It’s now autumn, sorry not sorry summer lovers. The night sky is creeping in earlier and earlier, the mornings and nights are getting a bit less obnoxiously hot, and all forms of pumpkin confectioneries are out for sale.

Cozy season is officially here!

I didn’t plan to take a hiatus but things got pretty busy the past few months and unfortunately, I had to step away for a bit. I thought that today, I’d do a little catch up session with you all and share what I’ve been working on or loving during the past few months I’ve been offline.

Beach Days

I’ve been going to the beach so much more. Unfortunately, that’s slowed down in the recent weeks because the rain has been non stop. It rains as soon as the work day ends, so I haven’t been able to do my wind down routine at the beach like I had been throughout the summer. And when it’s not raining, it’s so unbearably hot that I just may melt into a puddle of chocolate if I attempt to stay out for more than ten minutes. In all seriousness, reading by the beach and watching the day slip into night has been so healing. It’s one of my new favorite self-care treats.

Journaling

I’ve also gotten back into journaling. I picked up a new journal half way through the year, because I was desperate for a fresh start. I had been maintaining a journal from the start of the year but I wanted to change the way I journaled. I felt guilty about it at first and spent way too much time shaming myself over not finishing the journal I originally had but I knew that if I wanted to change the way I was feeling inside, I needed to do something on the outside to help push me to the right direction. If that’s a new notebook full of empty pages and new hope, then I’m going to go ahead and get a new notebook.

Solo Movie Dates

This is a recent thing, but I’ve started doing solo trips to the movies. There’s a cozy little strip mall where there’s a cute, tiny, theater cushioned in between restaurants, an ice cream parlor, and an outside bar. Treating myself to a movie after work has been the perfect way to start the weekend. Recently, I drove an hour out to watch “Bottoms” and I loved every minute of it. I made it a little self care day and did a lot of shopping before the movies. There’s something so comforting about watching a movie with a bunch of strangers and relishing in the moment of being completely, authentically you but also one with a community of people who are laughing, hooting, and gasping at the same thing.

New Writing Project

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but last November, I participated in NaNoWriMo. It was the first NaNoWriMo I’ve ever won and it was the first draft of something where I truly let myself go and just write. I loved the routine it forced me into and how each day, at least for an hour or two, I was forcing my brain to relax and just disappear into a fantasy world. I never finished the draft but I recently got an idea for a middle grade novel that I’ve spent the past few days roughly outlining. I’m definitely not a plotter. The idea of outlining in detail stresses me out and I tend to lose interest in my project really fast so I have a little google doc where I word vomited some ideas and character names, and I’m forcing myself to be happy with that and just start writing. The more I overthink, the more likely I am to stress out about the whole thing and never just write. Writing is the one thing that forces me to stop overthinking and just be.

Let’s Talk September Now!

My reading has definitely slowed down the past few months and I’m trying to learn to embrace it. I’m not really concerned about an end of year reading goal, but I do measure how well a week has gone by how many books I’ve managed to read. It’s not a good way of measuring quality of life lol, but a reader’s gonna do silly reader things.

That being said, I really want to start to pick up more big fantasy books this month. My last read of August was “The Jasad Heir” by Sara Hashem and I really enjoyed how slow yet deeply I enjoyed that book. It wasn’t a slow read but I didn’t have the time to sit down each night and blow through a ton of pages. I liked how immersive it felt to read a fantasy slowly.

Some of the fantasy reads I want to read this month are “Fevered Star” by Rebecca Roanhorse, “Crescent City” by Sarah J. Maas, and start the second book in the Percy Jackson series, “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” by Rick Riordan.

I absolutely enjoyed “Black Sun” by Rebecca Roanhorse when I read it a couple of years ago. It’s stuck with me for so long that I can still picture everything that happened in “Black Sun” vividly enough that I don’t feel the need to reread it. Also, the cliffhanger at the end of “Black Sun” was amazing so “Fevered Star” is pretty high up on my September TBR. I read ACOTAR this year and I’ve been meaning to pick up “Crescent City” close to the paperback release of the second book so I can jump from book one to book two easily. Now that September’s finally arrived and the paperback edition of the second book is being released later this month, I have no more excuses to put this one off. This year, I started my Percy Jackson reread. I honestly can’t remember if I’ve ever read them after I binged them in middle school. All I know is that it’s been a long time and I really enjoyed rereading the first one a couple of months ago. What’s more cozy than rereading an old favorite during cozy season?

What are your reading plans this September? And what have you been doing this summer? Let’s catch up in the comments!