A new series in which I share what’s up in my real life. If you’d like to know, keep reading.
Favorite NYC spots visited:
The Uncommons, Tartine, Standard Biergarten
What I couldn’t stop listening to:
The soundtrack to A Star is Born is seriously just too good. I have had “Always Remember Us This Way” on repeat for three weeks now and I don’t plan to stop any time soon.
Troye Sivan’s album Bloom is pop perfection. We bought it on vinyl and might wear through the record, that’s how frequently we’ve listened to it.
Favorite photo I took:
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Ok, so obviously I was not behind the camera on this one, but my dad was. I love creating with him – he’s an amazing photographer and is never afraid to give direction. This entire trip was just as magical as this photo.
Favorite piece I wrote:
I feel like I’ve hit my stride writing this month. I’m into this balance I’ve found in my reviews between the content of the book and my stream of consciousness. And I like getting more personal – I think my Girls Write Now piece takes the cake for what I’m most proud of this month. Also, I freaking love my Girls Who Read series. Thank you so much to the October girls Lauren, Patience, and Julia.
Home Life
In case you missed it, I live in Manhattan with my little monster, Cleo, and my two perfect roomies, Kyle and Ellen. Kyle and Ellen were classmates of mine at Duke. Kyle was one of my best friends (we found each other at some point Sophomore year, neither of us quite remembers the details of how we met). Ellen and I met during the second half of her senior year, so we shared less time on campus, but since moving to NYC, she’s become my human. We adopted Cleo in 2016, when she was three and a half, and the four of us make a happy family. Except for when our washing machine stops working. That seems to bring out the worst in all of us.
Ok, so the biggest update we have going for us is that we’ve becoming freaking obsessed with monopoly deal, a card game version of monopoly. It’s faster and more portable than the OG game, and we’ve been known to bring it to our local bar and play for hours.
I was out of town for four perfect days at the beginning of the month for a trip to Paris with my mom and dad. If you want to read more about that, I wrote all about it here. We had many visitors – Mary Kate from San Francisco, Abby from Nashville, Melanie from DC, my brother from Atlanta, and Elena from Charlottesville. We went to the most well decorated Harry Potter Halloween party of all time. It’s been busy month.
Work Life
For those of you who don’t know, in addition to nycbookgirl, I’m the assistant to a Broadway producer and I do freelance social media consulting and content creation. In terms of the content of work, things have been going extremely well. I love the shows we are developing in our office. In my theater world, October was a busy month – the last two weeks brought two days of attending the NAMT 30th Annual Festival of New Musicals and traveling for a one-night presentation in Cambridge, MA. nycbookgirl is flourishing in ways I had never imagined possible when I started this platform and for that I am so grateful. It has brought me so many incredible experiences and friends. Highlights from October include the early screening of The Hate U Give (RUN do not walk to see this movie), the Scribner Spring Release Party (thanks for having us, Scribner!), partnering with Barnes and Noble, and serving as the guest on the pilot episode of a new podcast – more information to come!
But this month has not been perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. As my responsibilities grow both inside and outside of the office, I’m struggling to find the right balance of how to budget my time. I’ve always been bad at saying no – I’m the kind of person who has a plan every night, but actually it’s two plans every night and a morning workout and X number of hours of work that needs to get done outside of the work day. I love my friends and our lives so much but I can’t seem to strike the right balance of time to be social and time to work and time to take care of myself. Don’t even think the words self care because I haven’t practiced that in ages. So I’m struggling to strike a balance and to not struggle with the fact that I’m struggling in the meantime. I’m the kind of person who is always pushing to do more and make more and be more but I’m worried I’m going to burn out. In the second half of this month, I realized I wasn’t letting myself get excited about each and every achievement, because I was already hunting for the next milestone. In light of that, I started a habit of writing down one thing I’m proud of every day in the corner of my planner. And it’s definitely made things just a little bit happier.
Favorite Meme of the month
Love Life
I went through the world’s most respectful break-up this past May – we were two people who cared greatly for one another but were simply headed in different life directions. I met a few interesting guys this summer, but wasn’t looking for any kind of serious commitment. I needed some time to just do me. And it helped that nycbookgirl was (and is) growing like crazy and demanded more and more of my time.
But now I’m feeling ready to start over and see where this takes me. For the record, I’ve been an app-dater for as long as I’ve lived in NYC. I actually talked about this in the first post I ever wrote for the blog. In essence: yes, I would love to meet someone in an incredibly romantic way (the current dream is via our holds on the library shelf…) but that’s not always the reality of dating in NYC. And, if that is my destiny, until it happens, I’m going to be proactive about meeting new people and apps are a fine way to do that. If I’m on those apps, people as normal as me are bound to be on the other side (not that I’m normal, but you have to get to know me to find my crazy – you know what I mean). Also, I actually like dating. I like meeting new people and I like the excitement of a crush. Less fun is that “ok, we’ve been on a few dates, is he as into me as I’m into him? Am I actually into him or do I just want to be? Am I going to get ghosted?” feeling. But it’s a rollercoaster and I’m along for the ride.
Mental Health Life
Honestly, my mental health has been all over the place this month. When I’m working or with friends, I’ve been quite stable. But at night and in the morning, my anxiety has been spiraling out again. As soon as I start thinking about the things on my to-do list I haven’t yet completed, my body goes haywire. My Sunday scaries are almost debilitating, though Ellen and Kyle do a great job of planning fun things on Sunday night to try and improve them for all three of us. Today has been particularly bad – the less sleep I’m operating on, the quicker I lose control and slip into a panic attack. I had my first full fledged panic attack today in a really long time, but I’m so grateful to my friends like Ellen and Henry who are always there when I text them in that state. I need to find a new therapist. I’m writing this here to hold myself accountable – by the next happy hour, I will have made an appointment with a new doctor. Some days, I don’t feel my anxiety as strongly and I’m able to ignore it and put of scheduling an appointment. But that makes it so much harder on the days where I am affected by it – I’m not prepared.
So, that’s my October in a nutshell! If you liked reading this and want more of this kind of post, let me know. Thanks for reading, bookworms.
nyc book girl 