Mid-Year Notes 2024

Compared to the past few years, 2024 has been a lowkey year so far. There hasn't been any big change and I haven't done any big things. Lately, life has been all about making each day work and finding joy in the little things.

That doesn't mean I have less things to talk about, though. I'm a ponderer and, if given the chance, could write 1k words about my morning beverages. Life is always filled with so many things to talk about, you just have to pause to notice them.

So, grab your favourite drink and settle in for a causal chatty post 🧋

notes on reading

I started the year with 3 intentions: read `100 books, pick diverse reads, and conquer intimidating books. Well, I'm doing pretty good!

I've read 75/100 books so far which means that I'm far ahead in my numeric reading goal. The number is pretty similar to my reading in 2023 so there's not much of a difference in pacing. At the current rate, I'll probably read around 140 books which is great.

My second intention was to read diverse books. There are two meanings for "diverse". One is the popular meaning in the book community i.e. books about/by people of colour, by women, featuring queer characters, etc. My meaning is about the types of books/stories.

I've been reading diverse (the popular meaning) books enough that I didn't want to keep it as a goal. 9/10 books that I read are by women. I made picking diverse books a conscious thing a couple of years back and now it's a habit so I don't worry about it. My reading this year looks diverse enough without me thinking about it.

My reading tends to stick to a few genres or types of stories which is the pattern that I wanted to break this year. Although my reading looked varied, it wasn't varied as much as I'd like it to be. So that is a goal this year and I think I'm doing pretty well.

I've been hopping between very different kinds of books so that I don't stick to a certain type and get bored. For example, I recently read The Bone Witch trilogy while simultaneously reading I Want to Die by I Want to eat Tteokbokki and Anne of Green Gables.

Other than the times when I binge-read romance books for comfort, my reading has been all over the place in a good way. Reading this way is quite fun! Picking a new read after finishing a book is exciting because who knows what kind of story I'll be immersed in next? I'm also taking the time to enjoy every book instead of sprinting through them.

Every time I go to the bookstore, I try to buy books different from what I have at home. I'm looking at new authors and books that I previously thought I would never read. Sometimes, I randomly go through the store and pick whatever catches my eye. In my last bookstore trip, I bought the first book that matched my budget.

Reading books is lowkey like a carnival now, lol. I like it.

Last year, I had a goal to read the 3 biggest books that were gathering dust on my shelves and it literally took the entire year for me to complete that. However, alongside them, I read more big books and ended up finishing 17 books that were 500+ pages long.

This year, I'm trying to keep up that streak and get to the really big books that have always seemed intimidating.

So far, I read 5 books that were over 500 pages in length. The longest was Anna Karenina at 992 pages and the second longest was In the Language of Remembering at 712 pages. I read 6 other books that were almost 500 pages (450+) that I would also consider to be "big."

After all those big books, I'm genuinely not as wary of big books anymore. It's nice to spend a few weeks slowly reading a big book. Anna Karenina and In The Language of Remembering were worth their pages. I couldn't wait to write reviews of them when I was done (linked above).

Now that I've finished Anna Karenina, I am planning to read War and Peace by the end of the year. I'll read other big books when I feel like but getting to W&P is a specific goal.

In short, my reading is going well!

I feel like I've been rereading more too. In 2023, 22/132 books were rereads which is around 16%. This year, 13/75 books have been rereads which is around 17%. Not that much of a difference but it just feels like I'm rereading more. It's not a bad thing but it's an interesting statistic because it depicts my mental well-being lol.

Romance still technically dominates my reading. 37/75 books are romance books. Despite that number, it feels lesser, though. Probably because half of those are rereads and I always get through romance in a few hours while other books take me days.

I have listened to 5 audiobooks this year which isn't much. Despite my commute being audiobook-friendly, I am not reading them. I haven't even tried in the last two months. I think it's because I only listen to those that I get as an ALC in Libro.fm and the selection hasn't been my type lately. Meh. There is a new Alise Oseman book that dropped this month, though, and it sounds really good so I'll probably listen to that soon.

my favourite books so far

I've read so many good books this year, right from January. How am I supposed to choose?! I'm limiting myself to 5 books. It should be easy to make a top 5 list... right?

