Words of June || It's been a long month.

June felt long enough to have stretched for months. It feels like I wrote my May wrap up long ago.

The weather has finally started turning from unrelenting heat to cloudy days with a lot of breeze (although the heat is back to burning while I write this) and I've started to finally settle down in my new city. I don't hate it as much now. I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying this 🙃

Grab a cup of your favourite drink and settle down, we have a lot to catch up on ☕️

reading

I real unusually low books in June, with a count of 5. Although the month was long, I wasn't reading much and somehow most of the entire month passed by before I realized that I read only 4 books. I'm just barely on track on my annual reading challenge which I'm usually ahead on.

The 5 books consisted of only ebooks. 2 fantasy books, one romantasy, one mystery, and one non-fiction. There were no rereads. I didn't even try to read any audiobooks because my luck with them hasn't been great.

I continued my backlog-reading quest with Fable by Adrienne Young. I honestly didn't care for it much. The entire book felt like a setup for what was to come in the next book. I kept waiting for the point when the story picks up but it didn't. I took quite a while to read it and was not engaged in the story at all. It was my first "meh" read by the author.

Taking a break before continuing with the duology, I read Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven. Apparently it's a popular book? I didn't know about it until my friends suggested reading it as our buddy read for the month. I wasn't a fan. As Lila put it, it felt like the author wrote herself into a corner and didn't know how to get out elegantly. Although it was interesting to see the many lives the main characters lived, their story was very repetitive. The "twist" at the end was supposed to be a shocker but it ruined the entire book for me. It felt like there was no point to the story.

After that disappointment, I went back to the Fable series and read Namesake by Adrienne Young. Although it didn't totally redeem the series, I quite enjoyed it. There wasn't a lag throughout this book and things just kept happening. I read it much faster and felt for some of the characters. I didn't care about the romance at all and the found family trope wasn't done very well. The relationship between the main character and her father was my favourite. I loved their ending.

Next, I picked up Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Similar to how I read book 1 in a single sitting in a café, I read this in 1 sitting at home. I forgot about time, my phone, and life. I didn't get up at all. It was engaging, funny, cute, and mysterious. Some things were repetitive like how Vera gets people under her wing but it was charming instead of annoying. It was great. I'm looking forward to book 3 which is supposed to take place in Paris!

Lastly, I read Deep Work by Cal Newport. It wasn't on my TBR but I saw a mention of it somewhere and decided to try it out. It felt good to read a non-fiction book again. It has the same issues as many non-fictions that I dislike but it had some useful advice too. I'm planning to apply some of the advice in my life. I'll mostly write a full review on this.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll came on my radar when my close friend spoke about it in our group chat. I added it to my TBR long ago and lowkey forgot about it. Decided to try it out. I didn't like the writing initially but the story held me in a fist. I knew that Ted Bundy was a Bad Guy but didn't know exactly what he did. When I realized that this was based on a real story, I quickly glanced through the wiki page on him and became disturbed. I really liked the book, though. I liked how it called out all the problematic and sad elements of the story that most people (back then) did not see. I recommend it, but check the trigger warnings before reading it.

I read a bit of The Artist's Way and did the exercises as well. Not sure if I can count it as a book at this point since it's a course. I'll count it when I'm done with it.

It's probably time I resumed War & Peace too. It's been almost a year since I started it. It's been around 6 months since I paused it. I kinda want to read and finish it but I'm not sure I have the time for it. The Artist's Way is a big enough project, I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to pick up W&P which is kind of like a project too. Reading it isn't easy. I'll see. Maybe, maybe not.

blogging

I finished a post that has been on my mind for a year! It was initially supposed to be "A Year Without Social Media" and has now become "2 Years Without" 😆 I had so many notes and so much to say that it ended up being 11k words long. Not long enough to be my longest post (my recent Margins of The Week was simply too huge to cross) but it's the second longest. Writing the social media post was one of my goals for June, it's that huge for me. It will be up soon, so keep an eye out for it!

