Words of August || Wrap-up

August was one of those months where weekdays were super busy and chaotic and weekends were slow with no plans. I'm currently writing from a cafe over an hour from my home on a solo day out which I was desperately in need of after a super chaotic and stressful week.

Through it all, I barely managed to keep up with my hobbies and routines. Get a drink and settle down, I have quite a bit to say about my August ☕️

words on books

August was a low-ish reading month with 6 books read. Somehow, it didn't feel like it. I read whenever I was free but then then free time was scarce. I'm not disappointed about it, though. Some months we read less and that's okay. The point is to read when we can.

Out of the 5 books, 3 were paperbacks and 3 were ebooks. 2 were romance books. I didn't count any rereads as I only read parts in books and not a whole book.

A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir. I finally finished The Ember Quartet series! This was a drag to get through like the last two books. I expected it but still struggled with it. The quick POV shifts and jumps in timelines with no visible jump were frustrating. Things picked up in the last 20% so only that bit flew by. Overall, not one of my favourite series. Book 1 was great but the rest of it.. meh.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. This has been on my shelf since the start of this year. I'm glad that I finally got to it. The writing style was boring and put me to sleep a couple of times but the words and the content were brilliant. I enjoyed it. Here's my full review of A Room of One's Own.

If You Give a Billionaire a Bride by Aspen Grove. I went on Twitter X for five minutes and saw Sil talking about this book. I quickly read it before my Kindle Unlimited subscription ended (I didn't renew it as I'm not reading much from KU nowadays). Two people got drunk and married in Vegas and had to make the relationship work for a while due to business politics. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about it. The story was okay.

Bride by Ali Hazelwood. I finally read it and completed my Ali Hazelwood binge. I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. I don't get why it has so much hype but I agree that it's a good fun read. I laughed while reading it and finished it in two sittings. A full review of this will be up soon.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. This was like a middle-grade book for adults. All the vibes and adventures and magic from MG books but with a far more fleshed-out world and starring a mother on an adventure after a decade of retirement from piracy. I enjoyed it but it was pretty draggy in multiple places and wasn't an easy read like I expected. While I like the author's works, I don't think I'll continue reading this series.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This book is so hyped, that I expected a lot from it. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it. The book's idea was nice but the writing was so drab and boring that I couldn't enjoy it. I don't mind grumpy curmudgeon-ish main characters but the writing should balance things by making the story interesting. I was bored for 75% of the book and the last 25%, while interesting, didn't make up for it. I won't be continuing the series.

I mentioned last month that I was contemplating reading War and Peace but I didn't get to it. I procrastinated reading it by picking up A Room of One's Own haha. Figured that I might as well get to a short classic that has been waiting on my shelf for longer. I may read W&P in September but I make no promises.

words on the blog

My ad contract finally ended so this blog is now free of ads! After a whole year, oof. While the money was nice to see, I don't really need it. I'd rather focus on doing better in my career and earning more through that instead of trying to make that money through this blog. Running a blog takes enough time, I'll have to treat it like a second job to properly earn from it.

As SheMedia pays out 35 days after the month ends, my last payout from them will be in October. I'll have to keep an eye out to make sure that I receive the amount I've earned. Otherwise, ads are a closed era. I don't see myself enabling ads on this blog again any time soon. I want to keep it clean, cosy, and fast. I noticed a huge improvement in the loading speed of my blog as soon as I deactivated the SheMedia plugin.

My blog's statistics hit a new low in August. It was expected considering the downward slope that my stats have been going in for the last year or so. I expected a slight uptick considering the number of book reviews I'm posting nowadays which are technically SEO-friendly. But then, I haven't been optimizing them for search engines or anything.

For the first time in 3+ years, another post got more views in a day than my annotating for fun guide did. That post had been the most popular every day for over three years. It got the most the next day as well but it's the sign that the end of its era is coming 😂

Also, my blog is receiving more views from AI chats now! I'm noticing a few referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai, and Microsoft Copilot. It looks like more and more people are searching on them instead of Google.

