Today’s “Best of 2017” post is my favorite one of them all: revealing my top 10 books of the year. In 2017, I read 117 books, which is my highest yearly total ever. My mind is slightly blown at that number because I didn’t know if I had it in me to even read 100 books, let alone blow that goal out of the water. Again, I will reiterate that my life is very conducive to reading as I am single, live alone, and don’t have kids. And I have a dog that is very restless at night, so I tend to get a lot of reading done while waiting for him to fall asleep. 🙂 Oh, and yeah, I make the time for reading. That’s important. I love to read, so I carve out the time to do so. The only way to read more is to… read more, you know?

With all that said, let’s dive into my top 10 books from 2017!

10) Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

There was just something about this novel that struck me. It was quiet and slow-moving and filled with complex characters. It gave me that feeling of why I love to read: books like these, books that just burrow into your soul, even if they aren’t the most fast-paced of novels. Major Pettigrew is sardonic and opinionated and everything I want in a main character.

9) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 

I read this novel in February, right when the political climate felt the most intense and the most depressing. The writing is heartbreakingly beautiful and the plot is so scary, but feels so relevant for our time. It’s one of those books that just completely transports you and causes you to think about what you’d do if you had to live in that kind of society.

8) The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner 

This is the first book I’ve read about a polygamist cult, and it was so well-written. I felt as if I was right there with Ruth, every scene was descriptive and vividly drawn. It was also the type of book that would have been so damn unbelievable if it had been a work of fiction – this is something we discussed at book club. We would have thought the plot went way too far! But nope, this was Ruth’s real life and these are things she went through as a child and young adult. It’s frightening, but so worth the read.

7) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond 

I took my time with this book and that’s exactly what it calls for. It’s dense but engaging, and talks about the housing crisis, focusing on a specific community in Milwaukee. Desmond put so much work into this book – both from a research and a writing perspective, and it’s one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I don’t typically read dense nonfiction, but as someone who grew up poor (not in poverty, but poor), I had a real connection with the overall message.

6) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng’s books start with the end: you know what happens, but you have no idea how the characters got there. And then she takes you to where the story really began, so you can figure out the characters’ motivations. Her books are so exquisitely written and each book covers a complex issue in an engaging and interesting way. She’s going to be one of those “must read everything she writes” authors for me.

5) The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Oh, this book just absolutely captivated me. It was one of the first ones I read this year, so that tells you something that it stayed with me this long (and 100+ books later!) I cannot believe how young this author is, nor that it is her first novel because the writing style was on par with that of a veteran novelist. The voice of this novel is distinct and she draws on an issue that has such important relevance today.

4) Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

I loved this memoir about Roxane Gay’s relationship with food and her body. It’s a book that is so relevant to me and that I could take such comfort in, even though her words were so brutally honest at times that they hit me at my core. They are words I have spoken to myself but haven’t wanted to give voice to. Gay is so goddamn vulnerable with this memoir and I applaud her for that because if there’s anything I know about being a fat person, it is that calling attention to my body is the hardest thing to do. A must-read for anyone, whether you also identify as a fat person or you have trouble empathizing with fat people (…which is very common in our fat-phobic society.)

3) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 

This novel was my favorite reading experience of 2017. Not necessarily my favorite book, but the most fun to read by far. It’s filled with 80s pop culture and funny characters and intense action scenes, and I expected to really enjoy it, but the novel far exceeded my expectations. I just couldn’t get enough of it and never wanted it to end. It reminded me a lot of my experience with reading The Martian, as both novels are in a genre I don’t typically read (science fiction).

2) This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Oh, my heavens, this book stole my heart right from the get-go. It was the book that I was forever recommending to friends because I literally want everyone I know to read it. Not only does it have a really important message and is so timely for what’s going on in the world today, but the characters are just so darn engaging and charismatic that it wasn’t hard to root for them. Rosie and Penn are #couplegoals for sure.

1) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

It honestly wasn’t hard to pick this as my favorite read of the year because no book impacted me on the level that The Hate U Give impacted me. It’s a book that everyone – and I do mean everyone – needs to read, most especially those who don’t understand the Black Lives Matter movement. This book made me so goddamn angry at the injustice black people face on a daily basis, a level of injustice that I just don’t understand in my white bubble of privilege. This book made me laugh and want to hug every character. I thought the language of the book was so perfectly written and I had chills with one of the ending scenes and just, yes. Go read this book. If you haven’t read it, stop everything and do so. You won’t regret it.

What was the best book you read in 2017?

