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Caitlyn’s Monthly Wrap Up: January 2023

Hi sundrops! Cossette and I decided that we’d try something new for our wrap up posts this year, and I’m excited to be able to go a bit more into detail about my month with you all! So, grab a cup of tea, get cozy and let’s recap the first month of 2023.

This month I traded a lot of my screen time for reading time, and honestly, I’m so glad that I did! I love the start of the new year because it brings with it a lot of possibility and excitement, but there’s also a lot of anxiety around it, and reading is what helps me stay calm and get away from those anxious thoughts. So, in trading screen time for reading time, I not only felt a lot more relaxed for the majority of the month, but also got a lot of reading done. As of now, I’ve read a total of 22 books, but we still have 5 days left of this month, so it’s possible that I will finish more. 

Something I had hoped to do this month was catch up on ARCs I was approved for in 2022 and I have accomplished that! I ended up reading 5 ARCs – All the Dangers Things, Lunar Love, Where Echoes Die, 6 Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did), and Always the Almost. I also DNF’d two ARCs, Where Darkness Blooms and Nocturne. Neither were bad, but they didn’t capture my attention. I do think that I’ll check them out once they’re available via audiobook because I am curious to see how things play out. I’m hoping to read at least one more ARC before the month is over.

My favorite read this month was Feel Your Way Through which is a collection of poems written by Kelsea Ballerini, who is one of my favorite singers. It was a beautiful and raw collection of poetry that made me laugh, smile, and to be honest, cry multiple times. Just like Kelsea’s music, her poems felt so relatable, and even the ones I couldn’t fully relate to really hit and resonated with me. I’m looking forward to rereading and annotating and marking up the book just as she suggests. I think that even if you’re not a fan of her music, this poetry collection is worth checking out (content warnings for references to eating disorders and gun violence). I also really enjoyed All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham and Lunar Love by Lauren Kung Jessen, both of which I reviewed this month (I’ve linked my posts below!)

I haven’t fully decided on my February TBR, but I do know that I’ll be rereading and annotating Daisy Jones and the Six in preparation for the tv series coming in early March – who else is listening to Regret Me on repeat?. I’m also really looking forward to reading Chloe Gong’s Last Violent Call (Cossette’s review made me even more excited, which you can read here), This Time It’s Real by Ann Liang, and She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran.

To add or purchase the books mentioned:

Blog posts I loved reading:

My posts this month:

People like to think that it doesn’t rain in California (okay, we do kind of live in a constant state of drought), but it’s been raining basically this entire month. We had consistent large storms just about every day for the first two weeks of the month. Luckily, a lot of the really bad outcomes — power outages, intense flooding, etc. — didn’t hit us, but it was still really crazy! I love all types of weather, but a lot of dark and rainy days in a row tends to not have the best impact on my mood, so some days had me feeling pretty down.

The middle of the month was pretty busy for me — I was asked to step in and stage manage a show we had happening at work, and that took up the majority of the week. I went to one rehearsal, one 5 hour night of tech, and then we had three shows in the morning on Friday and two shows on Saturday, so it was a long week! In general, my work life is getting very busy as we’re in full on prep mode for summer camps, so I have a lot of interviews, scheduling, spreadsheets and script writing in my future!

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my bullet journal. I’m loving how my 2023 journal is coming together so far and have had lots of inspiration lately. I’m working on setting up all my layouts for February — which is Vincent Van Gogh themed — and have already come up with themes for March and April (that theme idea layout that I set up has really come in handy!) and it’s been bringing me a lot of joy to take some time almost every day to work on my journal and do something creative for myself and not work. Additionally, one of my personal goals for the year is to improve on my (very very limited) art skills, so I’ve been doing a lot of doodling. They’re not great and they’re not perfect, but practice makes progress and even with the imperfections I’m having a lot of fun which is the most important thing!

I’ve got a few things happening in February that I’m really looking forward to. Towards the end of last year I decided that I wanted to change up my hair, so I scheduled a haircut and I’m going to try curtain bangs! It’s been years since I’ve had bangs and I’ve been bored of my hair for a while, so I figured why not? I’m planning on dying my hair a lighter shade of brown since I’m tired of how dark it currently is —- I also want to dye the ends of my hair purple, but I think I’m going to wait until the summer for that, plus, I have so much hair that if I try to do curtain bangs, a trim, dye my hair a lighter brown and purple tips all at once it’ll take up basically an entire day so I’d rather hold off on the purple until the summer.

There’s a Sistine Chapel exhibit happening near me until April, and I bought my mom and I tickets to go in February. I haven’t been to an art exhibit or museum since, I want to say 2019, so I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve always wanted to visit the Sistine Chapel, and the photos I’ve seen of this exhibit look absolutely incredible. There’s also a bookstore near the exhibit, so I’m obviously looking forward to that as well!

And there you go! A little recap of my reading month and some stuff that’s been going on in my life lately. I’d love to hear how the first month of 2023 treated you and things that you’re looking forward to in February! Until next time!

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