1) Student loan forgiveness
I have to start this post with the best news of the week: Biden announcing student loan forgiveness! I have $7,800 left to pay for my undergraduate student loans, which means I am done paying my student loans for-ev-errrrrr. While I haven’t been paying much towards my student loans because of the payment pause and I get a $100 monthly reimbursement from my company to put towards my loans, this is still going to be a huge weight off my shoulders that I don’t have to worry about these dang loans anymore! For me, student loans were the only way I was able to attend college (I also got financial aid and had some scholarships). And that’s true for many, many people like me who didn’t have parents who could pay for their child’s college tuition (and everything else that comes with college life). But then we get out of college with thousands and thousands of dollars in loans we have to pay back, working at jobs that barely pay us enough to live, let alone put hundreds of dollars a month towards paying off our loans. (True story: my salary was $25,000 for the first few years out of college, and this was in 2011-2013!) This news is such a relief to so many of us.
2) A very social week
It has been a very social week for me, which has been great for my loneliness! I had two friend dates on Saturday, lunch with my mom on Monday and then dinner with Bri that evening, and a day at the office on Wednesday where I got to hug a lot of coworkers I haven’t seen since March 2020 and have lunch with two of my fave coworkers! It has done my soul a lot of good to have so much social interaction, even though I really, really wanted to stay home and not go into the office on Wednesday. But I knew I would enjoy being around people, and I did. (Yes, even though I am your classic introvert, I still need social interaction. All people do!) While the loneliness hasn’t quite gone away, I am putting in the effort to ease it and that feels so good.
3) Becoming a mood reader
I’ve been in a weird place with reading lately. It’s not exactly a reading rut; it’s more that I feel very tender emotionally right now, and I’ve been very wary of reading books that feel too dark or hit me in my emotional feels. Maybe it’s time for me to become a mood reader?! I’ve never been one, but I’m starting to understand the appeal. But I need some logistics here: How do you read based on your moods when you’re a library user? Do you just request a whole bunch of books at one time and then pick based on how you’re feeling? I’ve always been someone who reads based on a very strict TBR, but it hasn’t really been working out lately. But I feel very weird about not using a TBR list to set my upcoming reads. Like, who am I without a reading list? Am I just supposed to peruse my shelves and pick up what sounds good at the moment? I feel like I’m free-falling by not having a strict TBR list that sets out my next read!
4) Internet schminternet
I have been having these weird Internet issues, but it only happens to some of my devices. For a while now, my personal laptop hasn’t been able to connect to wifi unless I restart my Internet modem through my Internet provider’s app. My wifi connection works just fine on my work laptop, my TV, and my phone; it was just my personal laptop, leading me to think it was a problem with that laptop (it’s a bit of an older gal). But now, I can’t get my personal laptop to connect to wifi no matter how many times I reset or restart my Internet modem and my wifi connection has stopped working on Kindle. (I was trying to download an e-book to read, please see above, but I couldn’t! Oh, the horror!) I called my Internet provider but even they couldn’t get it to work, so my next step is to have the modem replaced. I’ve had this modem for a while now (6 years) so it’s probably time for an upgrade. Fingers crossed this does the trick!
5) Weekend plans
It’s going to be a fun and busy weekend for me! Today, I have a facial with my favorite esthetician and I’m baking blueberry muffins for book club tomorrow. On Saturday, we’re doing brunch book club at Bri’s house and later, I’m doing my family’s fantasy football draft, which I am very much looking forward to! And on Sunday, Bri and I are meeting to record a few episodes of season two of the podcast! I’m so excited to get back into the podcasting chair with Bri. 🙂
I’m so happy for you re: the loans! It’s different in Canada; student loan debt isn’t SO crazy (we have it, of course, but it’s different).
For reading: I have a TBR list from the library, and I transfer those books to “hold” status when I feel like I want them, depending on how long it will take to get the holds. I admit that I can’t read too many emotional things sometimes. If I have a string of them, I usually request a really light romance or something that just is easy.
This is super helpful. Thank you for sharing your process! I need to look more into the ways I can set up some sort of wish list/hold TBR on my library’s website!
Hooray for fun social plans! I’m glad you are feeding that social need.
And I am a serious mood reader, so I am going to answer this question: “How do you read based on your moods when you’re a library user? Do you just request a whole bunch of books at one time and then pick based on how you’re feeling?” YES. That is exactly what I do. I order a TON of books and then when I get the notification to pick them up, I also browse around and add a few more to my stack. Then I bring them all home and… often end up returning MANY of them (a few times, ALL) without ever reading them. I am a mood audiobook listener as well — I went through a great stretch last month where every book I downloaded was awesome, but then I DNFed three in a row and now I’m taking a hiatus from audio.
