Goals/Resolutions for 2018

This is probably going to be pretty rambly, so... prepare yourselves? IDK. Work with me here. Anyway, I tend to make beginning of the year bookish resolutions, but this year I decided to make goals across the board. I plan to make a video sharing these as well, but I wanted to do a blog post explaining first, since I can't film for about another week.

So, a bit of explanation here: One major struggle that I've had this year is that I've accumulated a huge pile of hobbies and interests and things I want to do, and it's gotten big enough that I'm finding it difficult to split my focus on a regular basis. I'm finding myself working on one or two at a time, letting the others fall by the wayside, and I hate doing that. So, I wanted to make some year-long goals that I can work toward. Instead of making tons and tons, I've decided to make a single goal for each hobby. Something to reach for that is attainable, but still a little challenging. That way, I'm not pushing myself too hard in any one hobby.

Without any further ado, let's jump into the list.

READING

I figured this was the best one to start with, given that it's the hobby where I give myself yearly goals every year. Usually, I give myself a challenge to read 50 books and to read 7 books with 500+ pages. And I'm not giving myself either of those this year, even though they're in the back of my mind because I do legitimately want to accomplish those this year. Instead, I've given myself a single goal to work toward year-long.

GET MY TBR DOWN TO 30% OF MY LIBRARY

My 2016 goal was to get my TBR down from 45ish% to 35%, and I accomplished that. My goal for 2017 was to get it from 35% to 30%. And now, at the beginning of 2018, it's sitting at.... 39%. Yeah, I kinda screwed that up. BUT I believe in myself, and given that it's my singular reading goal for 2018, I think I've got this. 

I'm also doing a challenge based off of booksandlala's closet unhaul series, where I watch old hauls and have to read the books from them that are still on my TBR shelf. Technically, that's not a "goal" for the year, because either I read the books or I don't-- either way, books are probably getting unhauled. BUT, it does help me to accomplish this goal. So, win win. The first video in that series is embedded below!

YOUTUBE

One major change in 2017 is that I've started a second YouTube channel! My obsession with KPop that developed throughout the year led to the creation of a KPop-centric YouTube channel and many, many KPop videos. One of which got 100K+ views. Which is mind-blowing. My goal for the year is a pretty simple one..

MAKE 100 VIDEOS

Yes, that's 2 videos a week. Approximately.  Which sounds like a lot, and it is. But I love making videos, and that's only 1 video a week for each channel, and I've been doing 2 per channel for the past couple weeks with very little difficulty. This challenge allows me to split it up however I want, so if I'm at a point where I'm working on a particularly time-intensive KPop video, I could easily make up for that by having 2 bookish video in a week, which isn't difficult at all. Really, all this challenge forces me to do is to be consistent with each of the channels, since I'll probably get burnt out if I make 100 bookish videos or 100 KPop videos. 

WRITING

At the beginning of 2017, I was sitting on a freshly-written 96K word first draft of Flirting With Fame, my NaNo project. I worked on character development and outlining sporadically throughout the year, and then in October, I started a new fanfic project, which I worked on during NaNo. And then, right at the end of the year, I finished character development and outlining and prepared to start a second draft of Flirting With Fame. So... two projects. Both of which I like. Only one goal makes sense...

FINISH A FULL DRAFT OF EITHER FLIRTING WITH FAME OR MY FANFIC

Across the board, I really just want to finish A draft this year, regardless of the project, but I've decided that I want to restrict it to these two projects because I really shouldn't jump into another one until I've finished a draft of each. In reality, I would like to finish a draft of both of these, since I really love both of them, but I'm not going to give myself that huge of a challenge for the year. So, one draft. Of one of them. I think I'm going to begin with Flirting With Fame, but IDK for sure. I've been working on it, but not consistently. So, we'll see where that goes. I might need to set up some sort of writing schedule for myself but IDK for sure. 

KOREAN

Another new thing that happened this year is that I started learning Korean. TL;DR: I've been wanting to learn a second language for a long time, and I was working on Spanish because I took Spanish in high school and college and was pretty good at it. But, when I started getting into KPop, I switched to Korean instead and have been learning Korean on and off since May. Given that it's a language, it's hard to have a definitive goal, but the one I've decided on is...

