April 2019

Welcome to issue #3 of my (surprisingly consistent) newsletter! (Okay fine, I technically sent this a day late, even though it was only by one hour). My blog and Instagram are updated very irregularly (which is the number 1 thing I want to improve this year!), but for some reason I feel ten times more pressure to send my newsletter out on a proper schedule.

I did miraculously manage to publish a blog post this week. It’s about the importance of brevity in writing, which is extremely difficult for me as anyone who knows me well can attest.

reading: March was a slow month for reading. I was very distracted by other things happening (vacation, existential crisis, bad bout of depression). But also, most of the books I did manage to pick up turned out to be flukes. I kept losing interest in them after reading a few chapters. “Stop reading books you don’t like” is on a list of tips Austin Kleon wrote about how to read more, and one I’ve adopted wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t “reading more” with all the time I saved by quitting books I didn’t like. I recently befriended a musician and we spend a lot of time talking about music (the career I would have pursued in another life). So lately I’ve found myself tapping my Spotify app way more than my Kindle app (yes, I read e-books, don’t judge).

I’m going to make a new little section just for this month to showcase the albums I’ve been obsessing over (since I have no books to share, RIP).

listening:
Free Spirit—Khalid
Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost-Part 1—Foals
The Suburbs—Arcade Fire
Thank You For Today—Death Cab For Cutie
Trench—Twenty One Pilots
Blushing—Copeland

watching: A friend suggested I try out the show Bojack Horseman, and I am completely hooked. It’s definitely not a show I would have ever watched without a trusted recommendation. There’s something about adult cartoons shows that are off-putting to me. Perhaps it feels like a betrayal to childhood, because growing up I thought that Toons Are For Kids™. But the writing for this show is absolutely genius and I love the illustration work. Every time I watch it I just get more excited to keep pursuing some kind of writing and illustration career.

new things: I have a meeting with a potential business mentor coming up soon, which is really exciting. I read a lot of business books and blogs, and one unanimous agreement in them is that businesses are way more likely to succeed under the guidance of a mentor. I’m still not completely sure what exactly I want my “business” to be, but I know it’s on the tip of my tongue. Hopefully my meeting will help me spit it out.

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Thanks for reading!
Ally