Although I didn't write many posts this month and I'm actually a bit behind compared to when the month started, I wrote a lot. The social media post several days to write. I actually needed a couple of hours of prep just to collect all of my notes in a folder and make a new note with the collective overarching points. I tried out NotebookLM for this too. I fed my notes to it and generated a podcast which was actually very helpful. Listening to a conversation about my own experience let me to make even more notes and figure out a structure for it.

The other post I wrote (it will be up next week) was a long post as well which required a lot of cross-referencing in my journal and notes. I've been meaning to write it for a few weeks so I'm glad I'm done with it too.

With the above two posts, and my posts in general this year, I'm seeing a trend in my writing. Instead of thinking of it as writing blog posts, I'm treating many posts as an individual projects each. Instead of just free-writing like I'm doing with this wrap-up, more and more of my blog posts are full-on projects with notes written beforehand, a certain structure in mind, and then the writing itself. I need more focused writing sessions per post and I'm all the more happy with the result of each of them.

If this trend continues with at least 50% of the posts I write, I may have to spread out my publishing schedule even further. I'm currently posting every 8th day. Since it's taking me around a week to write some posts and I need breaks as well so that I don't burn out, I may have to start posting once in 2 weeks. I'm not sure I'll go that route just yet but it's on my mind since I can't publish at the same pace with each post taking longer.

In case you missed them, here are my June posts!

• Writing & Posting Book Reviews || A Discussion
• Butter by Asako Yuzuki || Book Review
• The Rain in España || TV Series Review

Excluding this post, I've published 25 posts totalling 87.3k words. That's almost 90 thousand words. Enough to write a whole novel. A huge margin of that word count is from my recent posts. So, yeah. I'm not doing any changes yet but if I find that I'm careening towards a burnout, I'll make some changes.

Speaking of changes, I'm seriously considering moving back from Substack to Kit. All the potential I saw in Substack didn't pan out and I feel like it's actually making my newsletters worse. I'm writing similar content as I used to but the readability of it and the personalised feel is gone without any other pros to compensate.

I was hoping that Substack would make it easier to put my words in front of more people but that isn't happening without Notes and I hate Notes, it's basically social media again. I was also hoping that having the option to comment would encourage more dialogue but since it requires a Substack account, it looks like it isn't happening. The few who do respond do it via email and I actually miss them because they are filtered into the Junk folder. My close friend told me that she's not noticing my emails because they get filtered as well. It's happening because Substack emails are considered promotion or junk. That's exactly what I don't want.

Another reason I switched to Substack was to find and read more newsletters myself but I detest the app and uninstalled it soon. I'd rather receive emails itself than open it and chance being bombarded with Notes. I can easily delete newsletters in email as well, especially the ones that require payment but I don't pay and hence are of no use to me. I can't clear those in the app. Also, I've noticed that I'm not receiving emails after switching to the app and then uninstalling it. I'll need to fix that.

Initially, it was possible to find new newsletters because I was willing to scroll through a few Notes. But now it seems like Notes barely push ahead newsletters and it's become something like Twitter. I'm not discovering new people even when I try on the website. I'm actually finding more good Substack articles through others' blog posts than Substack itself.

On the whole, I'm not enjoying Substack. I'm considering switching back to Kit but it'll be a bit hard to reconcile the new email list with the old one. I won't be able to migrate Substack app subscribers either. It'll be a bit hard and I will definitely lose a bunch of people as I migrate, but it's fine. Even if lesser people receive my newsletters, at least I'll be happy with the fact that they won't miss easily it.

I'll let you know what I do. While I think about it, you can subscribe to my newsletter now to read what I send there!

content consumed

Blogs

• Clo shared a really cool post on how she uses Airtable as a blog archive. She also wrote about her 2024 blog stats.
• Krysta wrote a lovely discussion post on how her school experience isn't reflected in books.
• Michelle spoke about her very bookish South Korea and Japan trip
• Epsita reviews Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Vanya wrote Laboratory in my backyard : Baking the leaves
• The Orangutan Librarian wrote Does Everyone Have a Book in Them?