BE ABLE TO HOLD A BASIC CONVERSATION/ READ BASIC POSTS

I feel like I've simultaneously learned a lot and almost nothing at all with my Korean learning. It's incredibly frustrating. That said, I am able to understand some very basic phrases that I see popping up on posts, which I always love. But, I want to improve upon this. I'm less concerned about the conversing than with reading. Long-run, obviously I'd like to be fluent enough to be able to both speak and read the language, but obviously reading is going to be the easier one because conjugating is possibly the hardest thing about speaking a language. Anyway, my goal obviously isn't to be fluent by the end of the year, but I want to have a basic reading knowledge of the language by the end of the year. Maybe not to understand all of the conjugations or to be able to speak fluently, but I want to be able to understand enough that I don't have to tap the translate button on all of the things my favorite idols post.

MAIN BLOG

It's hard for me to come up with a goal for my blog, since I mostly just post whatever I want on here, but I decided to give myself a pretty simple one...

DO A LARGE-SCALE RANKING

A couple years ago, I did a ranking of all of the designers who'd ever been on Project Runway. It was a huge series, and it took forever. And I loved doing it. And I want to do another one. I mentioned this several times throughout 2017, but have yet to do one, so I think I need to finally do it in 2018. I've been planning on ranking my favorite RuPaul's Drag Race queens for at least a year at this point, so I think that once we get season 10, I'm going to do that. But IDK. I gotta do some sort of a big ranking. 

SPECIALIS REVELIO

This is my Harry Potter analysis blog, linked at the top of this blog, where I analyze the series chapter by chapter. I started it in 2016 and have been severely, severely slacking on it, and I want to get back to working on it. I don't want it to be my priority throughout the year, but I do want to work on it. So, I'm giving myself a pretty simple goal...

FINISH ANALYZING SORCERER'S STONE

I honestly don't remember how many chapters I've analyzed and how many I have left, but I think that if I do one per month, I can finish by the end of the year. So this isn't a big challenge that I'm giving myself. I just want to work on this blog in some form or fashion and not totally neglect it.

And, I think for now... that's it. 6 hobbies. 6 goals. Hopefully all of them are achievable. There are other things I want to do throughout the year that I'm not making as specific goals (some TV shows/movies I want to watch, some other reading goals, etc), but these are the only firmly in-place goals. They seem pretty manageable, so here's to hoping that I can complete all 6 of them in 2018.

Check out my links below!

Main YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See you soon! 

On Vlogging Preference & Reviving My Blog [AKA an Update]

I remember being pulled to blogging several years before actually beginning to blog. As someone who's always had the desire to be a writer and even briefly considered doing journalistic writing, there's always been something incredibly appealing about being able to curate my own space on the internet full of my own writings and musings in whichever form I want. Finally, in 2012, I went for it. I started this blog and started posting about Project Runway. I used it pretty casually throughout the end of high school all the way through the end of my freshman year of college.

And then, in the summer of 2013, I got serious. Without getting into too much detail, I lived with my parents over the summer in the small town they'd recently moved to, and I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't know anyone, I had a job in customer service that was kinda miserable, and also felt like I was regressing from "independent adult at college" to "kid at home with parents." Definitely not the best of times. And I found myself throwing basically all of my free time into blogging. I did a lot of fun 30 Day Challenges and CDs On My Shelf posts, and one of my rant-y posts about a scam company actually went semi-viral. Even today, when you search the company, it's near the top of the search results.

I kept this up for quite a while, posting as frequently as possible, and trying to get into a routine. And then, right at the end of 2013, I discovered BookTube. I've always been a huge reader, but in college, I hadn't really been making much time to leisure reading... but BookTube re-sparked that interest. It led to my blog taking a very book-heavy turn. I was essentially doing BookTube-esque videos, but in blog form. Wrap ups, book hauls, reading challenges, etc. But by mid- 2014, that wasn't quite enough for me anymore. I wanted to make BookTube videos. I wanted to reach a wider audience and talk about books with more people. I wanted to actually have a comment section and to interact with people about books instead of seeing a decent view count with zero comments.

So, I started a BookTube channel. I posted a couple videos in the summer of 2014, and then began posting regularly at the end of 2014. And that's been my main focus ever since. Video was never my primary desired form of communication-- it's so much easier to say exactly what you mean when you can type and edit-- but I've enjoyed vlogging for the 2.5 years I've been doing it. I don't have a huge audience, but most of my videos get comments, and I do actually get to interact with people and get feedback. And as that's been going on, I've been less and less devoted to this blog.

