Stephany Writes

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 37)

The high of my week was starting NaBloPoMo! I basically started this on a whim, after reading a post from San two days before the challenge was set to begin. It just felt like the right time, since I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year (writing 50,000 words in one month) and since I was away from blogging for most of October. It’s been fun so far and I have my whole month planned out. It feels really good to get back to writing and my blog.

The low of my week was dealing with this minor skin rash beneath my nose. It’s been bothering me for a few weeks now, and I know I should see my doctor about it but at first, I wanted to see if it would go away on its own and then I got sick and didn’t have the energy to worry about it. But it’s still bugging me. Right now, I’m putting Neosporin on it at night and it seems to be helping. I’m going to keep applying it for the next few days to see if it cures the rash. Otherwise, to the doctor I go!

An internet resource I’d like to share is Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter. I subscribed to this newsletter a few months ago, and I really enjoy it. I don’t read every email that comes my way (I typically skip anything involving an interview) but I do love the way she writes about being a woman in today’s society (especially a childless woman) and work. She’s also been doing a deep dive into the weird subculture of Peloton, which I am loving. That was actually the reason I subscribed! As much as I love Peloton and have a special fondness for some of the instructors (Cody Rigsby 4Ever), it is a weird, wacky world and I’ve loved her pieces on the subject.

A podcast episode I enjoyed was an episode of Over My Dead Body. This season has been truly fascinating with lots of interesting twists and turns. I’ve enjoyed it! I don’t listen to a ton of true crime podcasts because I’m too much of a scaredy-cat, but this one is really, really good. This season, they’re following the investigation of a police officer who was murdered.

I’m currently reading four different books at one time! What the what. My “slow but steady” read right now is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes du Mez. I’m reading about a chapter a day. In between that, I’m reading Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig, which I am loving, and Rainy Day Friends by Jill Shalvis. On audio, I’m listening to the 15th book in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, A Better Man. Whew!

The best money I spent was $4 on a package of SUPERPRETZEL Soft Pretzel Bites. You don’t even know how excited I got when I saw these bad boys in the freezer aisle the last time I was in Publix. They haven’t been stocked for over a year at this point, and it’s made me really sad. (They had the regular big pretzels, but not the bites.) I love popping a few bites in the oven for a mid-afternoon snack, and I had to restrain myself from buying out all of the packages.

My plans this weekend include possibly test-driving some cars (my friend who just bought a car said that most dealerships have barely anything to test-drive these days, which is WILD, so we’ll see if I can make this happen). I’m doing it solely for research purposes, as I am not yet ready to buy. I also have Olive’s 2nd birthday party to attend (what a joyous party that will be!) On Sunday, I have a writing date with Mikaela and football with the fam. It should be a good weekend—and it’s going to be a CHILLY one for Florida! (Saturday’s high is 64!)

What was the high of your week?

Categories: Goals

Yearly Goals | Q3 Update

It’s time for my third quarterly check-in on my yearly goals. I should have posted this in October but, you know, life happened. I haven’t been as successful with my yearly goals as I had hoped, but even getting a few accomplished is better than nothing, right? Here’s the progress I made (or didn’t make) in Q3:

1) Buy a new sectional, coffee table, and area rug. 2/3 completed. I bought a new sectional in January and an area rug in September. The coffee table will probably be my birthday gift from my mom.

2) Work out three times a week. I would say that I’ve been about 50% successful with this goal. I struggled in Q1, did much better in Q2, and was successful for most of Q3 aside from a period of 2-3 weeks in August. I’m happy with that progress!

3) Start the process of becoming vegetarian by cutting out red meat and pork and having one meatless day once a week. No progress made. (Will likely not be completed.)

4) Become a regular water drinker. No progress made.

5) Experiment with an elimination diet. No progress made. (Will likely not be completed.)

6) Set a budget and be diligent about it. I’m doing pretty well with this goal, but the goal itself is rather vague so it’s hard to really measure how well I’m doing.

7) At the end of the year, have $3,500 saved in my emergency fund and $3,000 saved in my car down payment fund. This will be a pretty hard goal to accomplish by the end of the year. I need to save $1,100 in my emergency fund and $1,000 in my car fund to get it done. I’m going to try to hit the car goal since saving for a car down payment is my most pressing need.