It was hard! I forgot that I read The Last Queen this year, January feels like so long ago. I have to include it in this list and it will most likely be in my best books of 2024 list. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has written a fictionalized version of Rani Jindan's life staying true to the facts as much as possible in such a beautiful way. We've all read about her son, the last King, but we never read about her in textbooks. This book led me down a rabbit hole of reading my history on Wikipedia. I was talking to everyone about it after I read the book. Read my full review here.

In The Language of Remembering is another book that I couldn't stop talking about after I read it. There is so much in Indian history that is glossed over or simply cut out in textbooks and history. I wasn't aware of so many things in this book and it confirmed the suspicion we all had in high school: that our textbooks are subtle propaganda. The writing and chronicling in this book were brilliant. Malhotra is doing good and necessary work through her non-fiction books. Read my full review here.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was a different kind of memoir from the regular ones. Murakami writes in diary entries and they're pretty much like personal journal entries. He talks about his runs, his worries, how his body is ageing, and more. I loved how he explained that running helps his writing. It's a lovely memoir. Read my full review here.

The only romance book on the list and it's a novella, haha. The Exception to the Rule is a 30-minute read that gave me more joy than most full-length romances. I loved how the main characters fell in love through once-a-year emails over a DECADE. I didn't think such a small book could show a long story so well but it did. I loved it right from page 1. It was too nice and the last chapter is *chef's kiss.* I now read it whenever I want a quick dose of serotonin.

What You Are Looking For is in the Library charmed me completely. I was skeptical of the hype but wow, it was so good. It's also the only book with short stories that I have ever loved. They might be small but each story is filled with emotion, advice, and great quotes. I took my time reading and annotating them. The messages of the stories were too nice. My full review of this will be up next week 👀

Honorary mention: S. by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. (Also called Ship of Theseus sometimes because the original name is lost which isn't surprising since it's an alphabet.) This book is art. It was expensive but when I opened it, I could see why. It is such a unique book and a unique way of presenting a story—giving the readers an artefact from the story and letting them figure it out. I loved how it was FILLED with annotations (part of the story) and I had to scramble to find a way to add mine on top of them, lol. Brilliant idea, brilliant execution. The book is worthy of being in a museum.

notes on blogging

I published a total of 30 blog posts in 2023 and it was hard. My inspiration was dry and my motivation was low all year. I couldn't figure out why blogging wasn't giving me joy anymore. The blog revamp helped but it didn't last long. I was frustrated by the end of the year.

To use up my PTO, I had taken the last 2 of December off from work and somehow, my blogging spirit came back. I wrote 3-4 blog posts in that week and made a goal to post 25 times in 2024. I started by posting once every 6 days and somehow, I kept it up.

This year has been all about consistency and getting back what I love about blogging. Switching up the posts a bit and reducing expectations from myself has made a world of difference.

The problem was that I had been blogging a certain way for 2 years. I was focusing on SEO, on certain kinds of posts like lists etc. I was trying to be "professional" and it got boring. The response to my Goals and Hopes for 2024 post gave me the boost I needed to start posting more random posts without sticking to the old recipe.

I changed my wrap-ups from the mini-reviews format to the personal-ish rambly one that it is now. But I had to talk about the books somewhere so I decided to write more full reviews. Those two decisions gave me the time to come up with a good post idea that is my "major" blog post of the month.

So far, it has been working out. I moved from posting every 6 days to 8 days and am now trying to post once a week on Fridays. Let's see how that goes.

My overall stats are on a great down slope but it's alright. I sometimes look at it and miss the old stats which were on an upward slope. Then, I remember how much work that took and how this blog became a second job and don't miss it.

