Ramblings of a Thirty-Something

How are you doing right now? No, really. I want you to answer. How are you doing right now? Today is day 9 since the state mandate here in Illinois that closed schools. Some of you have been working from home longer than that. Some of you are still working outside the home--to all of my healthcare and safety workers, thank you!  To the truck drivers and delivery folks, thank you!  To the people who are stocking the shelves at grocery stores, thank you! We are in a state of limbo right now. Nobody really knows when things will get back to "normal." We are all at different stages in this shelter-in-place, this quarantine, whatever you want to call it. Some of us are starting to get stir crazy. Some of us are relishing this time. Some of us are just getting by. How are you doing right now? Last week, I posted in a very optimistic fashion. I shared what I planned on doing during these days at home. This week, I'm still going for optimism, but with a dash of realism

As I write this blog post, we are in the beginning stages of the school cancellations and social distancing. We have all read both good and bad posts and articles on this subject, and I will leave the commentary to better writers than me. And I want everyone to know that I absolutely respect the seriousness of what is going on throughout the world. Anything that I write that could be misconstrued as making light of the situation should be taken with a liberal grain of salt. Obviously, any "anxieties" that I write about are not, in any way, shape, or form, legitimate things I think people should be worrying. I myself need a little bit of levity right now, and this is the way my brain works. I apologize if I upset anyone. What I thought would be fun would be to go through some things I plan on doing during this time away from my classroom, my friends, and my regular life. This introvert is loving the self-quarantine aspect of the fight against COVID-19. You're seriously

Many thoughts are rattling around in my head as I sit down to write this blog post. Thoughts about people and human nature and why we do and say the things we do. I've come to the conclusion that people are messy, and we can never, ever understand other people in totality. Definitely doing some overthinking here. Which is a great segue into my topic for today! I am not a self-help book reader, usually. Many of the books I have read that fall into this category have been specifically for teachers or through a book club at school, and none have really done what I needed them to do for me. And then Anne Bogel wrote Don't Overthink It. First, let me just say that I love her website. I meant to link it last week in the post, but I didn't, because I'm a failure as a blogger. So here is a link to Modern Mrs. Darcy . And here also is a link to Barnes and Noble and Amazon's page for this book, in case you want to get one for yourself. You should do that. Don't ov

We are just digging into the third month of the year. Spring is coming! More importantly, spring break  is coming. Not soon enough, but it's on its way. I feel like I survived February. I also feel like I said the same thing about January, so what does that say about 2020 for Kaitlin? Ugh... But it was honestly busy in a good way. Lots of time with friends, lots of crafting, not a lot of reading...when I get to that section of the list, you'll see what I mean. I spent three days of this weekend at the iSchool Welcome Weekend down at the ol' U of I and finally got to meet some of my professors and classmates in person, which was great. It kind of refreshed my grad program for me, gave it some solid, tangible ground on which to plant my feet. I think I will use March as a way to refresh myself in the other areas of my life:  work, home, friendships. So without further ado, let's take a look at the items that will be helping me get there... My Current Books Yes, I