8) Complete the 2021 Unread Shelf Project. I am trucking along with this challenge:

9) Read The Count of Monte Cristo. Complete! I finished it in August and it was a 5-star read for me.

10) Finish the year with 35% of my books being by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community. I am currently at 39%, which is slightly up from where I was after Q2.

11) Build an earring collection (15+ earrings). I have 8 pairs of earrings (up from 5 in Q2). I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to complete this goal, especially if I “cheat” and buy one of those $20 packs of 10+ earrings at Target. Heh.

12) Start dating again. Complete.

13) Work through one Bible study this year. Not complete. (Will likely not be completed.)

14) Get my third tattoo. Not complete! Hopefully, I will get this done. (I’m always so nervous about going to a tattoo shop, lol.)

15) Stop drinking alcohol. Eh, mostly complete.

Categories: Life

10 Things I Loved in October

1) Beautiful weather. To my delight, Florida started cooling down in October! And by “cooling down,” I mean that we had highs in the low 80s. One morning, I walked out of my apartment and was even a bit chilly! I’ve had the windows open while I work and I really love that I can be outside without sweltering from the heat. Fall!

2) Celebrating Mia’s birthday. My sweet little niece (well, she’s technically my first cousin once removed but that language is so formal!) turned 9 years old this month, and I just do not know where the time has gone. I remember when she was born and now she’s just this super-confident, adorable-as-hell kid. I love her dearly and it was so fun to celebrate her birthday with family and friends.

3) An emergency dental appointment. The only reason I’m marking this as a “love” is that it solved my tooth pain! Remember how I talked about I was having this odd pain whenever I ate, and I thought that maybe a popcorn hull had gotten stuck in my gums? Well, the pain was still there after a week and eating was starting to be an exercise in torture. So I was able to schedule an emergency dental appointment. The dentist couldn’t find anything causing the pain, but he figured it might be some sort of air pocket and that doing a deep clean of that region of my mouth could help. I was due for a dental cleaning anyway, so I was able to get that done at the same appointment. It was a painful appointment because my gums were already feeling a bit sore and digging around in that area didn’t help much. (It took about a week for the soreness from the cleaning to dissipate.) But it solved the issue and now I can eat again without crying! Yay!

4) You Can Sit With Us. I just started listening to this podcast, which is hosted by the wives/partners of The Try Guys. I’ve never seen an episode of The Try Guys, but I was pointed to this podcast from a Reddit thread asking for light-hearted podcasts. It’s exactly that! It’s just four women chit-chatting about life and digging into topics like female friendship, sex, self-care, COVID, and more. It’s not going to change your life by any means, but sometimes, you just want someone light-hearted and fun, and this podcast is exactly that.

5) Lexapro. My dearest little white pill of Lexapro. How it has changed my life over these past few years and specifically, in October. Getting back on my meds was exactly what I needed for my mental health, and now I know that it’s just something my brain needs. I’m so grateful I was able to get a prescription quickly, that it was less than $2 for a 30-day supply, and that my pharmacy was able to fill the script within one day of receiving it.

6) Time off. I scheduled a few random days off in October (a Monday and a Friday) since I had some leftover PTO that I needed to “use or lose” by the end of the year. It was so nice to be able to stretch out my weekend like this! I didn’t make any plans; I let myself sleep in, read as much as I wanted, and have a low-key day at home. It was really great!

7) Amber dates. My friend, Amber, and I got together twice this month and it was much-needed to have some quality time with her. We checked out an Italian spot near her new house and also had a reading date in our favorite park (where an off-leash, super-friendly dog decided to hang out next to us for a while, ha!) Those little adventures were really helpful to me as I was going through my depressive episode.

8) Reorganizing my bathroom. My bathroom closet was really becoming a headache for me, and it was time for a refresh. One of those, remove everything from the closet and reorganize it refreshes. I bought a small lazy Susan to house my first aid supplies and a bunch of miscellaneous products (like nail polish remover, small tissue packets, etc.) I also bought a 3-drawer organizer and I’m using each drawer for a specific purpose: the top drawer for eyeglass wipes, the middle drawer for tampons, and the bottom drawer for nail care products. All of those products were taking up so much space in my bathroom closet because they were all in special packaging. Now they’re all contained! Nothing makes me happier than a super-organized closet, for real.