I am still earning some amount because of the ads on this site. My current stats are giving me around 60 USD in revenue every month. However, I'm looking forward to the ad contract ending in August. The extra cash feels nice but I don't need it. I also have a hunch that it's part of the reason for my declining stats since it makes my site really slow and it doesn't look good. I'm looking forward to having a clean and fast blog again.

The blog posts that I'm the most proud of from this year so far are:

• My Blog Income & Expenses in 3 Years — writing this took way longer than expected because I was trying to make it perfect by giving all the info and I had to go through my old expense trackers to find the right numbers. I'm proud of it because it's way more transparent than most such blog posts out there.
• My Best Book Recommendations — I procrastinated compiling this list but I'm glad I finally did it. I loved writing about all the books I loved.
• A Year With An Apple Watch — this is probably the longest post on this blog so far. It is 7k+ words in length and has all of my thoughts on the Apple watch. I'm proud of it because I finished it despite that length and did not quit due to my worries that no one will care about the post. I'm proud of it because I wrote it purely because I wanted to talk about it.
• My Personal Knowledge Management System as a Software Developer — this was the first time I made a post related to my work. It's not a post that most of my audience will be interested in but I wanted to record it. I'm proud of it because I tried a different kind of post for the first time—I explained my job, what it needed, and how I got to the solution. It's a total nerd post.

It's funny how most of the posts that I'm proud of are ones that don't receive a lot of reception. Except the recommendations post, the above posts haven't done well in stats. But the few comments that I received on them were so special because it was for something that I poured my passion into.

I've noticed that I'm getting more longer comments which makes me very happy. Reviews and lists are good for SEO and information but they don't promote personal connection enough. My wrap-ups and other posts this year have received many long comments. They're conversations that I can have and it feels like I'm connecting more with y'all too.

Speaking of connecting, I didn't do anything on it for a while but the Blog & Chill Discord channel is going strong. Fortunately, I have Clo and Sophia to nudge me whenever I forget to do things haha. It's technically for all bloggers to connect but the active group has sort of reduced to a handful. We get together once every month to chat about things and I love it. We even played Skribbl once which was so fun.

newsletter

The newsletter is going alright. There isn't much of an uptick in new subscribers as I don't really promote it anywhere. Earlier, I was getting new subscribers because my posts did well on search engines and I had included the subscribe form in those posts. Now, I have no clue how people are subscribing to it, lol.

The newsletter has always been a pet project that I don't take very seriously. I'm surprised that I've been sending newsletters for 3 years now! It doesn't feel like 3 years of work. I write random things every month as per my mood and send it. The once-a-month schedule suits me well so I've been sticking to that.

The content of the newsletter has changed quite a bit over the years, though. In the initial two years, I was pondering over many things and my newsletters reflected that. I sent emails like What does "good quality content" actually mean? and What does your community look like?. They were things that I had thoughts on but didn't want to share on the blog because I didn't know how to write a full blog post out of them.

Now, I'm writing blog posts on whatever I want. I'm also including ponderings in my monthly wrap-ups. So, what does the newsletter get?

Nowadays, my newsletters have been short paragraphs over a topic and links to my latest blog posts. It's still fun enough because it's fun to write emails and share a bit more of my life on there, but I'm wondering if keeping a newsletter makes sense anymore. I'm considering stopping the newsletter.

I'm not sure about it yet. I'll probably continue with it for the rest of the year and then decide if I want to keep going. But right now, I'm not feeling it as much. Sending the newsletters on the 1st of every month adds an extra pressure as well because it coincides with other things that need to be done at that time—writing the monthly wrap-up, paying bills, etc.

Maybe it's still fun but the timing isn't right. Instead of stopping, I may switch to sending them in the middle of the month for a while. I don't know yet, we'll see.

The above thought train has also brought up whether anyone is enjoying my newsletters at all. Is there a point to sending it if it isn't worth people's time? What if it's another spam newsletter? I realize that it's the anxiety emotion in me talking* but those worries are there all the same.

