Books of 2018

A list of the books I read completely* in 2018.

Books I liked most in bold
Those for bookclub in italic
Both... in well, both

Motherest - Kristen Iskandrian
Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
The Impossible Fortress - Jason Rekulak
Salt to the Sea - Ruta Sepetys
You Are a Badass at Making Money - Jen Sincero
Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself - Joe Dispenza
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
Heal Your Body - Louise L. Hay
Body of Work - Pamela Slim
All Our Yesterdays - Cristin Terrill
Van Life - Foster Huntington
Voyager - Diana Gabaldon
Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself - Mark Epstein
How to Live a Good Life - Jonathan Fields
Strange the Dreamer - Laini Taylor
Indestructible - Allison Fallon
Wish You Were Here - Renee Carlino
Girls Burn Brighter - Shobha Rao
The Year Of Less - Cait Flanders
Come Matter Here - Hannah Brencher
Heart Talk - Cleo Wade
In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It - Lauren Graham
Chasing Chaos - Jessica Alexander
Every Last Word - Tamara Ireland Stone
Girl, Wash Your Face - Rachel Hollis
Emergency Contact - Mary H.K. Choi
The Dirty Book Club - Lisi Harrison
Love, Life and the List - Kasie West
F*ck Him: Nice Girls Always Finish Single - Brian Keephimattracted (I'll go ahead and roll my own eyes at this)
The Bucket List - Georgia Clark
You're Not Lost - Maxie McCoy
Legendary - Stephanie Garber
Present Over Perfect - Shauna Niequist (second read)
The Immortalists - Chloe Benjamin
I'm Fine... And Other Lies - Whitney Cummings
The Paper Magician - Charlie Holberg
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (second read)
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows - Balli Kaur Jaswal
The Septembers of Shiraz - Dalia Sofer
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
The Radius of Us - Marie Marquardt
Skipping Christmas - John Grisham
How to Be Single - Liz Tuccillo
Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul - Nikita Gill
This Love Story Will Self Destruct - Leslie Cohen
Becoming - Michelle Obama


*There were many I started and decided not to finish

On Sunday

Overall the week was incredible. Great things are on the horizon, and great things are here now.

Highs:
+ Next steps from coaching session
+ Dancing on a Thursday
+ Talking to and dancing with J, who knows, but talking is better than not.
+ Allison Fallon's Indestructible event as a whole
+ Seeing Christine and so many others again, the vibe, the yoga (even when I was mentally very resistant), having yoga pants in my car (ended up being absolutely necessary), Jill and Kate's performance... so many things about the event were over the moon wonderful
+ Looking at a room in a house in E. Nash, the ladies were awesome, the puppies were awesome... staying hopeful for my upcoming move
+ Going to coffee with Ally and her family the next morning at the post. Such wonderful people. So many goals, so much learning.
+ Brunch with Cacey. I don't laugh that much with anyone else, such a gem in my life.

Lows:
- Tired/emotional blah on Friday because of not enough sleep Thursday (worth it overall)
- Not knowing where I am moving yet
- Stomach still being off and on weird

Gratitude:
+ Honestly a lot of gratitude for myself lately, for showing up, for spending time doing things that are uncomfortable but have such a great reward, for sticking with talk therapy, for making an effort to move forward, for continuing to learn how to show up for myself.
+ The sun on Friday, wish it could have stayed, but it was glorious and I know it's coming back soon
+ For my friends, for laughter, for brunch on Sunday, for having the means to go to the doc, for finding a great coach.

Articles I Enjoyed:
Japanese Women Are Shoplifting to Find Community and Meaning In JailHow very strange and sad that this is how people are finding community.

Why Dance Is Just As Important As MathHeck yes. Love this. Teach kids young and maybe less people will need to be sloshed to dance.

On Repeat:
Jordan Davis - the whole dang album. Such poppy, summer, somewhat country goodness.



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March

March was so, so, SO full of great and wonderful things. Oh my goodness. My birthday spent with friends, family here that weekend, trying new yoga classes through the month, leaning into friends on Saturdays and Sundays exploring East Nashville and then capping it off with a visit from a wonderful and close friend. March was crazy beautiful. It was hard and frustrating, it was fun and full of laughter and realizations... all the realizations.

Started working with a career coach, very excited about that, can't wait to see what we come up with that what changes happen moving forward. My whole dang life could look completely different in 90 days. I'm walking the edge of scared but mostly excited.