Being a mood reader can be frustrating though. I wish I could assign myself books to read — there are so many books in the world I feel like I SHOULD read, but now that I’m no longer in school I find it really hard to force myself to do so. I just end up not reading, and it seems better to read something rather than nothing.
This is super helpful, thank you! I really love the idea of just requesting books to my heart’s content and bringing a whole big stack of books home from the library. That’s what I used to do as a kid, but now I’ve become so tied to my TBR that it feels like free-falling, haha.
I am so excited for everyone who benefits from loan forgiveness. I know it will ease the minds of so many people and I’m so happy about it.
Re: mood reading. I just have a giant pile of books from the library at any given time. Right now I have nine physical library books (those get checked out for 21 days and can be renewed three times, so it’s possible to hold on to them for about two months) and three books checked out through Libby (unfortunately, those I only get for 21 days and aren’t renewable, so I have to babysit my Libby hold list a lot). When I’m ready to read a new book, I just look at my pile and see what I’m in the mood for. I think we read books at about the same rate, so depending on your library system and how long you can have books out, I think this is a doable system for you. (Although I literally live two blocks away from the library and probably go there three days a week, so it’s not out of the way for me. If your library is inconvenient, I guess this isn’t a workable system.)
Right now, I have:
My book club book for next month
1 non-fiction on ebook
1 fantasy on ebook
1 fantasy/romance on ebook
1 memoir
1 magical realism (I think – I don’t know much about this particular book)
2 contemporary fiction
4 sci-fi/fantasy
This has a lot less romance than I normally would have, but I’ve been striking out on romance lately, so I’m leaning hard into SFF because I’ve been on a good streak there. And if worse comes to worse, I’ll pick up the Tolkien books I’ve never read, but that sit on our shelves. (Ha ha. It’s a life goal.) Anyway, I still pick up books from my TBR, but just a lot of them at any given time.
Thank you for giving me such a detailed description of how you pick books to read as a mood reader! This is really helpful and I really want to lean into this new era of bringing home a big stack of books from the library and just reading the one that speaks to me more than others!
I am so glad you will benefit from student loan forgiveness! What a huge weight off your back. But it is also cool that your company provided a benefit for paying for school loans! I, too, had to take out student loans to go to college. I was 1 of 5 kids and there was no way my parents could pay for all of us. I went to a cheap state college, but college is still expensive when you consider room and board and such. I was able to pay my loans off in my 30s and it was the best feeling to be done with them. My undergrad loans were pretty small but my grad school loans were HUGE.
So I am not really a mood reader either but I will suspend holds if I don’t feel drawn to that book at that time. I almost exclusively use the Libby ap, though. I have my library card and Phil’s on there so I can put 30 books on hold in total. And then I have a TBR list in the libby ap – some are new releases but a lot of them are available immediately. So if I don’t feel like reading what is available for me, I’ll suspend the hold and read something immediately available. So I think you could take that sort of approach? I very very very rarely borrow physical books, though. It would be trickier w/ physical books because then you can’t pause the request if a book comes in that you aren’t in the mood for! It would require more active management as you’d have to pause things until you were certain they are the book for you.
But 90% of the time, I am not a mood reader which really does make this all easier to manage!
I love the way you have figured out how to get the Libby app to work for you! (This would make a fun blog post, going into your method!) I only use the Libby app for audiobooks and romances, so I don’t need to pay too close attention to it since I can just find the next book in my list if the one I’m searching for isn’t immediately available. I am really loving the idea of bringing home a big stack of library books to read to my heart’s content but it’s hard to steer myself away from my beloved TBR list!
I am super-excited for anyone who benefits from student loan forgiveness! Best news of the week.
I am sorry to hear about your internet woes. That is super-annoying. I hope the new router will fix things (these things do get “old” and don’t work as well anymore, as I learned from previous experience.)
Oh yes, when I brought my old router into Spectrum, they were like, “Yeah, we don’t even service these anymore,” haha. I got a brand-new router and things are working WONDERFULLY! Yay!
1. YAY for loan forgiveness. I am so happy for everyone who will benefit from this.
2. YAY for fun weekend plans, too!
3. Total mood reader but I’m totally guilty of just… buying the e-books. Then I just scroll through and pick one (my library has a terrible selection for my interests… and so this works better for me… I buy them when they’re on “flash sale” for <$5, for the most part.) So I can't help there, unfortunately.
4. And YAY, saw that the new modem helped! 🙂