the beginning, is supposed to be uncomfortable, so get used to it.  So here I am. Contrary to popular belief, blogging is not a thing of the past. It is still very much alive and well.

Last year was our second year into this nasty pandemic. I could not have imagined I would be living like I am today – home all the damn time! I like spending time with myself (the only child speaking) but I like seeing my family and friends too. I also enjoy my regular trips to Paris to attend author events and visit museums.  Most of this has been canceled or moved online, sometimes free or paying. Fun has been taken out of everything. Lately there are more and more in person events but the restrictions are severe now about who can attend. Even though I’m vaccinated and boosted up to the gods, I’m still not confident about going to events in person where there could be a lot of people and that includes my own book club here in Normandy. We have our first meeting of 2022 this afternoon and I was going to have myself FaceTimed in, but it turns out that our hostess is sick with laryngitis and can’t host, so imposed Zoom meeting is our fall back plan.  Love them dearly but there are just way too many cases of covid around here at the moment.

Despite the covid virus not letting us be great, I have managed to forge on and try not to think of all the things I’m missing out on as I get Old-er. I spent 2021 with my head in my books, spearheading readalongs, and I even started a second book club on patreon called The Read Soul Lit Book Club.  It focuses on reading books from the diaspora. I give BIG THANKS to all of my patrons who believe in the literary work that I do online and support me constantly.  All of the ladies are absolutely brilliant and very astute in their analysis of books. I always come away from our meetings feeling like I’ve really gone over the book with a fine tooth comb.  I hope they feel that way too.  Now that I’m entering my second year on patreon I’ve added 1 new tier to share in my love for books, making all my book review videos there.  I will no longer be doing book reviews on my YouTube channel.

So what else did I get up to last year. I read 71 books for starters. I had originally pledged to read 100 but clearly that was too much for me because by March I was already behind 4 books. 60 seemed to be the sweet spot (read 11 books over my goal) because I was able to read 8 books in November and 9 books in December.  For some reason every November and/or December I always seem to read a lot of books.

As for my other social media platforms, my Instagram account gained a little over 1,100 followers. My YouTube account gained a little over 400 followers which is normal because I kept falling off the wagon of recording, editing, and uploading videos. A book content creator’s life is hard and sometimes posting just isn’t in the cards.  Here sadly posting didn’t happen but my plans are to post once a week on here. Look out for a post every Saturday and thanks for sticking with me, despite my fickle posting practices. I’m coming with the realistic goals for 2022.  Until next Saturday…..