(if anyone reads this?) that there wasn’t a reading update for June. Oh some reading happened, mostly magazines, and lots of podcast listening. I’ll tally some of my current subscriptions (magazines on Libby, podcasts on Apple Podcasts) at the bottom.
June was a bit of a break for many reasons. I ended one of my day job contracts in May. I loved the peeps I worked with. The hours were reasonable, but having that extra tab open for meetings and whatever was a drain on my energy and brain space. It’s one of the things that I think a lot of people who have switched to working from home during these now precedented COVID times have learned: when you work from home it’s really easy to always be at work. Even if you’re a gig/contract worker like me. You may only be on the hook for X number of hours a week but you have to be available to meet or deal with work things all the time, a little like an unpaid retainer.
So, I wrapped that up in May. Then my bonus daughter came out for the last week of the month, which was wonderful. We missed also having my son and his partner because COVID is a jerk face. And then I had about a week or so to prep for being gone for three weeks to help a friend out with travel for surgery and post care. I squeezed in a visit with my sister and her fam and a day of work in the middle of all of that. Gotta tell you, going from “I barely put on pants to leave my apartment, amazing social anxiety girl” to “getting on a 4+ flight, driving from Nashville to (and in) Chicago, being in a hospital, and generally aways around other people who are not keifel (the partner) or Orion (the cat),” was a lot.
I spent about a week and a half recovering from that. I was so glad I was in a position where I could do it and am grateful for the time I got to spend with friends and family, but 0 to 600 is probably not the way to re-enter “normal” life. That brings us to just past the midpoint of July and I am back on some kind of schedule. I’ve written, edited, recorded interviews, done social media stuffs for the podcast, taken classes, and gotten mostly back on top of the apartment.
There’s good stuff on the horizon. Season 2 of WitchLit is well underway. I’ve got a couple guest appearances on other people’s shows coming up. I have a new story in an anthology out this fall (subscribe to the newsletter for more on that). And I’m making headway on the new book again. I’ll be back in July with our regularly scheduled list of what I ploughed through reading wise.
A partial list (the actual list means there are always like 200 podcasts in my queue) of witchy, writerly, or otherwise kinda artsy podcasts I currently subscribe to:
New World Witchery
DruidCast
Betwixt and Between
Working Class History
Missing Witches
Subtitle
The Allusionist
BBC 3 Arts & Ideas
Occult Confessions
Tending Seeds
Radio Free Golgotha
The Lonely Palette
The Witch Wave
Witchcraft Off the Beaten Path
Witches of Scotland
Southern Bramble
Your Average Witch
Witch Space
Baba Yaga’s Magic
How to Survive the End of the World
The Witch Wavelength
Ghost Church
Bonfire Babble
Magazines I have set up to download monthly through Libby: As a magazine junkie, free, paper-free mags through the library is amazing — need 10 foodie/shelter magazines for an anxiety-ridden plane ride? Libby’s got ya.
delicious. UK
delicious. Australia
Australian Gourmet Traveller
BBC Good Food Magazine
Country Living UK
your home
Olive
Vegan Food (I am not but I like the creativity and ideas)
PlantBased (same)
Saveur
Victoria (I have no shame)