My reading has been up and down over the last few years. The pandemic took a huge toll on my reading as I was dealing with a lot of anxiety. Then last year my reading just tanked for the first 8 months of the year. The only reason I finished with as many books as I did was because I could listen to audio books at work. Because of this, I wanted to keep my reading goal at a reasonable level for 2024.

While I knew I was reading at a higher pace the last few months of the year, I couldn’t guarantee that would continue into 2024. This meant I wanted to choose a goal that was more in line with my yearly average, so I chose 100 books, as I had be reading between 100-150 books most years lately.

Then came January when I was just a reading machine (31). February wasn’t quite as strong, but I still finished a higher number of books than average (19). By March 1st, I was already 50 books into my goal of 100. This was the point I had to start asking myself, should I change my reading goal and increase it to a higher number?

But if I do change my goal, what should it be changed to? Bump it to 150 in case my reading tanks again? Or double it to 200? Or even hike it up to 300, hoping to continue this reading pace through the rest of the year?

Then again, maybe I should wait another month to see how my reading flexed during unemployment. I could do a quarterly average and go off that. But, there’s also a new job to consider, and who knows how that will affect my reading.

There are so many factors that could completely change the time and energy I have available for reading that I think it’s too soon to consider increasing my goal. At least until I know how things are going to shake out on the job front.