Don’t forget to fill out my reader survey! It’s 100% anonymous. 🙂

In today’s “Best of 2017” post, we’re taking a journey through my blog posts from the past year. In 2017, I wrote 103 posts, which is right around the amount I wrote last year. I try to write an average of two posts per week, publishing on Tuesdays and Fridays. In August, I didn’t publish any blog posts due to my blogging break and in October, I published my highest total of 14 posts (seven of those being my “Week in the Life” series).

Here’s what resonated the most with readers this year. These are my top 10 blog posts by traffic:

1. What It’s Like to Date a Highly Sensitive Person
2. Book Review: Kiss Carlo by Adriana Trigiani
3. Book Review: Cocoa Beach by Beatriz Williams
4. On Taking Care of a Dog at the End of His Life
5. What People Don’t Understand about Social Anxiety
6. My Social Anxiety Is Not a Weakness
7. What It Means to Grow Up Poor
8. On My 30th Birthday
9. Book Review: Extreme You by Sarah Robb O’Hagan
10. When You’re Not Okay

What this list tells me is that readers love when I open up about my social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and high sensitivity. While three of my book reviews made it into my top 10, it’s hard to count those as favorites with readers because those posts are cross-posted onto another website and I don’t get nearly any engagement with them. They are anomalies, really. So, basically, you love when I get vulnerable. Noted.

Now, let’s dig into the meat of this post, which is a list of some of my more favorite posts from the year. I have completed this list of posts for four years now and it’s always so much fun to go back through my posts and pick out some of the better ones that I want to highlight. While I try to have a good mixture of light-hearted posts with my personal essays, there’s no doubt that the personal essays are where I get to flex most of my creative muscle.

My favorite post was This is What Democracy Looks Like, where I reflected on participating in the Women’s March in St. Petersburg and how my political views have changed over time.

What I am is a liberal Democrat with a passion for human rights, most especially for women and the LGBTQIA community. I’m pro-choice, which is not the same as being pro-abortion. Then again, being pro-life isn’t the same as being pro-all life. What I do believe is that women should have access to the services they need and, in some cases, that includes abortion services. What I believe is that I have zero right to tell a woman what she should do with her body. And neither does anyone else.

My most popular post was What It’s Like to Date as a Highly Sensitive Person, where I give 8 ways dating as an HSP is completely different than dating as a non-HSP.

Being a highly sensitive person means life is more intense for me, which makes sense that dating would be a more intense situation. Love comes very easily for me because I am so in tune with my emotions and my surroundings, so I tend to fall in and out of love quickly. (Some may say that’s not really love, and I won’t argue the point. I just think it’s the easiest way to explain how I feel.) But isn’t there such a radical beauty to that? It means I get to experience love in all it’s glory again and again and again.

My most helpful post was How to Read More This Year, where I give five tips on how you can begin to carve out more time for reading.

I read before bed every single night. Sometimes, I can only manage a chapter before my eyes are too tired to focus and sometimes, I get in bed so early that I can read for 45 minutes or more. This is when I get the majority of my reading done. It’s such a habit for me that I feel weird if I go to bed without reading, even if it’s just a few pages. If you find that those hours right before you go to sleep are spent scrolling through Instagram or reading terrible news stories on Twitter, instead plug in your phone, set your alarm, and put it on Do Not Disturb. Then snuggle into bed with your book and read until you get sleepy. It’s the perfect end-of-the-day activity!

A post whose success surprised me was When You’re Not Okay, where I talk about being sad and some of the things I do to fight my way out of a funk.

“This too shall pass.” “Feel your feelings.” “It’s okay to not be okay all of the time.” “You will get through this now because you’ve gotten through this before.” I have a bunch of mantras I turn to when I’m feeling down. Mostly, I like to remind myself that it is okay to be sad. I am not a robot, I am a complex human being and all of my emotions are valid, even the ones I don’t necessarily enjoy. I also like to remind myself that I will not always be sad. I will not always feel so defeated by life. Find a mantra and repeat it over and over and over again until you start believing it.

A post I didn’t feel got the attention it deserved was When Your Anxiety Looks & Feels Different, where I open up about my anxiety struggles and implore those struggling to get help, even if their anxiety looks different than what is portrayed online and in movies/TV.

My anxiety did not look like the anxiety I saw from other people who opened up about their struggles, so I thought that maybe because it didn’t affect my life in the same way that I didn’t deserve medication. Most days I was okay! Perfectly happy, even. And then, out of the blue, everything would fall apart and I’d feel as if my world was crashing down on me and I was swimming underwater and didn’t know how to reach the air. But then I’d fight my way out of it and be okay and convince myself that I didn’t really need meds. It didn’t affect me “enough.”

My most beautiful post was On Taking Care of a Dog at the End of His Life, where I discuss a recent diagnosis from Dutch’s vet and how I’m processing the news.