Songs/Albums on repeat:
Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour: Makes me want to get in the car and drive West.
Runaway June - Wild West: All the feels with this song
Jason Aldean - Gettin' Warmed Up

Articles I loved:

What It's Like to Quit Social Media As a Teenager- So much respect for teens that are quitting social media. I didn't grow up with it and I'm still having a hard time letting go of Instagram. I'm hoping that there will be more of a move toward this, or at the very least, less involvement than those just graduating college now. I would love to see an evening out.

I Tried to Use Personality Quizzes to Save My Relationship"I wrote letters I’d never send — more than 8,000 words analyzing what went wrong. Could I have been unknowingly cruel? Had my avoidance planted too many seeds of doubt, tapered my enthusiasm? Maybe I was suspicious of our love from the start, had always believed that I would not be good enough for him. Or maybe it was the way we couldn’t handle a conflict."
I don't know that there's anything I could relate to more when it comes to the end of a relationship.

What People Who are Lucky In Love Have In Common-At weddings, I sometimes think that the best gift I could give the bride and groom is a note that reads: “You’ll have some bad days!”
-To be lucky in love, you need to replace the squirm-​­inducing fear of settling with the exciting idea of investing. Put time and effort and trust and love into a person, and you get huge dividends.
Noted.

Green Funerals: Need to Know
I have said more than once I want to be cremated, I don't want to take up space in the earth with a box, but after reading this, I think maybe being part of a tree, or being buried in biodegradable cloth might just be the way to go. Is that morbid to think about? I just want to do the least damage possible and return to the Earth.

Gratitude Comes From Noticing Your Life, Not Thinking About It"...simply making the case to ourselves that we have reasons to feel grateful doesn’t necessarily make us feel grateful.

Gratitude, when we do genuinely feel it, arises from experiences we are currently having, not from evaluating our lives in our heads. When you feel lonely, for example, simply remembering that you have friends is a dull, nominal comfort compared to how wonderful it feels when one of those friends calls you out of the blue. Reflecting on the good fortune of having a fixed address is nice, but stepping inside your front door after a cold and rainy walk home is sublime.

The experience, not the idea, is what matters. So if you want to feel grateful, forget the thinking exercises. Look for your good fortune not in some abstract assessment of your life situation, but in your experience right in this moment. What can you see, feel, hear, or sense, right here in the present, that’s helpful, pleasant, or beautiful?"
Thank you to this article so much. Writing gratitude at the end of the day felt so forced. This makes more sense. I've started noticing in moments, what there is to be grateful for.



The Future of Paint? Bacteria?!

Yumna Al-Arashi Captures the Last Generation of Muslim Women With Facial Tattoos"Although many women adorn their faces for cosmetic reasons, most believe that the intricate drawings connect them with the spiritual world and protect their households from evil forces. In either case, Yumna says, the tattoos are a manifestation of female strength: 'These metaphysical connections translate as very powerful in these communities. Women are authoritative figures. They are the family’s decision-makers, they understand the land and animals’ needs best, they know how to use herbs to heal and they can cook. These are all essential survival skills.' The tattoos are symbols of matriarchal power in communities where women sustain the livelihood of their families. Men, Yumna says, are merely there to assist."
Glad that this is being captured, sad that a matriarchal society is losing ground.

An intro to the most joy inspiring human, Ruthie Lindsey. Been Love, Love, Loving everything I've read about her. If you want some gratitude/joy inspiration watch her Insta stories. So ready for her podcast to come out!

Dear Kids, You Don't Ever Have to Pretend"Sometimes your grumpiness will be met by my grumpiness, or I’ll react wrongly to your excitement. I will not always get it right, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting it wrong. I’m just figuring it all out too and I promise to apologize when I realize I’ve messed up."
A really beautiful letter to kids (everyone) about being honest about who you are. To yourself, and then also to others.

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On Sunday

This week has been taken up by rest. Lost of body enforced rest. Monday I took Chels back to the airport and when home with a sore throat. I went to work the next day but by the end of it felt quite off. That night started a 5 day stomach circus that was equally strange and annoying. I'm trying to think of what else has happened this weekend, but for the most part it has been the attempt at recovery.

Highs:
+ Rest, so much rest
+ Starting Strange the Dreamer (loving it)
+ Rewatching New Girl from the beginning
+ not feeling guilty for sleeping because I physically couldn't do much else

Lows:
- stomach bug
- not hearing back from person I was thinking of renting a room from
- going for legal advice about the car fin issue and being told winning in small claims would be a long shot

Gratitude:
+ While this sickness was anything but fun I am quite grateful I had PTO

Article(s) Enjoyed:
+ How I Learned to Love Myself

For me, the first step to learning to love myself was learning to notice myself. It was a slow process of peeling my identity away from the others I had glued it to. Over time, I learned:

– I am not my relationships.
– I am not what people think of me.
– I am not my failures.
– I am not my successes.