Obviously, it hasn't been inactive. At least, not completely. Most of the time, I still post once or twice a month, but my post count has continually gone down over the past 2.5 years, and especially since the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year. I think I posted a grand total of 12 blogs throughout the school year. And the main reason for that... is my vlogging preference.

What I mean by this is that, since I reach a wider audience on YouTube and I get to interact with people more often on there, whenever I get a good idea for a topic to talk about, it almost always gets put on the "vlog" list rather than the "blog" list. I always think "no, this is a topic I want to talk to people about, and that'll work better on my YouTube," and end up putting almost every idea down in the "vlog" column, delegating only my obscure TV show rankings to my blog. Because apparently, everything else is "too good" for my blog. I've had so many ideas that would probably be communicated better in blog form that I've posted on YouTube instead simply because I can converse with more people about it and reach a wider audience on there. That's obviously not an invalid reason, but I hate that I've turned this blog into something deserving of only my most niche, obscure interests and nothing else.

So, what's my point? My point is that you should prepare yourself for more diverse content. I'm hoping to do 30 Day Challenges again, and to post some discussions and just general updates. Maybe even favorites posts. And definitely some book reviews once I get around to it. I'm still definitely going to be doing my niche rankings posts because I freakin' love them, but I want to do more interesting stuff on here, and I want it to be more than just the spill-over from my YouTube. I want it to contain lots of different, diverse things. After all, it IS supposed to be the diverse and random thoughts in my brain.

Also, I say this at the end of every post, but please, make sure to comment on stuff! One of the most motivating things ever is seeing someone interacting with something I've posted. I love fangirling over my favorite topics, so feel free to join me.

That's about all I wanted to say in this post. The summertime is always when I have the most spare time, so I always feel really inspired and motivated to get creative and write/blog/vlog a lot, so I hope to be really active on here over the next three months (and the future too, but grad school is hard, y'all)!

Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! And don't forget to join in the discussion in the comments!

Calling All Fans of The Mole!

I'm a self-proclaimed reality TV junkie. My list of favorite TV shows consists of mostly reality competitions. For the longest time, I refused to admit to myself how completely obsessed I was with reality TV, but that's definitely become a thing of the past. Over the years, I've discovered more and more reality shows that have been added to my favorites list. But, in recent memory, none of them has stuck with me quite as much as the purported "smartest reality show ever," The Mole. 

Quite honestly, there isn't a ton of discussion online anymore about the Mole, given its age, but I know that the fandom is small but mighty, given the things that I do see popping up around the internet (Rob Has A Podcast episodes, Twitter hashtags, and the constant questioning of Anderson Cooper). Because of this (and my obsession with the show) I came up with the idea of doing a blog series- or starting a separate blog- for all things related to The Mole. My ideas are all over the place right now, but I wanted to throw it out there to see who bites.

For the uninitiated, allow me to explain. In the Mole, a group of contestants compete in missions/games, each of which can earn them money for the group pot that a single contestant will win in the end. But, there's a catch. One of the contestants is a saboteur-- The Mole. This person is not competing for the money, but is instead working with production to sabotage the missions and make the group lose games, thus keeping them from earning money. The real contestants' prime objective is to discover which among them is the mole. At the end of each episode, they take a quiz, and whichever contestant scores the worst on the quiz is executed (eliminated from the competition), whittling down the contestants. Only the last 3 people make it to finale, where there is a winner, a loser, and a mole. 

Throughout the season, the audience is also in the dark as to The Mole's identity, which is definitely the most fun part of the show. Viewers are given hints throughout the season to help them discover the identity of the Mole, alongside the player's confessionals and hypotheses about who the Mole could be. 

If you're like me and enjoy the hidden saboteur trope a la Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, this series will be like candy to you. Or caffeine. Or drugs. You get the point. It's addicting and you won't want to stop watching. But, unlike a lot of other reality shows, this game is really smart and keeps your brain active throughout the entire process. You find yourself making accusations constantly and often distrusting someone that you trusted just last episode. I can't say enough about how clever and fun this show is. 

Side note: Anderson Cooper is the best host of all time.

So that's my pitch. I'd definitely suggest that if you haven't checked it out and the premise sounds interesting, give it a shot. I don't think you'll be disappointed. All the US Seasons are available on YouTube, and will be linked at the end of this post. However, persuading you to watch the show isn't the main point of my post. Instead, it's to discuss this potential blog series. 

