Hello everyone! Today I’m sharing all I’ve been reading, watching, and generally enjoying.

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Also I really need a better description for this post haha!

I actually got a lot more stuff in this month than I thought I would. There was a bit of a slow period in the month when I had nothing due for school and it was just quiet so I did a lot that weekend. Now it’s crazy though so there might not be as much info on each item! But let’s get started!

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Books

First up, I’m including the book Great Leadership by Antony Bell. I actually read this one last year in September. I pretty much skimmed this book and only read items I needed for the paper I was using the book for but it was a great review of it so I figured I’d include it here. It really is a great book and I would recommend it.

I also “finished” Fundamentals of Selling, which was my textbook for my sales class. I say finished in quotes because my professor only assigned certain sections but apparently he did that because the text is not that great and it’s very repetitive. I’m going to count it as finished. I think I ended up giving it two out of five stars. It’s mostly terrible but did have some interesting little bits so that’s why it wasn’t one.

Movies

I was a bit late to the bandwagon but I watched Netflix’s Fyre documentary. As someone who works on events, it was so entertaining. Many people at work were talking about it and so that was a hot topic for quite some time. Overall, people like that main guy make me feel quite ill as he was clearly just out to make a profit off the people on the island at the end but it was very eye opening for everyone to do their research ahead of time. As learned with the Fyre Festival and TanaCon and such events, it’s a hard and expensive process to put on an event. It’s definitely not something you can just throw together. Overall, it’s really interesting though!

I visited my sister recently and we watched Incredibles 2. I’d seen it before so I won’t go too much into it but it was still fun to watch. I seriously love the Edna/Jack Jack portion of the film!

After the Oscars I saw that the winning documentary was on Netflix. Of course I had to watch it! I watched Period. End of Sentence. one night, and it was a really short documentary. If you get the chance to watch it, you should! It revolves around women from Indian villages who struggle to get sanitary products to women. The stigma around periods is really strong in India so women find it hard to get pads from stores if the shop keepers are male (which they generally are) so it follows women making pads and selling them to females. The women who are introduced to them for the first time are usually blown away by the possibilities the pads they just bought and are holding in their hands brings. Suddenly they can imagine working or going to school without shame and other things that I have always taken for granted. As I said, it was short but so, so powerful.

The next movie I watched was also a documentary on Netflix called End Game. The documentary focused on a few people who were very ill and nearing the end of their lives. As someone who has been lucky enough not to have been through these things it was very eye opening how the families or even the person facing this themselves are just not comfortable thinking about death. So many of them were saying they weren’t ready to talk about how they wanted the end of life care but of course the doctors were trying to help the person who was ill so they were desperately trying to kindly help them see the reality. It must be really tough and I’m glad the documentary is there to get people thinking about this rationally so I hope more people will see it and learn.

I watched an episode of a docuseries on Netflix called Dogs. It was the first episode “The Girl with the Dog”. I’d already seen it actually but I still wanted to see it again before continuing. The episode revolves around mostly one family where the daughter has seizures and is getting an alert dog. There are other children who are getting service dogs for stability or other alerts as well. It’s so nice to see the families have such hopes that the dogs will help their children and everyone in general relax. The mom of the main girl, for example, would go as far as to sleep on the floor of her daughter’s room because she was scared her daughter would have a seizure during the night and stop breathing, so she wanted the dog with her daughter so that they would all be alerted immediately if anything happened. It’s a great episode and I can’t wait to see more.

Finally, I watched the Netflix docuseries The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I’ve always wondered what happened to Madeleine, as has everyone else. But since we share a birthday (May 12) I always make sure to remember to wish her a happy birthday.

TV Shows

Throughout the month I watched a few episodes of my favorite shows, Parks and Recreation. I can’t remember all the episodes but “Flu Season” was definitely one of them. I love that one! I think the one with the time capsules was one as well.

I also watched some more of season two of One Day at a Time. Unfortunately the show was cancelled by Netflix this past month so whatever is up already is all there is. It’s shame because I loved the show and I know so many people did too, seeing the response from Twitter. But I love seeing the stories unfold and even if they’re not my stories the fact that it’s a hispanic family leads to relatable moments none the less!

Also, I never put this one on these posts but I always watch at least a few episodes of Pawn Stars on the History Channel. My parents and I really love this show so whenever we’re eating and it’s on we will watch it.

Music

I don’t think these songs are going to be a surprise. I’ve been loving Ariana Grande’s music a ton lately. I picked my top three songs for this one from her for the month. “NASA”, “No Tears Left to Cry”, and “7 rings”. I love them so much!

