#maybe i'll attempt to be a minimalist if i ever get home

[tanktopgallavich]

hi! 7, 11, and 27 🥰

Julissa!! Hi!! Thanks for the questions and I hope your day is going well!

7. what animal do you look forward to seeing when you visit an aquarium? Oooh, I love the sea otters! They are just out there being cute and zen, swimming around. Wish that was me. Also, every time I see them, I think about how they sleep holding hands and my heart feels like it will explode.

11. anything from your childhood you’ve held on to? I am way too sentimental so there's quite a bit. There's my first stuffed animal that I took with me to pre-K for naptime every day. I have the few diary entries from all the diaries I attempted to start that detail my adorable little kid problems, like wanting black hair and almost fainting because someone I liked shared a chair with me. I still have greeting cards from family and friends, some necklaces and rings I used to love to wear and my first ever nail polish.

12. what’s your favorite or go-to outfit? My favorite things to wear are my slightly oversized band or movie/tv show tees, leggings and Doc Martens. When I want to look a tad more presentable, i'll go for skinny jeans and one of my favorite knit sweaters in the colder months or one of my two long dresses and sandals for the summer months. However, if life was fair, I'd spend my days in a one of those zip-up pajama onesies so I could always be comfortable and warm. 😋

[aurashine]

Audiobooks

When I say this, I don't mean it lightly, I have grown to LOVE audiobooks. I very much used to be one of those people that slept on the idea of audiobooks for a long time. I didn't get the hype and I didn't really understand or want to understand for that matter. I had things to do and places to be. If I wanted to listen to something, I figured I may as well have filled my ears and head with beautiful music so I wouldn't have to think about it too hard, because so many other things and tasks filled my brain at the time. Maybe part of it was the fact that the only comparisons I had were the really bad books on tape I had heard family friends listening to when I was a small child? Everything I heard had seemed like people badly reading stories and was very boring, droning even, which didn't interest me at all.

That all changed when my partner introduced me to an audiobook he was listening to and convinced me I would really enjoy it. I was reluctant to download an app and give it a go, I even procrastinated as much as I could because I genuinely thought I would hate it. He even sent me the handpicked audiobook he had thought I would like as a gift, had me download it on my device and made me promise that I'd give it a try and that if I didn't like it I'd swap it out for something else. I had to try it at that point, I couldn't avoid it any longer. He had went through all that trouble to kindly share something with me, in an attempt to bring me joy. I couldn't bear declining his kind gesture or rejecting his kindness. So I did what any good partner would do and accepted a bid kindness even though I somewhat didn't want to, but was still very curious why he insisted I would love it.

So I downloaded it, started it on one of my drives home from his place (a thirty minute drive at the time), and I didn't stop listening even after I arrived at my destination, more like couldn't stop. It was so engaging and it was like I was personally being read a story. It was so different that what I had built it up to be. So in my spare time and time I was occupied using my hands for a different task, I'd find any excuse I could to listen in the car, in my ear pods, or on a portable speaker in my house. I loved it and became enamored with having stories told to me right away. I even regularly subscribe to an audiobook app so I can get new audiobooks as much as possible.

This past year I've devoured more books than I ever have because they were in audio format and I could passively listen while doing other things. I'm pretty pleased with or even proud of the fact that my total amount of books and audiobooks I've completed for the year has reached an all time high of: 26. I'm currently working on a lengthier title that I'll talk about below.

2021 Audiobook list:

1984 by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Some Thoughts About Relationships by Colin Wright

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E.Schwab

Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs

A Map of Days by Ransom Riggs

The Conference of the Birds by Ransom Riggs

The Desolation of Devil’s Acre by Ransom Riggs

Minimalism Essential Essays by Joshua Fields Millburn

Minimalism Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn

Simplicity: Essays by Joshua Fields Millburn

A Day in the Life of a Minimalist by Joshua Fields Millburn

Everything That Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Will I Ever be Good Enough by Karyl McBride

Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Narcissistic Mothers by Caroline Foster

The Social Skills Cure by Chad Collins

Pacman Frogs as Pets by Lolly Brown

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Here's the book I mentioned earlier, that I actually started today:

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

So far it's really interesting and mainly focuses on how various functions we do daily came to be, how languages form, the need we have as a species to have a natural order to all of our processes and how we use them. It's thought provoking and seems to explain a good bit of why we all do what we do and the similarities we all have based on cognitive function and how we order our mental processes. The main take away I have is that it's an organized explanation of the mechanics of how the mind works without diving into psychological disorders, but it may get into that. I don't know yet and don't want to speculate where the author is going. Honestly, I picked this book up under the assumption that it was about being overwhelmed navigating that, because the cover reads, "Thinking straight in the age of information overload".

My list is filled with mostly self help books, engaging fiction, and really informative books, just because that's what appeals to me so far on this journey. I've also built quite the queue of books I plan on listening to, that have even more topics. It's really nice having an extra conversation topic to share with friends about the types of books that they enjoy and recommend, because of this I'm always tacking things onto my ever growing reading list. Speaking of recommendations, the book my partner recommended is the final one on the list.

All in all I've learned that audiobooks aren't the terribly boring things I thought they were, in fact I've grown a deep fondness and adoration for them in place of that. It's become an enjoyable part of my life and I can't wait to get to all the amazing audiobooks waiting for me on my list.