At the end of 2018 I set a goal for myself of reading all of the books on the Top 100 Fantasy and Top 100 Science Fiction book lists.
Wow. I was/ am ambitious. Fortunately, I’ve read a number of them already, so it isn’t really 200 books to read, more like . . . ulp . . . 140. That’s . . . *sigh* a bit under three books a week.
Failing to accomplish a long-cherished goal is crushing, and we’ve all experienced it at some time or another. In the aftermath of failure some of us beat ourselves up. Dripping shame and resentment, we polish our self-criticism and enact a terrible spiral of negativity. The spiral ends with a retreat to our comfort zone, the place where we know we can succeed because we don’t try to do anything new or difficult.