As aforementioned, I've been wanting to start this for a while, but I have a ton of different ideas as to what to do with it, and I could use some guidance. I think that, at least as a starting point, I'd like to go episode by episode doing recaps and discussing everything going on. I think that the best way to do this would be to have a spoiler-free section of each post for newbies that might be reading, but then a spoiler-filled section at the end where I can discuss the clues and Mole activity throughout the episode. Other ideas that I think would be fun include rankings of the seasons and rankings of the moles. Maybe best winner rankings as well.  

Past that, I could use some advice. Mole fans, what would you like to see from a blog series on The Mole? What topics would you want to discuss? What do you think would be most helpful for the newbies in these posts?

Mole newbies: If you'd like to follow along with my posts and watch the show as I discuss it, that would be awesome! I'm going to start with US season 1 and work my way through in order. It'll be about a month before I get anything started (because I'm finishing up a series on Project Runway designer rankings), but I hope to get things going sometime in August. 

Let me know down in the comments what ideas you might want to see in a potential Mole series and what you think of the ideas I've discussed in the post!

The Mole (US) on YouTube:

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!

Top 10 Most Read Authors

Hey, y'all! So I recently (as in a few hours ago) discovered that this weekly series called "Top 10 Tuesday" exists. This is a weekly series created by The Broke and the Bookish (link here if you want to check it out!), where each Tuesday has a certain "top 10" topic attached to it. 

This week's topic is Top 10 Most Read Authors, which was actually kinda difficult for me. I'm not sure how this works for y'all, but I definitely get more attached to genres than I do to specific authors. While there are definitely some authors that I get attached to, in general, I tend to focus more upon the book descriptions that interest me or on the genres that interest me than upon certain authors. So, because of that, there are a very small handful of authors who I've read a lot of books from, but past that, my reads are stretched across a very wide range of authors. So because of that, you'll see some authors where I've read a lot of books by them, and a lot where I've only read a handful. That being said, let's jump into the list! 

10. Peg Kehret

# of books read: ???

OK, so I honestly have no idea how many Peg Kehret books I've read. On this list, I tried to exclude authors I read when I was a kid, because I read so many books, and I simply just can't remember all of the books I read. However, I was getting to the point where I'd only read 4 books by an author, and I didn't want to get to any smaller numbers, so I just decided to talk about Peg Kehret. She was one of my favorite authors, and I read a ton of her books. But I just can't remember how many. Oops. 

9. Stephenie Meyer

# of books read: 4

She's tied with the next person on the list, but I've only read one series by her (Twilight, obvi) so I decided to give her the lower spot. Plus, I don't like her books as much as I like the books by the next person. 

8. Brandon Sanderson

# of books read: 4

This is a recent addition to the list, because until June, I hadn't read any of his books. But I fell in love with his Mistborn trilogy and really enjoyed The Rithmatist, so I completely expect him to move up this list very rapidly. He'll probably be up in the top 5 by the end of the year! New favorite author, for sure. 

7. Beth Revis

# of books read: 5

I've read almost everything (if not everything) that Beth Revis has published: her Across the Universe trilogy, The Body Electric, and The Future Collection (a collection of her short stories). I may be missing a few short stories, but that's it! She's one of my favorite authors, and I can't wait to read whatever she publishes next! 

6. Joe Hill

# of books read: 6

I actually forgot about Joe Hill until I looked at my "most read authors" on Goodreads and saw him on there. The 6 books I've read by him are the 6 books in his Locke & Key graphic novel/comic series. Not sure I'm going to be reading any more books by him, but I did enjoy the series!

5. J.K. Rowling

# of books read: 8

The first seven books that I've read by J.K. Rowling should be pretty obvious: the Harry Potter series. Although I probably should've read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them & Quidditch Through the Ages by this point, I haven't. The only other book I've actually read by her is The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I might read some of her Robert Galbraith books, but those are probably the only other books by her that I would actually read.

4. D.J. MacHale

# of books read: 10

The books I've read by him are the 10 books of the Pendragon series, which is one of my favorite series of all-time. I don't plan on reading any more of his books, mostly because they're middle grade and don't really interest me, but I do really enjoy the ones I have read by him.

