Wrap Up | May 2019 + the unintended hiatus

Hey friends!

Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve been absent for pretty much the entirety of May. I had planned to take a little step back from blogging anyway as this summer is going to be really busy for me on my Master’s degree, but then I managed to catch/develop gastroenteritis – a nasty contagious stomach bug – which completely knocked me out for almost 2 weeks. Then I had to return to work, start planning my long summer of uni work, and celebrate my partner’s birthday on Sunday. Before I knew it, I found myself at the end of May? I feel like I blinked and missed it.

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted about my concerns around being able to manage book blogging alongside starting my PhD in September (not to mention squeezing it in amongst all my Master’s work this summer) and I’m still not sure what the outcome of my ponderings will be. It’s definitely something I’m planning on writing a discussion post about so that I can talk about it more in-depth and speak to other book bloggers who manage their blog alongside busy lives. What I do know though, from having my unintended break this month, is that I feel a lot less happy when I’m not blogging and I felt so isolated from my book blog friends. Writing this post is already beginning to lift my low mood but I’m also anxious about how much work I have to do. Anyway, that’s not a decision to be made right now – instead, I want to share with you all what I did manage to get up to during Moody May ❤

Down the TBR Hole | #6 The Curse of February 2018 and Owned Books

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Welcome back to my Down the TBR Hole series, friends. I haven’t done a Down the TBR Hole post for well over a month now meaning that my TBR list has been slowly creeping back up again, though I have been hardcore sticking to the DtTH deadlines I set for myself which has been a massive help.

Let’s plunge in and see what’s up on the chopping block this session!

Down the TBR Hole | Using the #KonMarie method for my Physical Shelves

Today I had planned to do the next round of Down the TBR Hole but considering that I have just done a major reorganization of my actual bookshelves using the Marie Kondo method I thought it would be really fun to share this progress with you all instead. Apologies for the crappy photo quality in advance, my phone camera is not great!

The second stage of Marie Kondo method, books, was one that I was simultaneously dreading but also really looking forward to. I find it quite difficult to sort out my books as these are objects that I am obviously quite attached to but I was also finding myself becoming frustrated with my bookshelves looking cluttered with too many books. Rather than just buying another bookshelf to fix the problem, I decided that I wanted to have a good sort through the books I own to see which ones I was invested in keeping and which ones I could donate to new homes. 

The thing I love the most about the Marie Kondo method is that she encourages us not to think about getting rid of things but to make space for the things that we want to appreciate more and that spark joy for us, rather than them being hidden away in amongst a mess of other things. This definitely helped me to sort through my books in a way where I didn’t feel guilty about “getting rid of” books but instead focus on the beautiful books that spark joy for me that I wanted to spend more time with.

February TBR | Getting stuck into my 2019 goals

Hey friends!

After having such a successful January, this month has been off to quite a slow start. I’ve had a lot going on over the past week and I’m going to be pretty busy for most of February meaning I’m likely to have less time for reading and blogging. I did come up with a fairly ambitious TBR, prior to realizing I might not have much time this month, so we’ll have to check back in at the end of the month to see how much (if any) progress I made!

Book Tag | The Last 10

I missed book tag Thursday yesterday because I had my first shift at my new job! I can’t remember if I told you all about it but I’m one of the new operations assistants at a local community centre working part-time while I study. I also had to finish my PhD application which was due in today, so I’ve had a pretty busy few days and fell a bit behind with blogging.

Here’s a fun little tag to catch up on my missed day yesterday!