9) A mom who gets it. Going through depression was hard shit, but it was made a little bit easier thanks to a mom who truly understands. She’s been there, too, and knows how to be there for me in exactly the way I need. She did a lot of listening this month and was constantly checking in on me to see how I was doing. I needed that.

10) Halloween. Halloween was a fun day, even though it was really weird that it was on a Sunday. I got dressed up as a cat, which entailed putting on cat ears and drawing on whiskers, and my mom and I sat out at the end of her driveway to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters. We didn’t get a ton of kiddos (around 30), but that meant by the end of the night, we could tell the kids to take a handful of candy, which I know the older kids were especially happy about, ha. The weather was beautiful, in the 70s with a great breeze, and we had a good time.

Tell me a highlight of October for you!

Categories: Books

What I Read in October

October was an excellent reading month. I finished 10 books and gave the majority of them 4 or 5 stars. I even had a hard time choosing my favorite book of the month, as there were multiple contenders. I’m still way behind on my goal to read 150 books this year (looking like it will be around 130), but that’s okay. Now I just giggle whenever I see the number of books I’m behind in the Goodreads goal tracker!

Let’s dive into the reviews of the books I read in October:

My Favorite Book of October

This Is My America by Kim Johnson (★★★★★) – What an incredible debut! When this novel begins, Tracy’s father has just 267 days left until he will be executed. He was sentenced to death row for a crime he didn’t commit seven years ago, and every week since his sentencing, Tracy has written letters to Innocence X to ask them to take his case. And then one of Tracy’s classmates is found murdered and her brother is the main suspect. For Tracy, it feels like history repeating itself. This novel was propulsive and heartbreaking but also hopeful. Tracy was an easy character to root for, and her story feels all too familiar. I listened to this book on audio, and it was my first novel read by Bahni Turpin (a favorite among audiobook lovers!) and I can see why she is so beloved. Her narration was fantastic!

My Favorite Romance of October

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (★★★★★) – I finished this book on the same day I started it, something I can rarely do these days. I’m just so glad I started it on a day I had no plans and could just sit on the couch and read for hours! When Izumi finds out that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan (making her a princess!), she travels to Japan to meet him and learn all about life as a royal. Of course, she quickly realizes this life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be with scheming cousins, a distant father, and so many rules that make her head spin. But learning more about her culture and her family and getting closer to her dashing imperial guard (swoon) might make things a bit easier. This novel was just plain fun—a bit of The Princess Diaries and a bit of Crazy Rich Asians—and I’d love to see this made into a Netflix miniseries of sorts. I can just imagine the beautiful scenery of Japan and the sweet romance playing out on screen! Please, please, please.

Other Favorites of October

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel (★★★★★)- Laurie Frankel does it again! She delivered another 5-star read for me in this incredible story of three teenage sisters growing up in a town tainted by the water supply. Mab, Monday, and Mirabel are triplets who have grown up in the town of Bourne, a city that made national news headlines when their water supply turned green—most likely due to a chemical plant releasing chemicals into their water. It’s caused untold damage to the town with residents getting cancer, babies being born with disabilities, and loved ones dying. When a new family arrives in town (big news, as the triplets haven’t seen any new residents in their lifetime), it unleashes new secrets and mysteries to uncover. I really loved the way this story was told (each chapter alternating between one of the triplets’ perspectives) and how it all came together in the end. It was a beautiful story about justice and sisterhood and love, and I honestly can’t wait to see what Laurie Frankel does next.

Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (★★★★☆) – I read this book when I was deeply depressed, and I think that was the exact right time to read it. It’s a memoir of Haig’s own experience with depression and how he found his way out of it. I really appreciated it and could empathize with him, and it was the kind of book I needed to read when things felt so incredibly overwhelming. It’s not for everyone, and his advice is not exactly life-changing, but it worked for me at that point in time.