I am myself. Regardless.

I've been thinking about this a lot, SO MUCH, myself lately. That I am not only the perspective of other people. I am. I exist. It's not good or bad, it just is sometimes. Different people are going to have different experiences of me, some great, some definitely not great, but neither of those are the truth of me. I just am.

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Three Years

As of October 3nd I have lived in Nashville for three whole years. Crazy. Three years ago I got into my car, with red rimmed eyes, scared as fuck, and headed East. The journey had started, the excitement started setting in the second day, there was no going back, and it was me and the road.

The roadtrip was and wasn't what I thought it would be. The memories of Horseshoe Bend still blow my mind, the entire trip is worth that one morning alone. Driving by different state signs, looking into gas station shops for cheap blankets, meeting a blogging friend in person, seeing Blue Hole in New Mexico. And even if the places visited weren't enough, the fact that I went solo across the states and didn't even think much about it. The eyes red rimmed from crying weren't about the journey, but how far the destination was from home.

But I've written about that part several times before, and while it might be good to revisit in depth again someday, today is about Nashville and the time I've spent here. I definitely look more fondly on the 5 days it took to get here than I do on the three years. There's been a lot of hard work to be done here. Not in jobs, but in my mind. I promised myself that this was the last get up and go, that after this it was time to stick it out and face it. I had begun to recognize the need for financial stability so my lacking bank account kept me accountable and in one spot.

Here I pause, not sure how to continue. I've had such a block when talking about or writing about Nashville. I've wanted it to be pretty, I think I am still comparing reality with the idea I had in my mind when I moved here. This grand change that would all lead to me living the American Dream. I would move here, get in with a job I loved, make friends and line dance all the time, meet a man that grew up around farms, a slow and steady type. I'd at some point fall in love, with the man, with the career, with the city. I didn't think about skeletons in the closet, or people being married out here at 22, or that I still didn't know what I wanted to do or how to get to that dream career. I didn't think about my demons I had yet to work through, the self acceptance I did not have. I didn't think about how this city was growing at an alarming rate and that traffic wasn't all that much better than the place I left. Didn't think about how I was moving from one place where buildings were popping up all over to another.

I didn't think about how it would be to start over in a city where I didn't know one single person. That the times I had up and moved before I had always known a couple people, or had school or a job to gather friends with. Truthfully, I didn't think about picking up and leaving Nashville not just because of low funds but because the idea of starting over again, just like I had here, seemed terrifying. I was tired.

It was good that I didn't think about any of that, because it got me here. If I had known all those details I probably would have stayed put, miserable. That's not to say I couldn't have turned it around at home, but I wasn't on the path to.



I am not disappointed that I came here three years ago. I am even glad I have stayed. People have told me it's okay to give up on this place, it's okay to come home, but something inside me doggedly protested. I don't know what the future holds when this lease is up. I want to say I'll have an incredibly fitting job that I make good great money at that affords me a room and a bathroom in a house and a backyard so I can adopt a dog. The other part of me wonders if it's time to find those things a lot closer to home, because while still young and healthy, my parents won't be around forever and the reality of that, and the maximizing of the time I have left, feels important.
And still yet there a deeper part of me thinking that it's not time to settle down yet. That I may have bounced between Portland and home and then here but it wasn't ALL about running. There was truth to wanting to see and try new things. The realities of what I want to experience are opening up again, and they are scary, and I think that's why I talked myself out of them before, but they are strong and I want to chase them because I don't want to keep asking "is this all there is?"

Where does that leave me, three years and four months in? Dreaming, wondering, exploring ideas and getting the most I can out of Nashville, just in case it's time to go somewhere new soon.

I'm grateful, I wasn't when I started writing this, but I am now. Nashville was nothing like I dreamed it to be, and that was hard, but the lessons I'm learning and the work I am doing make it so very worth it.

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Favorite Books of 2017

I started this year wanting to read only 2 books a month... that did not work. My reason was that I wanted to be more intentional about the books I read. While the number didn't work for me, the practice of reading more intentionally sunk in and I was able to make choices based on what I really wanted to read vs what was available. Even then, I ended up reading over 60 books and these 9 were my favorites.

The Crossroads of Should and Must
In the Company of Women
The Confidence Code
Finding God in the Waves
The Shack
The Comet Seekers
We are Okay
Dress Codes for Small Towns
Starfish

I am going to continue being intentional with what I read, probably being even more selective this year than last. I love reading, and I think it's very important to keep reading, but I also want to spend more time in my life.

So there's that.

Hope all of your 2017 reading was successful and happy page turning for 2018!

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Add me to the list of things you drink to forget.