I’m gonna be honest, things aren’t going great for me right now.

I try not to get too down on my blog because over time I’ve shifted into being less personal about my life and more semi-professional and focused on books and whatever else. Especially when my personal stuff is so complicated and depressing. But ultimately I am not a company churning out content, I’m a person. (A person who might get self-conscious and delete all of this in three days. It feels more suited to social media than my book blog, but I just end up feeling worse when I use any social media now except Tumblr. But I digress.)

My life is getting harder, and now there’s a plumbing problem with the house (don’t even know how bad it is yet), and between that, and my various health problems, and being trapped in an environment that my body cannot handle, and barely getting any actual rest, and covid that the world is pretending doesn’t exist, and the stress of other things, and knowing there is realistically no solution for my health with my specific combination of problems and situation and the way the healthcare system is… It’s getting harder to, well, not “pretend things are ok.” I haven’t been doing that. But harder to talk about books and movies and games and other things. It feels sort of fake. Like, my life is falling apart, why does this even matter? I don’t even know how much longer I’ll be able to do this, so what’s the point? I know that logically I’m stuck with this life, so the best I can do is at least try to find things that bring me joy when and where I’m able to, while I’m still able to. It’s harder than it sounds though. I’m also just so exhausted. Physically and mentally. Even watching a half hour show is too exhausting or too painful for my head or too hard to focus on some days, and those are still my relatively “good” days when I’m not sick, haven’t just gone to an appointment, etc. And it’s only going to get worse.

Fourteen years I’ve been chronically ill and collecting more and more problems and trying to keep going and finding joy, despite everything. It wears you down over time. Especially when you don’t have a support system. I know a few of you care, and that does mean something to me, but it’s not enough to fix things, you know?

I don’t want to give up my blog though. Not yet, at least. I’m still trying. I just sometimes go a week or two without posting because I don’t feel up to it or didn’t read a book that I liked, and it is what it is. Maybe that will just make it more special when I do post.

I don’t really have anything else to report. Oh, I did watch the movie Wicked. It was enjoyable, obviously great costumes and choreographies and all that, but it wasn’t particularly memorable for me. Though I do have one of the songs stuck in my head now that I’m talking about it, because when I was in 10th grade, we used three of the songs in a show I was in, and you never forget the lyrics to songs you’ve heard 7000 times lol.

A bit random, but does anyone have any funny, chill sorta podcasts you recommend?

One little good thing is that I did get a gorgeous book in the mail, but you’ll have to wait for my review or next month’s update to see it because I didn’t get a photo yet.

Blog/Bookish Updates:

Nothing this month.

Books I Received for Review:

Ok, well, this is the book I got in the mail, spoiler for that surprise 😅 But you’ll just have to look at the ebook cover for now.

Books I Finished:

If you’re considering buying any of these books from Amazon, I’d really appreciate if you’d use my affiliate link!

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune – A bit of a rough start, but I was enjoying the fun adventure and sweet characters once I got further in.

Dauntless Summer by Emmaline Strange – A fun hate-to-love queer fantasy romance.

(Side Note: Do I have to keep saying when the books I read are queer? 99% of what I read is queer, it would be easier to just say when it’s not lol.)

Kit & Basie by Tess Carletta – I had a couple issues, but I mostly enjoyed this. It was a calm and sweet lightly fantasy romance about a person who was mostly just a normal guy aside from being immortal.

Phantom and Rook by Aelina Isaacs – There were a lot of characters to remember and fantasy things that weren’t explained (the audiobook doesn’t have the index stuff) and the story wasn’t very focused. But it was a pretty chill fantasy story, and I might be willing to give the second book a try if it gets an audiobook.