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Failed My Annual Reading Challenge Again

Why I Keep Missing My Book Goals — And What I’m Changing in 2025

Gem Blackthorn
Rose Bed Lit
5 min readJan 9, 2025

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Image crated on Canva by author

My perfectionist left eye is twitching as I write this. But it happened again in 2024 — I failed another Annual Reading Challenge.

At this point, failing these challenges has become a tradition, which is ironic because I do this to myself. I commit to the reading goal. I set the goal. The expectation is all mine.

Reading Challenges in the Past

I’ve had some solid reading years over the past decade. Like everything else on this planet, my reading peaked in 2019. This was also the first year I set goals for myself.

My Goals (not books read):

  • 2019–60 books
  • 2020–100 books
  • 2021–80 books
  • 2022–40 books
  • 2023–50 books
  • 2024–30 books

I won’t lie — there’s something depressing about continuously lowering the bar for yourself. In 2021, I wrote about how I stopped enjoying the reading challenge because it became a…

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Rose Bed Lit
Rose Bed Lit

Published in Rose Bed Lit

A publication for poetry, fiction, and essays about how we love ourselves, our peers, and our community. This is the lighter counterpart to Thorn Path Lit.

Gem Blackthorn
Gem Blackthorn

Written by Gem Blackthorn

📚 Marketing & Content Strategist 🌙 Occasional Poet

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