It’s been 8 weeks since I’ve done a weekly wrap up, let’s do a catch up.
I feel like I’ve been doing Let’s Catch Up Posts way too often and each and every time, it feels monumentally hard. Without fail, my heart starts to run ahead of it’s normal pace, a lump finds its way into my throat, and my fingers freeze over the keyboard. Time is a weird thing. The fact that it’s been 8 weeks since I’ve done a weekly wrap up feels like a number that’s both small and too big. The physical and emotional experience of the past 8 weeks have felt like I’ve lived through 8 months but it feels like time’s passed by so fast, it feels like it’s been 8 days rather than 8 weeks. In other words, it’s like I blinked and it’s been only 8 days but I’ve lived what felt like 8 months. Make it make sense please because I don’t know how to.
I don’t know how to wrap up the past 8 weeks in an articulate way so here’s a quick list of some run on sentences that recap some memorable happenings and realizations:
- Travelled again out west, it was a glorious experience
- Read 8 or 9 books in April which feels crazy
- Fell back in love with middle grade books and honestly believe that they’ve done a big part in preventing me from sinking into a ball of anxiety
- Many anxious spells and nights falling asleep while crying
- Many beach trips to watch and read with the sunset
- Family health scares
- Meal prepping more often and enjoying meal prepping
- Crying more
- Getting back into journaling
- Slowly working my way to validate my inner feelings that I do indeed have anxiety and that randomly crying after your chest feels like it’s being sat on by the Hulk or King Kong (choose your own big boy) isn’t just “stress”
- Sniffing many books in public and getting weird looks but feeling too happy to care because there are little bundles of paper in the world made by people who are both ordinary and extraordinary that offer comfort, validation, and escape from reality and if I could, I’d bottle up the smell of a freshly printed or deeply loved book and wear it around all the time to remind myself that there are things to be happy about when everything feels bleak
- Friendship and playing with babies who are very particular about the way they position their water bottles and how they cannon ball into a pool
- Making way too many pies for a potluck at 11pm on a Thursday night
How have the past few weeks been treating you? What are some highlights? I know they’re called highlights but sometimes, the things we experience that are “highlights” aren’t exactly things that raise us up mentally, emotionally, or physically, so if you to have been struggling a bit and want to share those moments to, feel free to.
In an attempt to reintroduce some form of order back to this Weekly Wrap Up Series, let’s recap my past week.
What I Read
The Lightning Thief by Percy Jackson
This was so fun to reread. I read this series when I was in middle school so that means I haven’t read a book in the PJO universe for more than ten years ago. I wish I didn’t do that math lol. I don’t remember much of the series and I wanted to reread it before the new Percy Jackson book came out late this Summer or early Autumn, whichever distinction you prefer. As I told a friend, the highlight of my rereading experience was reading this book by the ocean and reading the scene where Percy meets Poseidon while sitting amongst washed up seaweed and reading the scene where Annabeth calls Percy seaweed brain for the first time.
King of Wrath by Ana Huang
This is my first Ana Huang book and I’m sold. I picked this up around 10 pm on Saturday night and finished it the next day. I basically read the entire book in one whole sitting. It was addicting and gripping and so swoon worthy lol. Very steamy, ten out of ten recommend. I can’t wait to read more of the author’s works.
What I Watched
I’ve been rewatching the Avengers movies because I mentally don’t have the headspace for trying anything new. Honestly, besides “King of Wrath”, most of the content I consumed this week have been rewatches or rereads. I tend to fall back onto things that I’ve watched before or love when I’m feeling low. My favorite movie has to be “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. Knowing how the Avenger movies wrap up, it felt a bit extra special watching this movie back and catching all the little Easter eggs hidden throughout the movie. I also started rewatching “The Ripper” docuseries and relistening to the corresponding episodes Ash and Alaina did on the “Morbid” podcast. That docuseries is so well put together in an editorial sense but the content of it is so infuriating. The show skips out so much of the case material and listening to the podcast is far more of an informative experience that is both victim focused and more facts heavy than the show. If you haven’t watched the show yet, I recommend listening to the episodes on “Morbid” first and then watching the show. It’ll really give you a bigger picture of what happened in Yorkshire.