February 2019 Reflections

As predicted last month, February was also a bit rough for me.  I generally felt better than I did during January, but I am still struggling with lethargy, depression, and a general lack of motivation to make it better.  February is such a short month, but I have always found it one of the longest to get through each year.  I did not do a lot with my month, but here is a rundown of some of my activity and thoughts from it.

CPA Exam

Of course most of my time has been spent studying (and avoiding studying).  Even though I scheduled everything out from the beginning so that I never had to do more than 5 sections a day and got 2 days off a week, I have deviated from the plan so much that currently I can only take 1 day off and have many days where there are 7 or 8 modules on the schedule.  We are getting closer and closer to my test date of March 6^th, so I am running out of time to procrastinate.  I am forcing myself to push forward so I at least get through all the modules before my test date.  I am suffering from the CPA version of senioritis and find myself not really caring if I understand the material after I review it.  Hopefully, I will have absorbed enough to pass next week, because otherwise I will have to do it again.  I really do not want to do that.

Game Night

I only had one real social event during the month.  This was a game night at a friend’s house.  This turned out to be a very good evening.  There were about a dozen people there.  We split into three-ish groups to play board games through the night.  Although the groups did mix up a bit over time, I managed to go the entire evening without having to compete with my husband.  I played two different games.  One was a reboot of an old game from the 1980s called Fireball Island.  Visually it played on Indiana Jones themes.  The main idea was to run around the island picking up treasure and then get back to the helicopter before the volcano exploded.  The person with the most treasure won.  I did not win.  The second game was called Roll for It.  This was a quick game that involved cards with different combination of dice rolls on them.  Everyone had 6 dice with which they tried to be the first person to roll the combination on the card.  You collected the cards from each combination you earned.  The cards had points on them and the first person to 40 wins.  I did not win this game either.  After playing those two games, I hung around for a while to talk.  However, I went home relatively early as usual.  It was a nice night though, and the type of socializing I enjoy most.

Watching Stuff

I have gone a little crazy on watching videos this month.  Remember last month, when I tried to cut back the Netflix and Youtube subscriptions to try to tame my watching habits?  Well, it did not really work.  While I watched fewer movies thanks to my 2 disc per month limit, I increased my streaming activity in its place.  When it comes to Youtube, I currently am still at 21 subscriptions.  It is not quite the same 21 as where I started because I added 3 new ones and cut 3 old.  I guess it is good that I at least followed the 1-in-1-out rule I set for myself.  I am a little embarrassed to list all the watching activity I did, so instead of leaving a complete rundown of all the shows like last month, here are just a couple that I would recommend.

Travelers:  Season 2 & 3 – This was such a good series.

The Haunting of Hill House – I am a wimp when it comes to horror, and this was really scary in parts.  However, it was also very character driven with a lot of non-scary plot development that helped me get through the scary parts.  It is not a faithful adaption of Shirley Jackson’s amazing novel, but I think it did justice to many of the themes.  The show is entertaining in its own right, and I am happy to appreciate it for what it is.  I am looking forward to the next story in this series which will be based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

Personal Product Project

I have continued on my project to work through my crazy inventory of personal care products that I have accumulated.  How little progress I have made just reinforces how much I need to do this.  When it comes to the skincare/body care/hair care, I have just been trying to work through the things I have open first.  I have noticed I have a lot of unnecessary products that I do not find myself really wanting to use (bubble bath, clay-based face masks, perfume samples).  I am trying to force myself to work through what I can, but my guess is some of this will end up being tossed.  Hopefully, I can be more selective about what I let into my collection in the future so I do not end up with such a bizarre collection of crap.  When it comes to makeup, I am mostly focusing on trying stuff out.  I do have a couple items that are almost gone, so I am “panning” those.  However, most of my makeup is nowhere near being used up.  Instead I am rotating through products, trying things I have not used in a long time or some possibly ever.  Items that seem workable go back into the drawer for future rotation.  Things that are no good, I am tossing.  Unfortunately, most of the tossed items are so old I have no idea if the product has gone bad or if it was terrible from the start.  I am not a full face of makeup every day girl, so I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to accumulate so much.  For February, I used up/trashed 8 items – 2 single eyeshadows, 1 tinted face SPF, 1 hand mask, 1 perfume, 1 deodorant, 1 shaving cream, and 1 nail polish strips kit.  I only bought 1 thing, Native deodorant in Lavender Rose.

Books

I am still working to whittle my Goodreads To Read list down to fewer than 100 books.  I am struggling to just delete more of them, so I took another tactic this month.  I tried to find some of the shortest, easiest reads on my list so I could get through more than normal.  I definitely accomplished the goal, but it set a hectic pace that I do not think did me any good.  I read 8 books in February, and I have 108 books remaining on the list.  Originally I wanted to do another short book readathon again in March, so I would be right at 100 going forward.  However, I have changed my mind.  I am going to read normally in March, and just let the number be wherever it ends up.  I have been careful about adding new books, so as long as I just keep reading more than I add, I should get to 100 in another month or two.  Here are the books I read during the month with my ratings (1-Awful, 2-Disappointing, 3-Decent, 4-Good, 5-Amazing).

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott - 2 stars

White Hot Truth by Danielle LaPorte – 4 stars

The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky – 3 stars

Klickitat by Peter Rock – 3 stars

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen – 4 stars

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – 4 stars

Dead to You by Lisa McMann – 1 star (truly one of the worst books I have ever read)

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley – 4 stars

There you have it, my month in review.  I am hoping March will start to see some renewed energy in me and my life.  Fingers crossed, I will be forever done with the CPA exam.  Also, the sun will shine and the warmer weather will return for good, and as such I should start to feel better.

See you next month!