YouTube

I have so many YouTube favorites this month! First, I’ve loved the Pixar Sparkshorts, specifically “Purl” and “Kitbull”. They were so, so sweet and I love that Pixar is putting them on their YouTube channel so everyone can see them. “Purl” is about a ball of yarn who is meant to represent a female entering an extremely male-dominated workspace and feeling like she doesn’t belong. As a female, I felt so strongly about this short! The next one, “Kitbull” is about a pit bull and a kitten who meet and centers around the stereotypes agains pit bulls. I’ve never met a pit bull I didn’t love so this one was particularly moving as well!

Next, can we talk about A Little Late with Lilly Singh? Lilly of “iiSuperwomanii” announced on Jimmy Fallon’s show that she was going to have her own late night NBC talk show! I don’t watch late night shows because, well, they’re late, but I can’t wait to see parts of it online! I do like her channel so I’m so excited for her!

Next is one of my favorite 32 year old ladies, Jenna Marbles. Her video “A Tour Of My Plants” was so fun to watch! It was half an hour of her showing off what her “too much” gene, as she calls it, has done for her plant obsession.

Somehow I stumbled on teacher channels. Two that I subscribed to were Pocketful of Primary and Putting Fourth Effort. I mostly watched their classroom set up videos from the past years but it’s really interesting to see all the work and creativity that goes into the classroom to make it a great space for learning.

I’ve been wanting to do an office and bedroom makeover so I’m obsessed with office/home makeovers. Recently I’ve watched Megan Batoon redo a wall in her living room and Grace Helbig do a three hour office makeover. There’s also been a ton of “declutter” videos I’ve seen so I can’t wait until school is over so I can do this as well!

I’m sure everyone already follows her because she’s amazing, but I caught up on Jamie’s vlogs from Don’t Give A Jam. I love watching her videos as well as reading her blog, so I highly recommend if you haven’t checked her out already.

Last but certainly not least, I loved Simone Giertz’s “Painting a mural only using my feet”. Her videos always make me laugh and so watching her do a mural (and pronounce “mural” completely wrong in the most hilarious way the entire video) was amazing. The mural wasn’t exactly my taste but it was lovely nonetheless.

Podcasts

I’ve been listening to more podcasts this month. I do still listen to Grace’s Podcast Not Too Deep but I actually watch it on YouTube now. I do prefer to see it even though it’s literally just people speaking into mics.

Next is the new Smoshcast podcast. It’s done by the Smosh crew which is getting back on track after the shutdown. I only skipped episode 4 because it was just hard to concentrate when one cast member kept arguing and talking over the others but the first three were really good and fun to listen to! I also watch this one on YouTube.

The third podcast I’ll mention is 99% Invisible. I really enjoy this one as it talks about design and just things we might not really notice. It’s so fun and interesting to listen to and explore the topics a little more afterwards.

Video Games

While visiting my sister we played Mario Kart on Switch. It was really fun! I kind of want a Switch now but I barely get time with my PlayStations so I’m not going to explore that any further for now. Still it was really fun and I can see why that console attracts people.

Hogwarts Mystery is kind of the same. The developers keep doing side quests and such instead of the main story so it’s slow going (or nothing at all…) and I’ve been taking a few breaks. Friendships are the same except Ava Samwise Quagmire has been introduced to Diego. For creatures she just adopted an acromantula. Oh! She’s a member of the Frog Choir now too. That’s pretty much it.

Active Life

Nothing to report here either! Ah well, maybe next month!

Creative Life

Creatively, I’ve started a few things to get them out of my system but with classes ending I wasn’t able to really dive in and finish stuff. Do you want a little spoiler for BirthMay?? I was putting together a “Self Care Kit” for myself earlier this month and I loved it so I decided I was going to share how I did it and try to make a check list or something for it. I’m going to sharing this all during BirthMay because Self Care Sunday is coming back! I hope you’re excited!

Next is work on a concept that I was introduced to at work. I have been working on a committee at work regarding “Whitespace”, which is the idea of taking short breaks when you need them to recharge throughout the day. The idea was conceptualized by Juliet Funt and this just resonated with me. I’ve loved thinking of creative ways to continue to promote it at work and it’s helped both in the office and for school or blog work as well!

I haven’t actually gone to them yet but I signed up for a free guitar lesson and free sewing lesson at my local library. I have been doing okay with guitar but I’d like some more guidance so this is perfect! I also can sew but I don’t know any official stitches or anything fancy and I only sew by hand so I can’t wait to learn how to use a machine for it! I have always wanted to make my own clothes so maybe if I like it I’ll buy a little machine and try it out. Otherwise, back to hand sewing I’ll go haha! Oh, and I’ll be going back to the DIY nights soon too. I can’t wait for those, I’ve missed them.

I also want to start going to the writer’s guild sessions at the library to finally work on the book ideas I have in my mind. It seems to just be a sort of an open writing session, where you can discuss your ideas with other writers, help writers with their own ideas, or just write if you want. I think that could be fun!

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So that’s pretty much it for my lively March! Let me know what hobbies you’ve been working towards recently. I’d love to know!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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