Wrap-ups

October wrap-up : books, goals, life in general

/ Maude / 1 Comment

October has been a difficult month (I feel like I say this every month these days… maybe it’s been a difficult year ?) but it was also full of interesting things, events, and a lot of good days of reading !

Here’s a short overview of what happened :

October goals

I totally aced my October goals !

  1. I filled out and sent my student loans application, and sent confirmation to the student loans organization that I was, in fact, still a student, so I don’t have to start paying back my student loans right away.
  2. I got involved in my program’s student group, and made a few friends there – there’s a lot of really nice people and I’m super happy to have met them !
  3. This one is only partially done, but hey. That still counts. I found a therapist for 3 free sessions in the month – it’s only three, because it’s paid by the university and they only offer 3 sessions a year, but that’s still pretty useful !
  4. I cleared out my wardrobe, Marie Kondo style, and got slightly better at fashion. Great changes won’t happen overnight, but I’m happier with the way I look, and that counts as a win for me !
  5. The local fresh produce marked turned out to be close to my house, open every day of the week, full of amazing food and totally affordable ! Having the right ingredients motivated me to cook more and eat better.
  6. I finally got a library card ! Two, actually. So I promptly borrowed and downloaded as many books as I was allowed to.
  7. I applied to a lot of jobs, still waiting to see how that’ll turn out.
  8. Sports still aren’t my thing, but I’m now doing a kickboxing class once a week, and trying to exercise on two days a week total – it’s not the best thing ever, but I’m getting better at it. Slowly.
  9. My phone usage wasn’t lowered much this month, but I tried to use it more responsibly – most of my time spent on that screen was spent reading e-ARCs instead of playing videogames that make me lose my time, so I’m feeling good about this one.
  10. See point “IRL classes and finals”
Books read

I totally didn’t read my whole October TBR – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t read books at all ! In fact, I managed to fit more than 10 books in my already busy schedule :

  • Out with the ex, in with the new, by Sophie Ranald
  • Everything isn’t terrible, by Kathleen Smith
  • Only mostly devastated, by Sophie Gonzales (I’ll review this one later this month and add the link here !)
  • Eff this ! Meditation, by Lisa Kindred – see my review on Goodreads here
  • Mooncakes, by Suzanne Walker – See my review here
  • Digital minimalism, by Cal Newport
  • Irresistible, by Adam Alter (I’m not entirely done with this one !)
  • The year of less, by Cait Flanders – See my review here
  • Ask a manager, by Alison Green
  • The bride test, by Helen Hoang
  • Spark joy, by Marie Kondo – See my review here

I’ll try to post medium length to full length reviews of the ones I haven’t reviewed yet here, but I can’t promise anything : I’m still pretty busy and writing full reviews takes so much time !

Blogtober

I planned to try and do Blogtober as much as I could, and I think it went pretty well : for a person who usually posts up to 4 blog posts a month, I published 10 of those in October ! I’m really happy about this, because setting myself this goal helped a lot in writing more regularly and getting my life a bit more in hand.

Which means : now that I know I can do it, I’m going to try to keep posting this regularly, and we’ll see how this goes !

IRL classes and finals

I studied pretty hard for all my classes – my midterms were at the end of the month and I absolutely need A+ in everything to be able to get the diploma I want to have, so I ended up super stressed out about everything and anything I could think about.

Fortunately, blogging and reading helped me relax a bit and focus more efficiently on the things I wanted to do well, and so far, I got A+ on 3 out of my 5 classes. I’m still waiting on 2 results, and I know at least one of those is going to be really bad, but I’m already working on how to fix this and how to get better in this specific class.

How did your month of October go ? Did you post your monthly wrap-up ? Feel free to link it in the comments so I can check it out !
Advertisement

April Wrap-Up and May TBR

/ Maude / Leave a comment

I’m writing this post from the comfort of a Starbucks chair in the corner of the shop, inside my city’s Chapters bookstore, with a coffee frappuccino and a brand new writing journal (that I might even dare to use in the next few months… if the results are any good, I might post them !). I’m the stereotype of the millennial young woman, and I like it.

The month of April has been eventful, with 6 exams at the end of it, 2 big semester-long projects to complete, a whole lot of stress and not enough time to read any more books, let alone write reviews of them. I’ve been feeling extremely guilty for abandoning my work here for two whole weeks (and then wrote a post about self-care, that you can find here !) , but today is my first actual day off since the semester ended, so here I am !

Even though I didn’t completely meet my reading goals this months, I still managed to finish :

– the Uglies trilogy, by Scott Westerfeld, reviewed here.

– Art Matters, by Neil Gaiman : you can find my review of it here (made when I had the time, at the beginning of the month…)

– Hand to mouth, living in bootstrap America, by Linda Tirado : as I expected, this was a bit too hard for me to review, because of the heavy topic of this book, but it is definitely a must-read for any American out here, and anyone who ever read the sentence “Well if they’re really poor, why don’t they quit smoking ? They’ll save money !” somewhere on the internet, and actually stopped to think about it and try to understand.

Sadly, I did not finish The light between worlds, by Laura Weymouth – I’ve been desperately trying to finish it for two weeks now, and I can’t seem to be able to read more than two pages at a time, so I’ll put this one on my nonexistent March TBR and see if I can finally get to the end of it !

I’m not actually planning a TBR this month, for a couple of reasons – I’m in between two full-time jobs, and just moved into a new apartment, so I’ll need some time to settle into my summer rhythm before I can plan things properly again. For now, I’ll just try to read whenever I can, and stick to my post schedule for some time !