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (★★★★☆) – I love Hoang’s commitment to writing romances with neurodiverse characters, and this one is no different. After Anna’s boyfriend decides he wants to see other people for a while, she joins a dating app to do the same (just to spite him) and meets Quan. Quan, who is dipping his toes back into dating after cancer treatment, and Anna have an immediate connection but things go terribly awry during their first date. But somehow Quan isn’t scared off and instead wants to continue seeing Anna. It’s a really sweet romance and I could relate so much to Anna’s dating struggles. It’s hard out there when your brain works differently than other people’s! While I was hoping for more from Quan’s storyline (he was just a little too perfect at times and a bit one-dimensional) and there were so many times I just wanted to shake Anna and force her to be more of an active participant in her life, this novel was still really touching and poignant. I enjoyed it!

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum (★★★★★) – I read this novel for the October challenge for the Unread Shelf Project, which was to read a book you’re secretly afraid of. I was “secretly afraid” of the emotion in this story and how heavy it would be, considering it’s a WWII novel. And it was definitely a heavy book! But an incredible one as well. This novel follows a young German woman who finds herself pregnant at the height of Nazi occupation and must do whatever she can to survive. It’s not a story for the faint of heart as there is a bevy of trigger warnings, especially graphic depictions of Jewish people being murdered and rape, but it was a really propulsive story that I had a hard time putting down.

Bombshell by Sarah MacLean (★★★★☆) – The newest Regency romance from Sarah MacLean was a hit for me, although I think it could have been 50 pages shorter, easily. This book is the first in a new series about the Hell’s Belles, a group of unmarriageable young women who are taking on London society and making sure scoundrels are put in their place. Sesily and Caleb’s story was such a fun one to read, and I’m anxiously anticipating the other books in the series!

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (★★★★★) – I had a really hard time deciding between This Is My America and this book as my favorite of the month. This book was just so good, so intricately plotted and fun. It’s part-mystery and part-scifi, following a man who has to find out who murdered Evelyn Hardcastle, and to do so, he’s going to inhabit different guests at the party she is at. There are seven guests he must inhabit, each reliving the same day over and over again. He has until midnight of being in the seventh guest’s body to solve the murder. The setting is the early 1900s at a creepy mansion filled with rich people, and it’s so evocative! It felt like being in a real-life Clue game. It was a really fun read and the ending was completely satisfying.

Honorable Mentions

Lost and Found Sisters by Jill Shalvis (★★★☆☆) – I found this book to be a bit cheesy and predictable. It’s marketed as women’s fiction (a departure for Shalvis, who typically writes contemporary romance), but I don’t know if she nailed the genre as much as she’d hoped. It read much more like a romance to me, which is fine, but I was just expecting something different.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin (★★★☆☆) – Oof, this book. I really wanted to like it more than I did, but it was just really hard for me to get past the asshole-y hero and the naivete of the main character. I did love the Muslim representation, however, and the sweet emphasis on family and community. But it was just one of those novels that I’m not going to remember I read in a few weeks.

October Book Stats

  • # of books read: 10
  • Fastest read: Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (a few hours)
  • Slowest read: Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum (9 days)
  • Star average: 4.3
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 40%
  • Sources: Barnes & Noble (2), Libby (5), Book of the Month (1), Little Free Library (1), library (1)
  • Formats: print (5), e-book (3), audiobook (2)
  • Abandoned books: 1 (My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrick Backman)
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I’m currently 17 books behind schedule to read 150 books this year. For my adjusted goal of reading 125 books, I’m 4 books ahead of schedule.

What was the best book you read in October?

Categories: About Me

So, About That Blog Break

Long time, no chat, eh?

For most of September and October, I was depressed. Depression is something I struggle with, but it’s not something that’s an everyday part of my life. It typically hits me during random periods, and I can usually drag myself out of them within a few days. This time was different. This time lasted many weeks and affected everything: the way I felt about myself, my relationships, my life. My focus at work. My hobbies. I couldn’t go on social media without feeling like everyone was having fun without me, and everyone would be ok if I just fully exited their lives forever. That sounds so dramatic, but it was how I felt at the time. I was in an incredibly dark place and when I am in that place, I don’t feel as if I have purpose anymore.

I tried just pushing through the pain and darkness for weeks, but it wasn’t working. Writing can be cathartic for me and I’m committed to always talking about the hard stuff, but I just wasn’t in a place to really dig into what I was going through. It was all too raw and painful and happening in real-time. I was in a dark place that I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of. (When I tried to remind myself of the good days and the times when my depression wasn’t such a suffocating force in my life, my brain continually fed me lies. “You weren’t really so happy, were you? Have you ever actually been happy?”)