The newsletter subscriber count is currently at 487. It was 640 something but I cleaned up cold subscribers recently. It's better to have a smaller subscriber count who engage rather than a bigger count where half of them don't see my emails at all.

About 300 people are opening my emails every month at least, I'm not sure if they're fully reading them but that number is pretty good. This year, there have been almost 150 clicks from the newsletter to the blog too. So it's not like it is dying.

I'm torn. On one hand, it feels like my content isn't worth it and on the other hand, I feel great seeing the open & click statistics. The reason for the anxieties is mostly because newsletters don't receive replies often—I have received maybe 2 replies this year—so it's easy to feel like no one cares.

Anyway. The conclusion is that I'll continue sending newsletters for now. But I'm having doubts about the content I'm sending in it.

If you read my newsletters, what kind of content do you like to see? Help, lol.

* Inside Out 2 reference!

social media

It has officially been a year since I uninstalled social media apps on my phone! Other than occassionally checking them on browser for any texts and 5-minute installs to share blog posts, I have been off them and it has been glorious.

As time went on, I thought about them lesser. I thought about social media often in the first few weeks. After 3 months, I decided to go another 3 months. After 6 months, I decided to keep going until I wanted it back and I haven't yet.

I'm still considering whether I want them back. Life has been good without them but I do miss some things like sharing quick reading updates. I don't want to go back to doomscrolling through. We'll see.

I am planning to write a whole post on "a year without social media" sometime with all of my thoughts.

2024 goals

I started the year with 8 goals and 4 hopes. This was the first time that I set proper goals and I followed them to an extent. Now that half the year has passed, it's a good time to reevaluate whether those goals make sense.

A year is a long time to commit to anything. Sometimes, it works out easily without a goal like my stint off social media. Other times, it is hard. While setting my goals, I did it with the expectation that my priorities will change so it's okay to update the list during the year.

I had a good journalling session about the goals a few weeks back. Here's what I ended up with:

1. Read 100 books — as I'm done with 75 books, this is going great. I'm not updating this goal as 100 is a good number.
2. Learn to cook my favourite dishes — this is not going great. I made a few of the dishes a couple of times but I don't remember the recipes. I am cooking a little more than the basic stuff, though. I am keeping this and I want to focus on this more in the coming months.
3. Run 5k in 38 minutes — done ✅ I reached 35 minutes before my running streak tapered off.
4. Run a 10k — after a lot of thought over this, I have decided to remove this goal. I don't care about running a 10k anymore. I want to have fun playing badminton and improve in that.
5. Publish 25k blog posts — done ✅ I'm not updating the number. Hopefully I'll keep blogging without a goal in mind.
6. Post 20 vlogs — now that I'm blogging consistently, I don't have the time to vlog as well. I also lost the interest to vlog. I'm removing this goal. I'll vlog if I feel like it but I'm not going to think about it specifically.
7. Learn about financial investing — done? I learnt but I don't think I want to do it. All the people around me who invest seem to get a lot of stress from it. I understand the risk vs reward concept but do I care about the reward that much? I want to live a peaceful life and not one filled with riches so... yeah. For now, I'm not investing.
8. Aim for a promotion — I'm still aiming for it. A little unsure if I'll get it because of how things are going at work. We'll see.

Out of the 8 goals, 3 are done. I removed 2. 3 goals are remaining to be worked on. I am not adding any new goals because 3 is a good number and I don't have any other pressing thing on my mind right now.

On my hopes for 2024:

1. Get back to 1k daily blog views — not happening and I'm not trying for it. The blog is closer to hitting 100 daily views which is fine.
2. Reach 500 subscribers on YouTube — not happening considering I'm not doing YouTube right now. This was a throwaway hope anyway.
3. Travel out of the country — not happening, don't ask me why.
4. Maintain and strengthen my relationships — it's going as well as it can. There's no way to measure this. It could be better but it's not bad.

