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What’s Been Happening In My Week

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What's been happening in my week…

 

I read some great books this week –

Sparrow by L.J. Shen

This is a dark romance with a male that I loved to hate until I hated to love him. I was drawn straight into the story and loved every minute of it. The last few chapters had me madly flipping so I could hurry up and get to the end. If you love a book with crime, revenge, hate, lust, distrust and not your usual kind of love story, check this one out.

Night Shifts Black by Alyson Santos

Oh how I adored this story! The writing in this story was so understated and beautiful that I never wanted the story to end. And yet, all I wanted was for the story to end so I knew what happened with the characters. And I absolutely loved the ending! I was so glad I saw a post about this book in a reading group. If you love a story full of depth and meaning with characters you desperately want to see happy, give this book a go.

The Girl in 6E by Alessandra Torre

I just started reading this one yesterday and am enjoying it so far. This is a thriller, not romance. I'll keep you posted next week about whether I love it, but I'm fairly sure I'm going to love the rest of it!

 

I binge watched some TV this week…

Janet King – I watched the entire first season of this Australian law/crime show. If you're interested, that season is on Netflix. The second season just started on the ABC and you can catch up on iView. I absolutely loved this show!! And I've also started catching up on the show it spun off from – Crownies. My mind has gone into overdrive plotting a book with a lawyer and a cop…

 

I listened to two awesome podcasts this week…

A conversation Danielle LaPorte and Emelia Symington Fedy about – How do you tell a spiritual faker from a real light maker? Is there really enough abundance for everyone? How does it work being an introvert AND a public figure? What’s love and shame and cash and hypocrisy got to do with it? I loved this interview and realised something key about myself… the answer to something that has been holding me back for the past month. I've lost my joy. And so, now that I've figured that out, I'm on a mission to get it back!

An interview with Sean Platt on the Self Publishing Formula Podcast. Inspiring!! I've followed Sean Platt and his writing partner for a couple of years now and have read some of their books on publishing. This interview gave me an insight into how Sean manages his time and his goals/dreams. I love the way his mind thinks and would kill to spend time there lol. I'm really enjoying this podcast from Mark Dawson. I listened to his interview with Marie Force a couple of weeks ago and it was a good one too. Check it out if you're publishing books.

 

So, after realising I'd lost my joy and doing some digging within myself to try and figure out why and how to get it back, I made some decisions. I've actually spent the better part of the last three weeks trying to figure this out and I think it all came together in my mind this week. The last probably six to nine months have been personally hard months for me and I've done a lot of soul searching about everything in my life and made many changes. One of those changes was that I started to really listen to other authors about how they deal with work/life balance and burnout. I knew I needed to make changes so I did, but I've come to understand something key about me – balance isn't segmenting my life into batches of time where I dedicate a certain block of time to one thing and another block of time to another in a structured way. I thrive when my life is more fluid and flexible. And I love to work. There, I said it. I fucking adore the shit out of my work. Trying to hold myself back from creating and working sucked the life out of me. Sure, I've added back to my life some of the things I'd let slide – time with those I love, reading (oh God how I missed reading!!), making art, catching up on TV shows I love, exploring the world and some other fun things (because I also realised I was lacking fun in my life), but no longer will I not work if that is what I'm itching to do. My key takeaway from all this is to listen to myself more and trust my instincts more than listening to others.

Having given myself permission to work again (lol! I never thought I'd ever say that in my life), I've mapped out the rest of this year and started the ball rolling on some projects I've been wanting to do for ages. I can't wait to share all this with you soon!!

I'd love to hear what you've been up to this past week! Read any great books? Seen any awesome movies? Leave me a comment! xx

 

NinaL

  1. Patti says:

    Your a busy girl!

  2. Steph says:

    I have come to realize that the whole goal towards work/life “balance” isn’t so much about balance as it is about finding a work/life HARMONY that works for you!

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