I actually haven't been looking at my stats much so I realized the changes only towards the end of the month. I've been focused more on writing posts, commenting on others' posts, and appreciating comments on my posts.

A big chunk of August went into completing my A Year of Being Active post. It is finally up after over a month of working on it! I had written some of it in early July but most of it was written in the week before it went live. I spent two weekends and multiple weeknights writing it. I didn't have the energy to proofread it before posting but I'm proud of how it turned out.

I read the post days after it went live and actually got lost in it as if I didn't write it. It is full of memories and feelings. I didn't expect it to receive much attention but was pleasantly surprised when it received quite a few likes and lovely comments. I appreciate every single comment so much because of how close the post is to me.

As I was reading my old posts a while back, I realized that this blog is a different way of capturing my life and documenting memories. I may write book reviews most of the time but they capture my outlook during the time I read it. The books I read reflect the kind of days I'm having. Similarly, my wrap-ups and other posts also document my life, just in a different way.

With A Year with an Apple Watch and A Year of Being Active, I'm embracing this different way of documenting life. I keep a journal where I write the day-to-day details and my thought spirals. But a lot of the zoomed-out views of my life are saved through blog posts in this corner of the internet.

I have another "a year..." post planned—A Year without Social Media—which I haven't started writing yet. I planned for it to go up in September but I think I'll take more time to write it. Not having social media for a whole year changed a lot of things for me. I want to take my time and write about it all properly. I want to love that post as much as I love the Being Active post.

I had actually attempted to return to social media in late July. I installed Instagram on my phone. I didn't post on it or see much in it, but it was on my phone. I thought that I'd post when it felt natural to and I wouldn't get back to content creation. The second night after installing the app, I had a dream where a random person repeatedly told me to uninstall Instagram throughout the dream. I listened to my subconscious and uninstalled the app after I woke up in the morning. It looks like I like my life without it too much haha.

In a wrap-up a couple of months back, I mentioned that I was wondering what to do with my newsletter. I decided that I'll continue it with a few changes at least until the end of the year. I still like writing it but I want it to be worth the read as well.

The main issue is that I usually write the newsletter and monthly wrap-ups around the same time. As the same thoughts are in my mind, there is some overlap between the two. So, to switch things up, I decided to try writing the newsletters in advance when I'm thinking of different things.

I wrote September's newsletter about halfway into August and I love what I wrote. The idea came to me on a Friday morning and it stuck. I had so much to say on it and it felt like a good topic for the newsletter. So, soon after logging off work that day, I wrote the newsletter. Instead of planning it, I just wrote whatever came to mind and it turned out well (in my opinion).

As that was a success, I'm going to try writing newsletters in advance for the next few emails. I'll schedule them to send on the 1st of every month at 9 AM IST as usual because a few friends have told me that they like starting the month with my newsletters. I'll just write it earlier.

Between the blog and the newsletter, I'm writing a ton of words every month. A Year of Being Active post alone was 10k words! The more I write, the easier writing becomes. My weekly routine involves a lot more writing than you would expect. Whenever I have a block of free time, I'm writing.

In fact, I crossed 150 posts on this blog in August! The number isn't much compared to my initial days of blogging when I used to post every day. But the posts on this blog are far longer and planned out—they've taken more effort. So, it's wild that the number is so high haha. I've written a lot in the past 3 and a half years.

Earlier, I used to write while on a Discord voice channel with my college friends as they played games. They've changed games a few times but they're usually playing League of Legends and while I tried it, I'm not a fan. To hang out with them, I used to stay on the call and blog while they played. Eventually, the game chatter became a familiar background noise for blogging.

Over the past year or so, I haven't been joining them on Discord as much because the timings didn't sync up. As I started working out in the mornings, I slept earlier and I blogged earlier in the evenings too. They still started playing only around 10 pm. It took some time for me to get used to blogging to only Lofi or slow music without the game chatter but now I'm properly used to it.

