2025 Weekly Challenge, Week ?: Back on the Wagon

It’s been over two months since the last time I did a goals check-in.  My life just got to be too, too much, and something had to give… and that something turned out to be, among other things, trying to meet the goals I set at the beginning of the year, before the world went crazy.

Things are marginally less chaotic right now, not because my life is no longer busy but because the busyness is somewhat more focused, so I’m going to try to hop back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger.

Where I’m at Now

The last couple of months have been one major thing after another, and sometimes at the same time.  There was the Fall Show for the Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys, which I had to prepare a doll exhibit, part of a doll program, and a workshop; there was all the house sitting for my husband’s parents, which made it difficult to get much done at our house; there was trying to get the house ready for my mom to stay with us; and there was my mom’s surgery and recovery.

Once we got all that done, we still had NaNoWriMo FauxNoWriMo DenNoWriMo to get ready for.  Our local region did a fun spin-off of NaNoWriMo last year, after everything blew up, and called it FauxNoWriMo.  This year, after NaNoWriMo announced they were officially shutting down, we decided to rename our local community DenNoWriMo, and start building it out to be a local replacement for NaNoWriMo.  Getting it ready for November meant building a new website, planning events, planning fun extras like stickers, writing email blasts, and beefing up the social media community.

Now DenNoWriMo is just a few days away, and November is sure to be another whirlwind month.  With only two months left in the year, I’m hoping to get back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger than the last, oh, nine months have gone.

Where I’m at right now:

Writing

I haven’t worked on my novel in months at this point, although of course I’m hoping that’ll change in November.  And obviously I haven’t been maintaining my blog and Instagram either, except for the Banned Books Week post I made in October.

Decluttering and Organization

We worked on decluttering and organizing the house before my mom came to stay with us, and a bit during and after that too.  Unfortunately our progress was stalled more recently, as we had DenNoWriMo to prepare for and unexpected additional house sitting for my husband’s parents.  I’m hoping to get back to that in November, though, in addition to working on my novel and running DenNoWriMo.

Dolls

I haven’t worked on a doll in ages, and honestly, the decluttering and organization project will take precedence over doll projects.  But I do hope to get back to them soon, possibly by December.

Lessons Learned

Honestly, if there was a lesson in any of this, it was that plans and goals don’t always turn out the way you want them to.  I can’t blame myself for not sticking to my weekly goals because it’s not like I knew when I set them that my mom would need surgery, or my husband would lose his job, or that we’d have a fascist regime taking over our country and stressing us all out.

Sometimes the best you can do is just to get through it with your life and yourself in one piece.

Like I said, if I can pick things back up and finish out the year a little stronger, I’ll be happy with that.

Happy Banned Books Week 2025!

It’s been a while.  Life has been hectic and I’ve gotten away from tracking my progress — mostly because I’ve had to focus on so many other things that my goals for the year have fallen by the wayside.  But I couldn’t go without posting about Banned Books Week!

Today kicks off Banned Books Week for 2025.  To celebrate the week, I always like to browse the list of top banned and challenged books from the year before, and read one or more of them if I can.

As usual, the list of the top challenged books for last year includes quite a few repeats.  And as usual, the list betrays the homophobia/transphobia, racism, and sexism that runs rampant in our culture.

1. All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
2. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (TIE)
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (TIE)
5. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
6. Looking for Alaska by John Green (TIE)
7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (TIE)
8. Crank by Ellen Hopkins (TIE)
9. Sold by Patricia McCormick (TIE)
10. Flamer by Mike Curato

In fact, I’ve now read all of the usual suspects except for the first two, possibly the first three.  All three are now on my TBR list.

I’ve been celebrating Banned Books Week in this manner for almost 20 years, but never has it seemed as important as it seems this year.  With the year’s events — the threats to our Constitution, particularly to our First Amendment rights — I feel like our rights to read and write what we want is quickly becoming ever more precious.

So I will definitely be reading the remaining three books on the list in the coming weeks.

Never forget how lucky we are, for the past 250 years, to have been able to read what we want.  Nazis burned books to try to destroy their influence.  Don’t let history repeat itself.