He’s been such a big part of my life for so long. It’s hard to imagine living life without him. Every time I think about going home and him not being there, a piece of my heart cracks. For the past eight years, every time I come home, he’s there. But the reality of our dogs is that they live short lives and we have to have the strength to let them go. I’m just hoping Dutch will give me some time to find that strength.

The post I was most scared to push publish on was What People Don’t Understand About Social Anxiety, which was in response to a mean comment someone left on my blog.

When I’m in my logical mind, I know that nobody cares how I park my car. I know that I’m not an idiot if I have to look around a while before spotting my friends in a restaurant. I know that. But social anxiety does not play on logic; it plays on our biggest fears. Our fear of being judged harshly, of people laughing at us, of being embarrassed. So, yes, I will worry about people judging me for how I parked my car because that’s how my social anxiety works. You don’t need to tell me it’s silly because I know it is. I already feel completely ridiculous by how crippled I get by my thoughts when I’m worried about a social event. I already feel as if there’s something wrong with me because I get so damn worried all the time about things most other people don’t even concern themselves about. But social anxiety is not about logic, so please don’t make someone feel bad for the things they are fearful of. That’s not helpful, that’s harmful.

The post I am most proud of was A Year-By-Year Review of My Twenties, where I explored each year of my twenties and saw just how far I’ve come over the last decade.

For the past two years, I’ve documented my year month-by-month, assigning the emotion I was feeling most strongly to each month. I thought it might be fun to document my twenties in the same way, which meant I had to dig through my blog’s archives and my own memories to figure out exactly what happened each year and how I was feeling. It was an interesting experience, helping me to see just how damn far I’ve come in ten years. I can’t believe that ten years ago, I was a scared college student who thought she was meant to be an elementary school teacher. How times have changed, eh?

It’s been a great year of blog posts and I want to make 2018 even better! While I have my own specific ideas of what I want for my blog next year, I wanted to make sure what I want aligns with what my readers are craving. It’s true that I don’t write for an audience, but this blog wouldn’t be what it is without people engaging with my posts and helping me feel less alone in this crazy world. So, if you have a minute, would you mind filling out my survey and letting me know more about who you are and what content resonates with you the best? I’d greatly appreciate it! Simply go here to fill out my survey!

Happy Tuesday, friends! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. I know I did. I was spoiled rotten with gifts and enjoyed time with my family in a very low-key way. It’s back to reality for me, as I’m at work today (womp), but at least it’s a short week, right?

Today begins my favorite series on my blog, my “Best of…” series. At the end of every year, I like to take the time to look back on the year with a series of posts and I’m kicking things off with this end-of-year survey that I’ve completed for three years in a row now. This is such a fun way to look back on my year and it really makes me think about everything I have and haven’t accomplished. Feel free to use it on your own blog!

1) What did you do in 2017 that you’ve never done before?

I participated in a political protest. I called my senators. I got a tattoo. I started taking anti-anxiety medication. I replaced the windshield on my car – twice. My writing was published on Thought Catalog.

2) Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I kept some of my new year’s resolutions, but not all of them. And yes, I already have my list prepared for 2018!

3) Did anyone close to you give birth?

No.

4) Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5) What places did you visit?

San Juan, Puerto Rico and Asheville, North Carolina. Two incredible destinations!

6) What would you like to have in 2018 that you didn’t have in 2017?

A more balanced look to my health. 2017 wasn’t my healthiest year in terms of diet and weight, and I really want to change that in 2018. At the very least, I want to eat healthier and exercise more, even if that doesn’t amount to losing weight. I’d also like to fall in love. I’m hoping 2018 is my year for that.

7) What dates from 2017 will be etched in your memory forever?

January 21, the day I marched in the Women’s March. And November 4, the first day of my vacation to Asheville where I saw fall colors for the first time in my life!

8) What was your biggest achievement this year?

Hm… perhaps getting my writing published on Thought Catalog. I also had some great career moments in 2017. I had a fantastic annual review that came with a significant pay raise and was named the employee of the month runner-up in November.

9) What was your biggest failure?

I made a lot of mistakes with my finances this year. I really want to change that in 2018 and find a better way to manage my finances.

10) Did you suffer from illness or injury?

I suffered from diverticulitis in April, a chest cold in September, and a fractured ankle and road rash in December. This has not been my healthiest year!

11) What was the best thing you bought?

My laptop! My old faithful laptop that I’ve had for five or six years finally died a painful death, which meant I had to buy a new one. I really enjoy my new laptop, especially considering I don’t have to keep it plugged into a power source constantly like my old laptop. 😉

12) Where did most of your money go?

Well, aside from bills and student loans, probably to food. I spend a lot of money on food, whether that’s groceries or eating out. I’m hoping to track my expenses much more thoroughly in 2018, so I can get an accurate read on just where my money is going.

