Happy new year, my friends! And what a start to the year it has been. I've gone all in on writing, leaving behind my full time job in Student Affairs to try and build my writing career. It has been exhilarating and terrifying and overwhelming, to say the least.

I'm mostly in the learning phase at this point, doing research and poking around to see what's out there. In the meantime, I'm continuing to write on Your Book Friend and Medium. Here are the highlights from January:

• Someone stole my credit cards during our vacation, and I wrote about how I can't stop asking questions

• National Pizza Week happened, and a pizza lover like me couldn't resist spending a little time reflecting on the pizzas of my life.

• As I prepare to live a life that looks super different from the past few years, I'm musing on the difficulty of change and adapting to it

• The Amanda Reads newsletter is BACK with weekly tarot readings, book recommendations, and some words from the web! You can subscribe for free.

• While my husband was away on a business trip, I decided to scare myself by watching an entire season of Only Murders in the Building

• As I do every month, I looked back on the best books I read in January 2023.

As always, thank you for supporting my work in whatever ways you're able!

September was an incredibly busy month at the day job, yet somehow, also a pretty prolific writing month. I finally felt the tug to write some personal essays and even try my hand at a little humor after a few months of feeling wrung out and mainly writing about books.

It helps that I've started to go out into the world and do things that might inspire said personal essays again, I think. Here's what I put out in September:

• I started a new Tarot Tuesdays series on my self-care blog, Running Into Joy. I reflect on the meaning of a particular card each week and give you some journal prompts based on its message.

• At the Rennaissance Festival this year, I got to meet some hawks. This prompted reflection on my teenage hawk girl years.

• My car broke down in the middle of a tunnel last week, which naturally sparked the need to write my way through it. The feelings, not the tunnel. Some guys in a truck pushed me out of there.

• While browsing my Google recommended articles, I began to wonder what someone would think of me if this was all they knew. Then I decided to channel Google's impressions of me for what may be my funniest piece to date.

• Plenty of bookish goodness continues over at Your Book Friend, including several book reviews and the usual weekly content. I'm going to post there once a day in October if all goes according to plan.

Those are the highlights of September! Thank you, as always, for being here and for supporting my work. I hope you enjoy what I've put out this month!

It feels like just yesterday, I wrote my June highlights post. That's partly because I got that one up a little bit late and partly because I've been so busy at the day job that time is slipping right on by. Soon I'll be in the busiest season of my work in Student Affairs, and my writing will likely slow down as I get through the start of the semester.

Here we are at the end of July and the start of August. July wasn't my most prolific writing month but I did get a few new words out into the world.

• The old running & self-care blog is back up and running (see what I did there?). I started half marathon training and decided to blog the journey week to week. You can start from the beginning with this post.

• I shared a bit about my latest podcast obsession and how it briefly inspired me to download TikTok.

• July found me coming out of June's pain flare cycle, and I reflected on the morning I realized I'd woken up without a headache for the first time in two weeks.

• A friend and I took a full moon hike with a local group, which was a magical experience. Just not quite the experience I expected.

• FanFare had another bout of their Thunderdome series, in which writers face off around different topics to claim the crown. I jumped into the ring to prove that The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement is the worst sequel of all time.

• Of course, several book reviews and What We're Reading Wednesday posts also graced the old book blog, Your Book Friend.

When you list it out like that, July doesn't feel quite so unproductive as it felt! We'll see how August goes. I hope you had as good a month as is possible in these times, and an equally okay August ahead!

Yes, it's already mid-July and yes, this post is delayed. June was an incredibly busy work month for me, which meant I didn't have a ton of energy left over for side projects and hobbies. Unless you count complaining about too many meetings as a hobby.

Nevertheless, I did get some writing done in June, which means I'm here to recap the month in words.

• After feeling weird about it for a few years, I finally wrote about the time a male yoga instructor put his hand on my butt during class.

• I had a ton of fun writing this humor piece about how Biossance skincare has taken over my bathroom, and Reese Witherspoon is to blame.

• We hit the midpoint of the year, which means a check-in with my reading goals for 2022.

• My nostalgia and I couldn't resist hopping on the trend of reviewing favorite movies from every year you've been alive. Here's the first installment in the three-part series.

I won't neglect to mention that in addition to these essays and articles from June, there's plenty more to check out over on the book blog, if you're here for the book reviews and book news commentary. I'm gearing up for the all hands on deck vibe that is August in student affairs, so I won't promise a July recap will be any more on time. Under promise and over deliver, as they say.

Thank you, as always, for being here and for your interest in my work. If you're feeling so inclined, I always appreciate a coffee tossed my way.

Happy June! Here in PA, the flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and the temperatures are reminding me why I'm mad that central AC isn't a given in houses here.

May saw a slow return to writing consistently after some time away for the wedding and honeymoon. It's also continued to be a heavy time to be a human person living in this world with a shred of empathy, so I've taken time to recharge and take action as best I can to try and combat the overwhelming helplessness that creeps up any time I engage with the news for too long.