During one weekend in August, my blogging time matched their playing time in the afternoon. So, reminiscing about old times, I joined the voice channel. But it looks like I got used to not having chaotic chatter of multiple voices because I could NOT write with that noise haha. I soon left the channel. It's funny how I couldn't write without that chatter for years and now I can't write with it. Says a lot about changing lives and changing times. I kinda miss the old days. I won't make an effort to get used to that noise while blogging again though 😂

However, I am still on Discord as I blog because I've been hosting co-blogging sessions more often on the Blog & Chill Discord channel! I'm trying to make the channel active again so I proposed regular blogging sessions. It got a huge positive response so I've been keeping events almost every weekend on there. It's a simple event where we show up and blog at the same time, check in with each other, and chat a bit. It's nice to blog with company 😌 Join the Discord channel here!

In case you missed them, here's what I posted in August:

• Anne of Green Gables book review — I adored this book and gushed all about it in this review.
• A Year of Being Active — As if I haven't spoken about it enough in this wrap-up 😂
• A Room of One's Own review — I had to write a full review on this, even though it was a small book.

A couple of older posts that you should check out:

• Are Book Reviews Enough for Book Blogs? || Discussion
• In The Language of Remembering book review

I also finally tweaked the featured posts in the homepage slider to show a specific set of posts instead of the latest posts. I want my cornerstone content featured first followed by the regular blog post list. I'll mostly switch the featured posts once in a while but at least the homepage won't show the same latest posts twice.

content consumed

August saw me consume a LOT of content. Mainly in the mornings while I have breakfast and during commutes. It's nice to spend time on things other than work before work takes over my brain and squeezes out all of my energy.

Blog Posts

• Ruby deep-dived into how she rates books.
• Erin shared her obsession with the library and wrote a thoughtful post on the things she fears.
• Sophie listed her worst reader traits in a fun post.
• Marie revealed the cover of her debut novel!
• Nikitha talked about 3 economic concepts she wishes she had more time to explore
• Nikitha's post brainfog while test-taking is pretty relatable but one of the lines stood out and stuck in my head for days: "a present that i’m not sure i entirely consented to."
• Elgee spoke about why book blogging is different from other niches.

Newsletters

• When was the last time you fed your soul? I loved this newsletter. I meant to add it to last month's wrap-up but forgot to. Better late than never.
• Who are you underneath all that society stuff? A very thoughtful newsletter.

YouTube videos

• Art changed my life. This video is BRILLIANT. It is legit art.
• The year that changed my life. Yeah, YouTube has been recommending these videos lately haha.
• Zoe Sugg & Alfie Deyes's Vlogust throughout the month.

Allow me to speak about the last point for a minute. I've been watching Zoe and Alfie's content on and off since high school. I've always liked their vlogs and Brighton has been one of my bucket list cities because of their videos. At one point, I was watching so many videos of theirs that my words would randomly be in a British accent (my friends made a lot of fun of me in college due to this).

They did "Vlogust" i.e. vlogging every day during August last year and it was loved by everybody. So, they brought it back this year. This year's Vlogust is my favourite content by them out of all the content I've seen over the years. Their videos went up at 9:30 PM my time every day but I watched them the next morning with my breakfast.

Right from day 1, the videos brought me so much comfort and joy at the beginning of my day. I loved watching them and their family having fun. The videos made me laugh so many times. (One vlog showed them laughing for several minutes straight and it made me laugh so much that my cheeks hurt.) They were cosy and casual. It's so nice to see them being amazing parents and raising happy kids.

Alfie has a tradition of answering a question at the end of each vlog from the previous vlog's comments. I liked that tradition in his vlogs and was happy to see them do it for Vlogust on Zoe's channel this time. Both of them answer a viewer's question at the end of each vlog. Some of them were quick and funny while others were thoughtful. I loved the end section of every vlog because of that.

Watching their vlog was a really nice way to start the day and I'm going to miss Vlogust so much now that it's done. Their vlogs were my daily television because each vlog was around 40 minutes long which is a good length. They mentioned that they're also doing Vlogmas this year (vlogging every day from December 1st to 24th/25th) so I'm glad that I'll be getting more of such content soon.

