Over the winter break, I made some decisions about the direction of my professional life and how I prefer to spend my middle years, and by the end of January, those changes were in motion.
I transitioned my work schedule back to part-time (this doesn’t look quite like I’d initially planned, but it’s working out okay so far) and started taking three courses in the music and drama departments of a local community college so I can dip my toes into the world of audio engineering and voiceover.
Getting into this work has already changed the way I listen to music and for the first time in years I’m listening to audiobooks at 1.0x so I can hear the pacing and vocal nuances of the narration. I’m also watching (and listening to) commercials, which is…educational.
It’s something of an adventure, but so far it’s been good. The last time I was doing something that made people say, “Oh, wow! That’s so cool! Tell me more!” was when I was a doula, so that little bit of external validation is an unexpected benefit. I do wonder if I would get the same level of excitement if I weren’t in Southern California where the entertainment industry is so ubiquitous. All the more reason to try out this path while I’m living here!
We’ll see where all this leads, but for now, here’s some of what I’ve been reading so far in 2024!
January’s Completed Books:
My favorites from this bunch:
I didn’t have any 5-star reads this month, but there are three 4-star reads among the dozen I read.
- A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie (I’m reading a Christie a month until I’ve gotten through them all, a multi-year project, and this one stood out to me for the ways that Christie pushes the envelope of social conventions at the time and how well she draws the characters.)
- Big Swiss by Jennifer Beagin (hilarious and uncomfortable story about people acting contrary to their own best interest in so many ways.)
- Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin (A self-help book that’s not about “ten steps to personal fulfillment” or any hooey like that (although there is one quiz, which I think is required by law for the genre), but rather focuses on realistic boundary setting as a way to live in a way that’s more balanced in terms of meeting our needs as well as meeting others’ needs. This is something that’s been very much on my mind the past two years or so as I realized just how much I’d lost track of my own sense of self and back-burnered my own needs while in the thick of child-rearing and homeschooling, a situation not made any better by a global pandemic.)
The rest of the list:
- Open Throat by Henry Hoke
- The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones
- Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn
- All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
- The Guest by Emma Cline
- Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
- Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
- American Mermaid by Julia Langbein
- There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura
Stats (pretty charts thanks to The StoryGraph):
Currently Reading:
- Redshirts by John Scalzi
- Wellness by Nathan Hill
To-Read for February:
In addition to my StoryGraph, you can see my Litsy profile for status updates throughout the month and my Instagram (@ImperfectHappiness) for mostly not-book-related photos.
Imperfect Happiness 