3. Cassandra Clare

# of books read: 10

Cassie Clare is most definitely among my favorite authors. I love her Mortal Instruments series and Infernal Devices trilogy, and I also enjoyed The Bane Chronicles... or at least most of it. And I also plan on reading the rest of her books as well. I also plan on reading the first two books from her Magisterium series (cowritten by Holly Black) very soon, so she'll be moving up on this list really soon.

2. Agatha Christie

# of books read: 11

Once again, Agatha Christie is one of my favorite authors. My favorite stand-alone of all time is her book, And Then There Were None, and I've also enjoyed (almost) all of the 10 books that I've read from her Poirot series. And I do plan to read many, many more of her books in the future, so I expect her to stay up high on this list, if not all the way at the top.

1. Lemony Snicket

# of books read: 13

Lemony Snicket is, of course, the pen name of Daniel Handler, but I haven't read any Daniel Handler books, so I decided to name Lemony Snicket. I almost didn't include him in this list, because I consider these books as ones that I read when I was a kid (I think I read them mostly in elementary school). However, I was running low on people, so I decided to include him and he ended up at #1! Now, I'm sure there are authors that I've read more from than Lemony Snicket, but they're all among the authors I read when I was a kid and (as mentioned earlier) I'm not including those on this list. 

So, that's it for my post on my top 10 most read authors! I definitely plan to keep doing the Top 10 Tuesday series in the future, mostly on here, but possibly on my YouTube channel as well if I decide that the topic would work better in video form. My YouTube channel is linked below, so feel free to check that out if you want to!

Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

   

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!

I'm Back- FOR REAL

Hey, y'all! So I think this might be my longest hiatus from posting-- A MONTH AND A HALF. WHAT?!?!? And I know I promised in April that I would be posting again... and then I posted like 2 things and disappeared. But this time, I'm for real. Want to know how I know that?

Because I already have 3 posts scheduled to go up IN THE NEXT WEEK ALONE. Not even kidding. And I'll probably have another within the next 24 hours. The first one will be posted at noon today (10 AM Central time, June 16th), and it's my Harry Potter Experience post. Chances are, if you're reading this, it's already up. So go check that out if you're interested!

Then, tomorrow, I'll (hopefully) have a post that correlates to my Top 5 Wednesday video this week, followed by 2 review posts on Friday and Monday.

But let's stop for a second and get real here. This is not going to keep up. I'm not going to be posting 4X a week on a regular basis. I'm hoping to post at least once a week steadily, maybe more depending on the week. I want to continue my ranking Project Runway designers series, and I want to continue doing CDs On My Shelf posts. I'll probably scatter in some other things (especially bookish things, if I do full written reviews of books), but those will be the main content on here.

I'm not making any promises. I know I'm a lazy bum, but I also know that if I continually force myself to do stuff I don't really want to do, I will eventually just stop all-together. And I don't mean to say that I dislike blogging. I like it very much. But sometimes, after working all day (I have a full-time job, for those of you who are unaware), sometimes, I don't feel like coming home and doing MORE work, and instead want to just sit and watch Netflix/YouTube. So I'm going to try and strike a healthy balance of vlogging, reading, blogging, and down-time over the summer.

I'm not sure how anything's going to transfer into the new school year, because (for those of you who don't know), I'm entering my senior year of college. And not only am I going to be taking senior classes, but as a music major, I'm going to be preparing for a recital. And on top of this, I'm going to be working as a research assistant, will (most likely) have a fellowship, AND will be applying to grad school. So blogging/vlogging/reading regularly might not be as possible then as it is now.

Anyway, I have digressed extremely far from my original point, which is that for now, I'm back, and I hope to continue to steadily post over the next few months because I feel like there's no better way to talk about my opinions than to type and subsequently edit them so that I can say exactly what I mean.

Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

   

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!

Hey, y'all!

Hey, y'all!

So... it's been a while.

And by a while, I mean approximately a month, so it's nothing crazy, but it is definitely my longest absence from this blog. And before the long absence, I was... scarce, to say the least.

So, what's my explanation for this long break from blogging?

Laziness. Laziness is my explanation.

I know you're probably wanting some actual explanation, but that's the long and short of it. Pure laziness. And I've been focusing on vlogging and writing.