Substacks

• The Art of Keeping in Touch
• A Piece of Me in Every Place
• The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
• let's stop treating women's relationships like status updates
• what it really feels like to fall in love with your new life while grieving your past

TV Shows

• I've been watching Our Unwritten Seoul (Kdrama) ever since the first 2 episodes were out! It's been hard to wait for new episodes every week but it's been fun too. It kept me hooked and I liked the story told through the main characters.

life

My June started in Bangalore, with my favourite people. I spent almost 9 days in Bangalore and somehow managed to do A LOT.

Meeting several friends was the highlight. Although I didn't meet my college group this time, I met a few of them. I slept over my best friend's house and then spent many hours with two other close friends. During the work week, I went to the office(s) for 4 days, visiting the Google Ananta and Google Kyoto offices. I met an old college friend in the latter after several years. On Friday, I took a few friends from my previous job to the Google Ananta office and we had a lot of fun touring and playing games. Then, I had a sleepover with them where we stayed up till 4 am. The next night, a school friend's bachelorette was at an airbnb so I stayed over there my last night. Took the train to return the next evening.

I effectively met every friend group this time. My college friends (although only a few), my reader friends, my friends from my previous job, and my school friends. It was a PACKED week and I loved it. My heart was full of joy the whole time. I didn't want to return to my new home.

I did, though. Maybe because I know that I can meet friends once in a while in trips and that I don't need to be in Bangalore all the time for it, I'm not resenting this city so much anymore. The weather turn also helps. We've had quite a few days of rain and wind. It's still not cool enough to wear a jacket outside, only at office in the AC is on, but it's much cooler.

I feel much more settled into the city too. I played badminton with my team and other colleagues through the badminton group at work. My mom and I checked out a nearby huge park and I happily went for a run. Although we had to wake up at 5:30 am to be there before it gets hot and giving me enough time to get ready before heading to work at 9 am, running again after many months felt amazing.

I ran 5ks three times, with reducing breaks each time. Although my time is not close to what it was a year ago, I'm surprisingly able to do it without slowly working up to that distance. In fact, the first time I did a 5k, I was doing it conservatively so that I don't suddenly strain my body. However, I did quite a lot and my body was barely sore. I was able to do it again the next day and only then felt some soreness in my legs. Looks like I've been keeping myself well active even if I'm not running regularly!

The Artist's Way asks for an "Artist Date" every week which I've been kind of failing at. In June, I finally properly did it. I went to a cute bookstore and the café next door as a solo date. I spent 1.5h in the bookstore reading snippets of various books that caught my eye. I was surprised to like A Creative Act even though I didn't like it when I tried it on the Kindle last year, maybe because I only read the beginning which is quite spiritual. The rest of it is actually nice.

After time at the bookstore, I checked out the super popular café next door. It was too crowded though so after sitting a while, I asked for my drink to be made to-go and went to a small hangout area behind the building. It was cute! So many people were just chilling and chatting. Kids were running around. A few teens were dressed up and filming a dance reel. I sat alone, sipping my coffee, watching the sky change colours as the sun sets.

Although going alone for the first time wasn't completely smooth, it was really nice. 10/10 would do it again. I definitely want to try the café again because they seem to make great matcha drinks, even "matcha drink of the month" exclusives. I want to try them.

I don't have any travel or other plans for July so I'll mostly be living my daily life, trying to make the most of it. I hope to run and explore the city more.

chat with me!

How was your June? What did you read/do? Did you try anything new or quit something? Tell me in the comments! Add a link to your wrap-up if you have one, I'd love to read it.

If you publish on Substack or subscribe to newsletters on Substack, what are your thoughts on the emails or the platform? If you subscribe to my newsletter, have you been reading them lately? Do you think I should switch back or move to an old school email list without any provider? I'd love to know your thoughts, it'll make my decisions easier 😂