Balancing Reading, Blogging and Classes

Good evening, dragonflies! 

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm having a hard time reading a lot with the recent beginning of my masters. But, I want to take care of my blog, so I'm going a little more contemporary! 

With the beginning of the new school year, I've seen a lot of students mentioning the fact that it was more difficult to keep up with their blog, Instagram and reading. I totally agree with this! But, I also hear about a lot of students who say they used to read a lot, but dropped it all once school took over. This, although understandable, I found to be quite sad. 

So, I decided to compile a list of suggestions on how to balance the uni world with the book world! 

1. Make use of public transport

Up until this year I took the bus everywhere - we lived 15 minutes away from the city by bus, so it usually amounted to 30 minutes a day (but it usually took more because of schedule delays). I know it's tempting to go on your phone to check what's new on Reddit in that time, but it's also the best time to get a chapter or two done. 

Plus, public transport is great! It takes me 2 hours on the train to get to my old city. That's two hours in which you have no social interactions because everyone is keeping to themselves. Two hours of book bliss. 

2. Books with short chapters are your friends

Ok, this might be a little difficult to filter out at first. But books with chapters that are only a couple pages long are so easy to flip through! This usually means that there is a lot of things happening in the story itself, and it's always so tempting to see what's going on afterwards. Plus these books make it super easy to divide your reading into manageable chunks - read a few chapters while your pasta is cooking, in those extra minutes you have before leaving to class, or even during the commercial break in a movie. 

3. Love the draft function

I've made this mistake before - I've been so caught up in classes that I forgot to post. But I would still get ideas of posts. 

The best way I found to get around this was, once I had an idea for a post (or a book review I didn't have time to finish), was to use the fact that you can save posts as drafts. 

This is one of the best functions - have an idea? Write it down in a few lines in a new post that you don't publish. You finished a book on the bus but have an assignment to finish? Write down your main opinions as a list on an unpublished post. It's a super useful way to see how much you have to finish, but the best thing is, you are under no obligation to finish! Plus, if you want more regular posts, you have many of them already half-done! 

4. Instagram? Take photos in batches

I've had a lot of people ask me how I manage to find time every day to take my instagram posts, especially from friends who don't bookstagram. 

The thing is, I don't. I treat my sleep preciously so there's no way I'm going to get up early to take a photo. That would really put me off of instagramming in general. 

The best way I found to do this is, once you have a few hours off for whichever reason, take loads of photos at once. If you keep them simple enough, you can take up to 10-12 in an hour. They might not all be perfect, or what you want, but at least you'll have a few that you can use for the next few days. 

5. Read what you want, not what people want you to read

This is a point I can't stress enough. There are so many people who assume that because you're a reader, you've read all of the classics - and if you haven't you can feel the judgment of these people. 

It is tempting to then just cave and reach for the books that everyone tells you to read - whether it's from social media or the people around you, just to fit into the hype. 

The thing is, every reader is different. We all enjoy different details in books that we choose to read. Just because a book was adored by 98% of the community doesn't mean that you need to force yourself to read it. Read what you want when you want, and I promise you'll read more easily. 

6. Close Netflix and read

I get it, after a long, annoying day there's nothing more tempting than to wrap up in a blanket and watch 15 reruns of Friends for the 3rd time. And that's okay, sometimes it's so necessary. 

However, reading has shown to be equally - if not more - relaxing. Try it out, and see what it does for you! 

This is my list for now! Do you have any other suggestions? Leave them down in the comments! 

If you are currently in school or college, I hope that you are doing well! It's an important time to really learn about yourself, and learn to grow, so make sure that some of your free time is also spent going out in the world and spreading your wings. 

Stay bookish!