See, I have all of these things that I enjoy doing in my free time: reading, writing, vlogging, blogging, watching YouTube videos, etc. And there are typically only so many that I can focus on at a time. Lately, it's been vlogging, writing, and watching YouTube videos (which is a constant regardless of the other things that I choose to focus on). But, I want to try to prioritize blogging more. At the beginning of the semester, I made this crazy schedule where I was going to be blogging or vlogging literally every single day. And while I technically have time to do that, I didn't factor in the fact that I need to have down time where I'm just lazing around and that I get distracted really easily. So I never seem to be able to fit everything in.

Anyway, I will be resuming the Project Runway rankings series. Also, a new CDs On My Shelf post will be up on Tuesday, April 7th. And this is a special post, because it's not a randomly chosen CD. It's been specifically chosen because it's being released on April 7th. If you know anything about my taste in music and favorite bands, you probably know what this is, so that's all the info I'm giving you.

Also, I'm not sure what I'm doing about book posts, because I have been making book videos on my YouTube channel. So I might not be making very many book posts aside from reviews. But we'll have to see.

I'm going to be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, so maybe I'll post some updates on here? IDK for sure. We'll have to see...

So, there you go, a brief update! See you in a couple days!

Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

And no, this isn't an April Fools Day prank. I just thought it would be better to post it on the first day of the month. I'd come up with something actually funny if I was kidding.

Super-Late Update!

Hey, y'all! So I haven't really done an update in a long time, and I felt like it was time for one since there are probably going to be some schedule changes as far as when posts will go up. I'm also planning to change around what series are posted and when.

First-off, I figured I should discuss something I've been adding to the end of my posts lately-- for the last couple months, I've been making YouTube videos! My YouTube channel is almost solely about books (surprise, surprise). If you'd like to check it out, you can do so here: My Youtube Channel

I'm planning to suspend a couple series that have been regulars on my blog. The first is my One Day Tumblr Challenges. This one is being suspended for the simple reason that I've run out of Tumblr Challenges that actually interested me. If you look back, it's probably been 5-6 months since a challenge that I did was actually a Tumblr challenge. I've tried finding new ones that looked interesting, but I just haven't been able to find any. If I happen to come across another one that I really want to do, I will definitely do it. However, these will no longer be regularly scheduled posts on my blog.

The second series that I plan to bring to suspend is my Secret Lightning Scar Fan-Fiction. I started re-working this fan-fiction at the beginning of last year because I hadn't written in a while and wanted to get back into it by forcing myself to write every other week. The plan was to work on it throughout the two-week period so that it would be well-written and how I really wanted it. However, I just ended up writing it the night before it was posted and it completely destroyed my Friday nights (not like I had anything actually exciting going on, but I had to bail on dinner out with friends a couple times). I'm not happy with the way several of the chapters turned out, even though it did flesh the story out a little. Anyway, it did get me back into writing, so it did its job. It's a pain to write and post, and it's not an incredibly popular series on my blog. So plain and simple, I'm not going to be writing any more. If there's a high demand for more, I might possibly write more. But other than that, it's finished.

What is becoming a regular series, however, are my book posts. Which probably isn't a surprise, because that's what most of my posts have been about as of late. However, they've been kinda over-running my blog, and I realize that. So I plan on making it a regularly scheduled series, once a week.

 Speaking of schedules, I have created a tentative schedule:

Blog schedule:
1st/3rd Tuesday of the month-- CDs On My Shelf post
1st/3rd Thursday of the month-- Random post
2nd/4th Tuesday of the month-- Book post
2nd/4th Thursday of the month-- Random post
Every Saturday-- Project Runway designer rankings post

YouTube schedule:
Sunday or Monday-- Random video. Day of the week depends on whether or not I'm doing T5W that week.
Wednesday or Thursday-- Top 5 Wednesday video. Random video on Thursday if I don't do a Top 5 Wednesday.

I really like this schedule right now, and so I hope to keep to it going forward.

So, that's all I really had for today's post! Check out my links below!

YouTube Channel 

Facebook

Goodreads

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!

Schedule Update/ Coming Soon...

Hey, y'all! So I just wanted to update y'all on the blog's schedule now that I'm back in class and trying to juggle everything I'm doing. And give another fun blog update that I just recently decided to do.

I'm not going to give y'all a full run-down of everything I'm doing this semester, because it might make your head spin. It's a lot. Junior year in high school was a lot of work, so I can't even imagine how much work Junior year of college is about to be.