13) What did you get really, really excited about?

Probably traveling. I always get so, so excited right before my trips and I was most especially excited right before we left for Asheville.

14) What authors did you discover in 2017?

Beatriz Williams, who writes really interesting historical fiction that takes place in the 1920s-1930s. I read two books from her this year and have her other titles on my TBR.

Louise Penny, who writes cozy mysteries and is most especially known for her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. I read the first two books in the series this year.

For romance authors, I discovered some new favorites: Penny Reid, Katee Robert, and Sarah Morgan.

15) Compared to this time last year, are you a) happier or sadder, b) thinner or fatter, c) richer or poorer?

Maybe sadder because this time last year, I was seeing someone so my life felt a bit more bright. I’m fatter but richer.

16) What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I had gone on more dates, saved more money, and written more fiction.

17) What do you wish you’d done less of?

Spending money on unnecessary things. Beating myself up for things beyond my control.

18) How did you spend Christmas?

I woke up naturally at my apartment and slowly got ready for the day. Around 10, I loaded up my car with my presents, and Dutch and I headed to my mom’s (with a pit stop at Starbucks for coffee and hot chocolate!) I just hung out with my mom and stepdad, reading my book and playing games on my phone until my brother and his family came over a little after 2. From there, we opened presents, had a low-key “linner” meal, played trivia, and watched some of the Steelers/Texans game. A perfect Christmas Day, in my opinion. 🙂

19) What was your favorite TV program?

I only watched a handful of TV shows this year – Gilmore Girls, The Office, Parks and Rec, Master of None, Grace & Frankie, Scandal, The Carmichael Show, and Mad Men – because I don’t have cable, so I’m limited to the options on Netflix. My favorite was probably Gilmore Girls. I loved the revival episodes, A Year in the Life, and thought it was the perfect ending to this beloved series.

20) What was the best book you read?

Well, I’m going to reveal my favorite book of 2017 later on in the week when I talk about the top 10 books I read this year. But here are the books (excluding romance novels) that I gave 5 stars to this year:

• The Mothers by Brit Bennett
• How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
• The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
• The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
• The Trump Survival Guide by Gene Stone
• With Love from the Inside by Angela Pisel
• You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• Cocoa Beach by Beatriz Williams
• Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch
• Evicted by Matthew Desmond
• I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Escape by Carolyn Jessop
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• Anchored: Finding Hope in the Unexpected by Kayla Aimee
• Hunger by Roxane Gay

21) What did you want and get?

I finally got a tattoo! I’ve been eyeing this design for years and I’m so glad I finally got it done. My tattoo makes me oh-so-happy.

22) What did you want and not get?

Romantic love. I went on dates, but I didn’t meet someone who made my pulse race and knees weak. I want to find that in 2018.

23) What was your favorite film of 2017?

The live-action Beauty and the Beast. It made me cry and fall in love with Belle all over again.

24) What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 30 on my birthday and celebrated with a day of “me.” I took the day off work, slept in, got a pedicure and a massage, spent some time at Starbucks reading, and went out for dinner and dessert with my family. It was the most perfect way to ring in my thirties!

25) What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Losing weight. I think I would have been happier and felt better about myself and my year if I had finally managed to lose some of this blasted weight.

26) Who kept you sane?

My mom, as always. I don’t know what I would do without her!

27) Who did you miss?

My grandma. Always my grandma.

There were so many moments this year that stopped me in my tracks when I realized I will never see her on this earth ever again. She’s gone. I had my time with her and now I have to live the rest of my life without her. It really sucks.

28) Who was the best new person you met?

Hm… most of the new people I met were through my job. And some people I met through dating, but we’re not in touch anymore. Oh, I met a friend’s partner and he’s terrific. And he makes my friend oh-so-happy, which is all I ever want.

29) Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017.

I have a nurturing personality. One of the reasons I’ve been on the fence about having kids is because I didn’t know if I had the right personality for it. I highly value my alone time and sleep, too. But this year was the first year where I started to realize that I do desire motherhood and that I will be a good mother if I get a chance for that. I’m a nurturer in the way I handle Dutch, in the way I treat my friends, in the way I help my mom. And I know I’ll be an excellent mother someday.

30) Show us one of your favorite photos from the year.

This day started out crappy as I broke my ankle while helping a friend move, but it ended beautifully with a 30th birthday celebration that my friends threw me where they showered me with love. In my early twenties, I struggled so much to find my tribe, never believing I was worth one of my own, and I’m glad I somehow managed to find these girls even in the midst of all my inner turmoil. They are everything I need and want in friends.

What did you do in 2017 that you’ve never done before?