If you like watching cosy vlogs, definitely watch their Vlogust. Here's their Vlogust playlist with all the videos. I highly suggest watching one vlog every day because it gives just the right amount of joy and comfort for a day. It also keeps you looking forward to the next day because there's another vlog to watch.

words on life

My August was pretty uneventful, to be honest. Most of the month went by in a blur of work and badminton. My schedule is pretty packed with a long work day that even one hour of play is a big addition. I came home exhausted almost every day.

In the last 10 days, my eyes started becoming strained. My eyes have always been prone to becoming strained easily, There's a reason I wear glasses almost all the time despite having 20/20 vision. Lights and screens affect my eyes a lot. The increase in my work time plus blogging time in August clearly affected them.

I started applying castor oil on my eyelids every night again, after going off them for a good while. In the last week of the month, my eyes were strained so badly that they were burning almost all day. I had only a few hours at the beginning of the day when they were fine. Around 2 pm every day, they would start hurting and turning red.

In the last few days of August, I was crashing at around 9:30 pm every night. Even if I wasn't fully sleepy, I couldn't keep my eyes open because they would be hurting so much. I couldn't look at screens or lights after coming home. One day, I almost almost skipped dinner because I couldn't keep my eyes open to look at what I was eating.

I'm trying to reduce my screen time but it's hard when most of the screen time is due to work. I don't spend much time on my phone—there's nothing to spend time on considering I don't have social media. I blog during off-days but it's not that much. I don't know how to cut my screen time significantly without giving up work.

My sleep wasn't great as well. For some reason, my usual sleeping position wasn't comfortable anymore and I'm just not able to find a good position to sleep in. I woke up with my back or neck aching for a few days before I decided to try different sleeping positions. It's better now that I switched but it is taking time to get used to a different position.

Maybe my morning badminton routine didn't help either, because I had to wake early-ish and run off to play. I didn't want to give it up, though. Playing in the morning is the only time I get to have a bit of fun during the day. In fact, I moved up my playing frequency from 3-4 days to 4-5 days a week.

Speaking of badminton, I won first place in badminton women's doubles at my office's sports day event! I was put into a volleyball team as well because they were short on players. Thankfully, my team did most of the work and we placed 2nd. It was a long day and I ended it with go-karting for the first time. It's not easy to turn the car haha. A few of my colleagues and I went for a chill dinner that lasted late into the night.

As I'm a part of the committee at the office that organized the sports day, it was a bunch of extra work during the month. I did not give my all for it—I couldn't considering my regular workload. I had a bunch of organizing work during the sports day as well. I was the main person handling badminton which led to a very busy few hours. It was tiring.

I woke up the next day with body pain and burning eyes. I also had plans to meet friends in the morning so I powered through the morning routine and rushed off to meet them. It was a fun time but I yawned throughout haha. I need a no-screens day with lots of naps soon.

In other good news, I journalled more often. For a while, I was barely journalling. My days were busy but I was also blogging so much about personal life that I didn't have the energy to journal. But I slowly got back into it in August and it's lovely. I missed emptying my thoughts onto paper.

I'm hoping to continue journalling and playing badminton more in September. I also have a chill vacation planned which I'm super excited about. I need a few relaxing days by the beach during which I do nothing productive.

The break is much needed because life is going to get busier as we inch closer to the end of the year. Although our festivals are scattered throughout the year, most of them are around the end of the Gregorian calendar. The festivals slowly started in August with Varmalaxmi pooja and Janmashtami. The next one is Ganesh Chaturthi in the first week of September. Soon, we'll have Dussehra and Diwali.

Work also gets busier around this time of the year. I've never had a stress-free November/December in my career yet. I've already applied for leave for the last 10 days of December. Even if I don't go on a vacation, I'll take a break at home like I did last year.

It's funny how September has just begun and I'm already planning de-stressing holidays in December.

chat with me!

How was your August? Did you read any books? How does your life usually look in the last few months of the year? Does it get busier for you as well? Chat (or rant) with me in the comments!