In conclusion: meh. The hopes are random things that would make me happy but don't mind if they doesn't happen.

life

Finding a badminton group early in the year was wonderful. Yes, I run lesser but I am playing regularly and I'm having so much fun. It was a bit weird to be the only girl in the beginning but the host treats me like I'm his niece and everyone's friendly. We are all competitive in a friendly way and play fair. It's nice.

My running was great in the beginning of the year and then tapered off. I still find it fun but I'm just not doing it as often. It's partially because of the heat too, running is not fun in the summer. Now that it has started raining and temperatures are just starting to dip, I might do it more often. Let's see.

I'm not being hard on myself to work out nowadays because I don't want to push myself to burnout. It's hard enough to maintain a life alongside work while going to the office four days a week, any exercise is a bonus.

Another reason I'm being lenient on myself is because I've lost enough weight and I don't really want to lose more weight. Although badminton apparently causes more calorie burn, the weight loss is seen more with running. Losing weight is great and all but I don't want to be very thin or conscious about my body.

I'm a little annoyed that I need a complete wardrobe change too. I haven't been this size since high school so... yeah. None of my favourite clothes fit me well anymore. Even the clothes that I bought a few months back are loose now. I still like and wear a shirt that I got in high school, I'm not someone who is interested in completely changing my wardrobe.

Hence, I'm currently in a not-so-good situation with clothes. I'm trying to make my clothes still work as much as possible by replacing what I definitely cannot wear anymore. Bleh.

As I'm not working out as much now, I'm sleeping in and enjoying reading or journalling in the mornings. My journalling has been pretty consistent this year. I don't journal every day and sometimes miss a week or more but I am journalling often enough.

Journalling has been very helpful. Whenever I'm overwhelmed with emotions or struggling with decisions, I write in my notebook and it somehow makes everything better. I have sorted through my emotions and thoughts and come to proper decisions so many times through writing. Sometimes, I don't even realize that I'm stressing over something until I write a whole page about it. It's a good outlet for emotions.

A funny thing that I've noticed is that I can't journal and blog on the same day. If I'm overflowing with words, I can do both. Otherwise, I can only do one of them. It's as if I have a limited number of words in me per day and I can spend them on only one of the activities 😂

The first half of the year also marked a year since I got my scooty and started riding regularly! Back when my friend was helping me practice before my test, he said that it will take me a year to become good on the roads. I balked at that because a year sounded so long. But he was right.

It takes a year of regular riding/driving to get a good road sense and become confident. I wouldn't say that I'm perfect now but I am not bad. At least, my nerves have gone and I'm confident enough to take my scooty without a second thought. I don't think about all the possible scenarios beforehand or tense up while riding. I even sing to myself while riding on familiar roads sometimes. That's a win.

I didn't travel at all in the first half of the year. I had a small trip planned in the end of June but I didn't end up going (details in my June wrap up). Well, coincidentally, I am returning home from my first trip of the year as you're reading this (if you're reading it on 19th)!

Actually, I'm writing this post before I go on the trip and I'm still unable to believe that I'm going. I haven't even travelled as much and I'm going to Ladakh?? Where I'll have to deal with very cold temperatures for the first time and also altitude sickness???

I am pretty worried because of 2 things: the altitude, of course, and the mobile connectivity. Prepaid connections from other cities in India don't work there and the postpaid sim that I have will work only in the main town. So, for two days, I might be unreachable? And might not be able to contact my family through my phone? Oof.

Many people travel to Ladakh so it should be fine. But my mind is coming up with all the worst case scenarios and I'm trying to console myself by coming up with solutions to all of them. Unfortunately, there are many.

I hope I manage fine in the trip, lol. There are worries but Ladakh is also gorgeous and I'm sure I'll love the experience. I will let you know how it went in the July wrap-up.

chat with me!

How was the first half of your 2024? What did you do? How are you doing on your goals, if you made any? Is the year going the way you wanted it to? What are you looking forward to in the rest of the year? Tell me all about it in the comments!