And truthfully, it was also scary to be in this place. It’s scary to have my brain work against me at this level. All I wanted to do was sleep because, at least then, my brain was quiet for a while.

I decided to take time away from my blog. I was trying to write a Friday blog post and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t muster the energy to talk about my life and pretend things were fine when they just weren’t. I deleted the blog post I was working on and told myself I was going to step away from the blog for two weeks. I wasn’t going to make some big to-do about it. I was just going to take the time away, unannounced.

At this time, I also deleted Instagram from my phone (the only social media app I use) because it was starting to feel like an unhealthy place for me to be. I didn’t want to worry about what other people were posting or what I should be posting or how much better people have been at adapting to Instagram’s changing landscape than I have (looking at you, Reels). I regularly take breaks from Instagram and I have a 30-minute daily time limit on it as it is, but I really needed to fully delete the app and step away from it for a couple of weeks for my mental health.

Alongside my depression was my dearest friend, anxiety. As I mentioned in a previous post, my anxiety has been at an all-time low for a really long time—so much so that I weaned myself off Lexapro. But things got really bad in October with my anxiety. I was living in a constant state of high anxiety and obsessive thoughts. I would latch onto one thing (typically, my mom dying) and wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it no matter how many different tricks I tried. I started having regular panic attacks, something I don’t experience often but became part of my daily existence. I never feel more like a crazy person than when my anxiety is out of control like this.

In the end, I called my doctor and got back on Lexapro. I still remember calling the pharmacy in tears on a Saturday when they hadn’t yet filled the Lexapro prescription and I was so worried I was going to have to wait until Monday to call my doctor back and get this taken care of. (Even though the pharmacy would have given me an emergency three-day dose if I really needed it, I was just worried that something was going to happen to push back the date of restarting Lexapro.) And when the pharmacist confirmed they had my prescription refill request and would be filling it in the hour, I miiiight have burst into tears. I was just so tired of being depressed and sad and anxious all the time, and I wanted to do something that would get the wheels turning in the right direction.

And it did. Perhaps it was a placebo effect (okay, it was definitely a placebo effect), but the day after I restarted Lexapro, I started feeling better. And each day since, I’ve come back to myself little by little. Today, I feel the most myself in a long time and I am so happy to have crawled through that dark place to get here. It was the hardest fucking thing, as anyone who struggles with mental illness knows, but I made it to the other side.

I planned to come back to blogging and social media in two weeks, although I was prepared for my break to last longer if I needed it to. What I didn’t expect was to get bronchitis the weekend before I was set to return.

Aside from my severe reaction to the second Covid vaccine, I haven’t been sick in over two years at this point. Between working from home, wearing masks when I’ve been in public, and not being around people all that often, I’ve been at my most physically healthy. But then my mom got sick with bronchitis (there were a very scary few days in there where we thought she might have Covid) and, of course, I ended up getting sick from her. SIGH. It has not been a fun week over here. Last weekend, I was mostly dealing with chills, fever, and a slight sore throat, but then Monday hit and I was sneezing like crazy, coughing up my lungs, and dealing with intense fatigue. Thankfully, I’m on the mend and mostly just dealing with an irritating cough. Even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t Covid, I still went and got tested (negative!).

And now I’ve written over 900 words about where I’ve been for the last few weeks. I got sweet emails from people checking in on me, which was really nice. Knowing that my absence was felt by other people (especially people I’ve never met IRL!) gives me that sense of purpose that was lacking when I was feeling deeply depressed. I need to bottle up that feeling. <3

But I’m excited to be back, excited to be feeling better (both physically and mentally), and excited to write again. I really missed this space and connecting with you guys and opening my heart. In fact, I missed it so much that I’ve decided to participate in National Blog Posting Month (publishing a blog post every day in November). While not an official challenge anymore, my friend San has carried on the tradition and inspired others to do the same. Get ready to see a lot more of me in your feeds, friends! (One of my goals with this challenge is to do a weekly Q&A post, so I’ve created this form where you can ask any questions you want! Or you can comment on this post or email me with your question if that’s easier for you.)