Get ready for a good old fashioned ramble á la the old days of blogging – this is exactly why I created my “musings” category!
How I’ve eliminated a huge distraction
Before I had my baby at the end of last year, I wrote a post about how I was going to be slowing down my content creation. I very much kept up with my monthly (though they are now quarterly) life recaps and I started including my book reviews within those posts instead of them living on Instagram and, of course, Goodreads.
I also wrote about yoga, having a baby (including pregnancy, the newborn days, and going back to work), and overall life simplification.
Simplification and using my time wisely has been on my mind a lot recently. This is mostly because I have far less free time than I’ve ever had before. When I do have free time I want to make sure I maximize it instead of defaulting to using social media (in my case, mostly Instagram).
A few months ago I was inspired by this article on the Everygirl to delete Instagram from my phone during the week. It has made a HUGE impact. Typically I would pick up my phone and automatically look at Instagram for a few minutes when I have a second to myself, or worse when I want a distraction from whatever obligation I’m currently engaged in. Now, I’m doing all the things that I thought were cliches, like noticing what my five senses are experiencing, taking deep breaths, and overall just being present.
Therapy and the mindfulness techniques that I have been working on are absolutely a huge contributor, but I also noticed that not having a default app to peruse has made me more present. What I’ve found is that other apps like Pinterest, Goodreads, and YouTube don’t have the same effect because I’m not trying to “catch up” and finish looking at every new post. Instead, I turn to those apps when I am consciously looking for inspiration, not when I’m unconsciously looking for distraction.
Plus, I read posts from a handful of my favorite bloggers and listen to podcasts, so it’s not like I feel a lack of media in my life. I want to consume a handful of content mindfully and focus most of my time on books, my own writing, and being with friends and family!
What this has to do with my book reviews
I’ve been sharing book reviews in my monthly (now quarterly) life recaps for quite a while. I also have been posting the reviews on Instagram stories and saving them to a highlight. And all of the reviews originate on Goodreads.
I was trying to figure out a way to better display and organize my reviews on my blog and I created a beautiful page where you could click on the cover of a book to see my review. I’m really proud of it! However, it was an intensely manual process to pull this together and I got through all of my five star reviews before giving up. I’ve read over 300 books and it was too much work to put it together exactly as I was envisioning.
So here’s the deal, to make at least a small improvement in the way you can keep up with my book reviews, I’m going to break them out from my quarterly recaps. You can now expect two recap posts a quarter, in addition to my other posts: one with a life update and one with books.
The best way to follow my reviews is to connect on Goodreads because you’ll get to see my reviews in real-time and you can filter them based on the star rating. I don’t plan to post my reviews on Instagram anymore because, as I described, I don’t have interest in using the app anymore. I’m also going to stop posting my quarterly recaps on Instagram because if anyone is curious, they can just look on the blog (and I send photos to my friends all of the time, so I don’t need it for the social component anyway)!
How to stay up to date without Instagram
I’ll use Pinterest to share all of my blog posts and LinkedIn for any posts that are career related. And did I mention Goodreads enough yet as the place to follow my reading?
I’m not sure when I’ll get back to podcasting – I have a feeling that is still a ways away because of the time required, but I do hope to resume someday!
My first and best love will always be this blog. I started it for the love of writing and I wasn’t worried about how I would “drive traffic.” Reflecting on how I was using social media has made me realize that I don’t need to promote what I create to an audience. I want to create for the fun of it and anyone who decides to enjoy it too is welcome!
Leave a Reply