When I Should Be Studying

2018 was the first year I ever set New Year's Resolutions. My family were never ones to make resolutions. As a goal oriented person it is odd that I had never made resolutions prior to 2018. In this blog post I will share the resolutions I made at the beginning of the year. For each resolution I will update on wether I achieved it and if I plan to make a similar resulting for 2019. For another blog post that is similar to this post check out What I Learned In 2017 . Run 10 Miles Without Stopping In August of 2017 I got back into running. Shortly after getting back into running I fell in love with it and starting setting goals for myself. It wasn't until December that I made the resolution/goal to run 10 miles without stopping. This is a distance I had never run before. I am happy to report that I did achieve this goal not too long into 2018. As of now I am strength training and am not running more than 2 miles at a time, so running 10 miles without stopping is not a reso...

As a New Year's Resolution for 2018 I wanted to reduce the amount of waste I was creating and start implementing zero waste practices and products into my life. For example over the past year I have been able to reduce the amount of paper I use significantly. For more on how I did that as a planner check out my blog post  Switching to a Digital Planner-Paperless Planning . The amount of waste I produce in the kitchen has also been reduced. As an environmental studies major and environmental advocate, I want to make even more sustainable changes in my life. The following blog post will describe the goals I have for 2019 regarding zero waste and sustainability and how I plan to achieve each goal. Roommates As of August I moved into my first apartment and am living with three other young women. I have been able to encourage them to recycle by providing a bin for them to put recyclables that are not accepted by our apartment, but there are still areas that I would like to educat...

May Book Review: Wonder My Reasons For Reading This Book After reading Columbine last month, I was looking for a more lighthearted and fun read. I also wanted to read Wonder by R.J. Palacio before I watched the movie since the movie is based off of the book. I had seen the trailer for the movie and found the story to be very interesting and knew that the book had to one of the books I read this year. Wonder is a lot more lighthearted compared to the books I have been reading the past few months. I felt as though I chose to read this book at just the right time in my life. Content of the Book August Pullman is a extraordinary boy who was born with a facial difference. The books begins with him starting middle school at a private preparatory school after being homeschooled since kindergarten. The book tells the story of Auggie's adjustment to school life and the lessons and experiences he had during 5th grade. The other parts of the book are told from the perspective of A...

April Book Review: Columbine My Reasons For Reading This Book As someone who was only a few months old when the tragedy of Columbine occurred, I did not have much knowledge on a historic event that greatly effected the United States. After the Parkland School shooting on February, 14 2018, I become interested in reading peoples opinions and research on school shooters. I came across Columbine by Dave Cullen and thought that it would be a good read that fit all the topics I was currently interested in.  Content of the Book  This book breaks down the myths that surround the Columbine massacre that took place on April 20, 1999. The myths that are explained is the martyr student, that bullying by jocks was the reason for the attack, depression was a cause, and if the killers were apart of the Trench Coat Mafia. The author of the book is Dave Cullen who fist reported on the massacre and then took his interest to the next level by taking ten years to write this book. C...

March Book Review: Gone Girl I am well aware of the fact that I am about four years late on reading this book. In my defense when this book was released I was too young to read it. I feel as if this was the right time and age for me to read this book. So, no regrets on not reading it sooner.  My Reasons For Reading This Book My mother is aware of the type of books that I enjoy reading and suggested I read  Gone Girl . She read the book around the time it was released and knew that the book fit the genre and books I prefer to read. My roommate also encouraged me to read it as well since she has also read it and knew I would not be able to put it down. Content of the Book  On Nick and Amy's five year wedding anniversary Amy goes missing from their Missouri home. The questions begin. Is she dead? Was she kidnapped? Who could do this? Was her husband involved? Amy was born and raised in New York and ended up reluctantly moving to Nick's Missouri hometown afte...

If you want to purchase some of these spreads you can buy the digital bundle from my Etsy shop: Simply Paperless .  I had created six different bullet journal fitness and workout trackers/spreads. These spreads were made in my digital bullet journal using the GoodNotes App.   I highly recommend to use a stylus when using GoodNotes as a digital bullet journal. For this project I used the Adonit Dash 3 Stylus , which I highly recommend. I also recommend the Bargain Depot Stylus 2 Pack  from Amazon. Daily Workout Plan This first spread can be used to plan out what exercises you plan to workout each day of the week. I would recommend this spread for those who are just starting to workout. I did not created the workout that is used as the example for the content of this spread. The workout is from Pintrest Workout Plan .  Workout Tracker This next tracker is in the format of a monthly calendar. In order to track the different workouts...

February Book Review: The Woman in the Window   As mentioned in my  January Book Review: The Worst Hard Time  one of my resolutions for 2018 is to read more personal reads. Even though it is only the second month of 2018, I am changing that resolution to read a new book every month of 2018. Since I have this goal in place I have started to develop a reading wish list. My Reason For Selecting the Book I chose to read A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window ;due to the fact that it was on iBooks Top Chart and honestly because the About the Book interested me right away. Content of the Book The main character of this book is Anna Fox. She spends her days alone in her New York City home drinking wine, playing online chess, giving advice on an online chat room, and loves and I mean loves watching old black and white movies. Agoraphoia keeps Anna from leaving the house, trying to entertain herself causes Anna to see something that she wasn't meant to see. She al...

January Book Review: The Worst Hard Time One of the resolutions that I made for 2018 was to read more "personal reads".What I mean by this is reading books that are not assigned to me for my college courses. I did make an exception for the mouth of January because I was reading this book for a class, but it ended up feeling less like an assignment and more like a personal read. My Reason For Selecting This Book Of the suggested books that my professor recommended for the assignment, I found The Worst Hard Time to be the most intriguing.  Content of the Book Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time uncovers personal stories of what living through the 1930s Dust Bowl was really like. Reading this book is like reading a history textbook, but is told in the format of a biography.  What I Liked About the Book In the past I have seen where authors struggled to piece together a fluid story that incorporated personal stories, historic events and statistics. Egan wa...

What I Learned From My Weight Loss Journey As I previously talked about in my last blog post What I Learned in 2017 , one of my 2017 New Year's Resolutions was to live a healthier lifestyle with the goal of losing weight. In this post I will go into why this became one of my resolutions, past struggles with my weight/appearance, and my tips and tricks for how I surpassed my weight goal in one year. What pushed me to want to loose weight? Early in the year of 2016 I struggled with a number of health problems that caused me to have a lack of appetite and when I did eat I experienced extreme stomach aches. After getting that under control through months of water therapy, I was finally able to eat, but this new found ability to eat again led me into a phase where I was eating large portions and not the healthiest of options. In December of 2016 I was trying on dresses for a school dance. I ordered a size small, with up to this point had always fit me. Lets just say there w...

What I Learned in 2017 As a year 2017 was one for the books. It was filled with loads of excitement, new experiences, challenges, lots of change, and quite a bit of self growth.  2017 New Year's Resolutions I think this is the first year I have ever completed a New Year's Resolution and kept up with it throughout the entire year. My New Year's Resolution for 2017 was a common one, but my experience with it was far from the norm. I started 2017 wanting to create a healthy lifestyle with the goal of losing weight. I plan to have a separate post discussing my weight loss journey. When it came to completing this resolution was successful and even surpassed what I expected to achieve.  Life Lessons While in high school and college I had experiences where I needed to step up and become an advocate for myself. This was something I had never had to do before because I had been relying on others to be my voice.  In order to achieve the success that you want ...