Sometimes it feels odd to plug away at my corner of the internet with so much going on, but I ultimately hope that art will continue to give us the ability to connect with one another as well as the much-needed chance to focus on something bright and light every now and again. With that in mind, here's a brief recap of the words I put out into the web for the month of May.

• Just in time for Mother's Day, I put down my thoughts on why assuming all women want to be mothers is damaging for the nuturer in all of us.

• I also reflected on the super-fancy lodge my husband and I booked for our honeymoon

• My go-to location for my favorite local coffee chain permanently closed while we were away, and I became briefly obsessed with the fact that the chain didn't acknowledge it online

• My anxiety found a new outlet in the form of the free one-card tarot readings I've been dropping into our Little Free Library, so I wrote about why I think that is

• Panic! at the Disco's long dormant Instagram account showed some action in late May and I got excited about what it almost definitely means--new music!

• The Best Books of the month column at Your Book Friend is back after our April hiatus, and I had so much fun running through my favorite reads of the month.

Whew! Going back through the month made me realize I was more productive with writing than I felt like I'd been.

Thank you for being here and for following along with my writing month-to-month. I appreciate your support, as always! We'll see you in June for more musings.

Hello from the other side of 30, my friends! This month has been a whirlwind between my 30th birthday, wedding planning, and my bachelorette party.

The look of pure skepticism on my face while receiving a Tarot reading at my bachelorette party.

On top of it all, a toe-tally random piece that came out in early March has gone quasi-viral, and it’s not at all the sort of essay I expected to garner so much attention. I’m talking, of course, about the essay I wrote to process my Big Feelings about losing my left big toenail and how it dragged up some medical trauma from my chronic pain diagosis a few years ago. You can read all about in my essay in Age of Empathy, titled “When I Started Running, I Expected to Lose a Toenail—But Not Like This.”

That piece has been far and away the most viewed article I’ve ever written, and certainly takes the top slot for March 2022 without much competition.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want to leave out my other darlings!

In March, I also…

• Penned a reflection on turning 30 and how it’s not quite the overwhelming thing I thought it’d be.

• Finally put down my thoughts about yearning for another summer like that one time we all seemed to be playing Pokemon Go. Ah, the togetherness and harmony.

• Wrote about the decision to switch my birth control method to only have four periods a year, for better management of my chronic pain condition.

In other exciting writing-related news, I revived my weekly newsletter, Amanda Reads! You can subscribe for free and get weekly reading recommendations (books and online articles) and a tarot reading to start your week!

Your Book Friend also went legit, because I snapped up the domain name! You can now find all the bookish goodness not only on our Medium site, but also at YourBookFriend.com! There’s always way too much new content there for me to summarize in these monthly highlights, so do give us a follow if you want book reviews, reading recaps, and other bookish goodness. For a quick preview, there’s always the monthly Best Books recap, one of my favorite posts to write.

That’s about it from me for this month, dear friends! Thank you for your support and your interest in my words. If you’d like to throw a little monetary support my way, you can Buy Me a Coffee.

Here’s to a great April! See you in May from the other side of matrimony!

Holy productivity, Batman! I’ve been on a writing spree and have started putting out a lot of words lately. I can barely keep up myself, so I’m guessing it might be hard for others to keep track, too.

So, I’m going to start doing a monthly post highlighting some of what’s gone out in the world. It may be April 12th, but we’re kicking back to March highlights with this one and I’ll bring you April at the end of the month.

Mental Health/Chronic Pain

• Invisible Illness accepted my essay about not being sure I earn the “chronic pain” badge

• I wrote about Tarot as my social anxiety superpower, also for Invisible Illness

Books & Reading

• I put together a list of the books I didn’t expect to love for Books Are Our Superpower

• The awesome new pub, Coffee Time Reviews, picked up my review of Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flight (which, not to brag, was quoted in a Penguin tweet promoting an event with MacDonald, so)

Self/Identity

• I guess I live in PA now? I wrote about getting my new license for The Personal Essayist

Self Publication Nation

• I shared how I reframed the journaling narrative to (finally) start a daily journaling practice

That isn’t even everything, because somehow I have written so much these last few months! I hope you enjoy my words, and I’ll catch you in April with a recap of some of my favorite things to cross over from my brain to the world wide web.

New essay about using tarot as an icebreaker in social situations, live in Invisible Illness.

Check it out at this link.

The inaugural issue of The Journal of Dungeoneering for Hip and Attractive Professionals released on March 15th, 2021.

It comprises a variety of art and conversations related to the exciting world of tabletop RPGs, including my essay about finding my place at the table, Chaotic Awkward.

Check out the issue, including my essay, here.

Nonfiction essay “Cooking for One” is now available in audio format through Golden Walkman Magazine.

Listen to the podcast here.