Anyway, because of my crazy schedule, I'm going to have to be more flexible about my blog posts, because I won't always be able to get one up on the same days. My normal series will be returning, and hopefully I'll also be able to throw in some extras. So here's my tentative schedule.

Schedule

The CDs On My Shelf- These will be up on the 1st and 3rd Monday or Wednesday of the month, as well as on the occasional 5th Monday/Wednesday of the month.

One Day Tumblr Challenges- These will get posted on the 1st and 3rd Friday or Saturday of the month.

The Secret Lightning Scar- Chapters of this (my HP Fanfic!) will get posted on the 2nd and 4th Friday or Saturday of the month.

The 2nd and 4th Monday or Wednesday posts will be random posts.... maybe bookish, maybe completely random.

All of this is really tentative... I don't even know if I'm going to have time for all of these posts, but I'm going to try to post stuff, which is why I've organized my schedule the way that I have.

Hopefully, if all goes well, there will be a new post up on Monday. It will be the last post which doesn't follow the schedule that I just laid out. It was summer related, so I wanted to get it out ASAP.

Music!

I'm bringing back something that I had on one of my blogs back when I had separate blogs for each of my series. On my CDs On My Shelf blog, I had a side-bar with the songs that I had been listening to on repeat, and kept it pretty updated. I'm not quite sure why I didn't keep that for this blog, but for some reason I didn't. Anyway, if you look on the left side of the screen, somewhere over there, you'll find the Stuck On Repeat section, which is the music that I've been listening to non-stop lately. 

Don't forget that I've created a Facebook page for my blog! If you want to check that out and like it, you can click HERE. I'll try to keep that pretty up-to-date with new posts and such.

Thanks for reading this! If you like my posts, don't forget to subscribe/follow, since it lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm doing. See y'all soon!

Quick update!

Hey, y'all!

So, it's been a while since I've just posted a little update, so I decided to go ahead and do that and just let y'all know what's going to be going on with the blog in the upcoming week(s).

First off, no Project Runway. This is why I didn't promise to blog the whole thing. I knew I'd decide not to do it. A couple things caused this to happen. First off, I really needed them to be able to go up the day after the show, while it's still relevant. This means that I write it Thursday night and schedule it for Friday morning. But the links and pictures aren't available until Friday, so that throws a huge wrench into the plan. It means the post has to go up Saturday, where it won't get as much traffic because no one cares by Saturday. Also, I found myself totally not looking  forward to those posts at all. Long story short, they just aren't going to happen.

OK, happier news. This afternoon, a very special CDs On My Shelf post will be going up. Tomorrow, I'll also be posting a very interesting bookish post that I think will be really interesting. As far as the next week goes, I think that I'll be getting the next Secret Lightning Scar chapter up in the first half of the week. In the second half of the week, you'll probably be getting an updated Favorite Youtubers post! I've noticed that both of the posts I've done so far have been really popular so I think I'm going to make it a bi-annual update. This one will be formatted slightly differently than either of the last ones, but I think it'll be slightly better as far as organization goes.

I'm trying to figure out a way to space out my posts, since there's a ton crammed into this last little time before my fall semester of school starts, but I have a feeling that I'll be blogging a lot up until school, and then things will mellow out a bit. I've got way too many ideas and not enough days to get them done.

That was all I really wanted to talk about. Just wanted to give y'all a little heads up about what's going to be happening sometime soon. And partially because I'm ashamed that I can't finish a single season of Project Runway blogs. Maybe next year the fifth time will be the charm? Or maybe I'll just learn not to try anymore. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Exciting Announcements/ 2014 Is Gonna Be Awesome!

Hey, y'all! Now, it may not look like much has changed, but this blog has just gone through an extensive overhaul! What happened, you may ask?

This is now my ONLY blog.

Wait, what? But you have "CDs On My Shelf" and "One Day Tumblr Challenges" and "Adventures of a Makeup Noob"! What happened to those? In short... nothing. Except Adventures of a Makeup Noob. That one bit the dust. Most of its posts were on here already. But I digress.

All of my posts are completely intact. They have simply been transferred over to this blog. As you can see at the top, there are tabs up above labelled "One Day Tumblr Challenges" and "CDs On My Shelf." These two blogs have been absorbed into From Kristen's Brain. On each of their individual pages, you will find a list of the posts within that section, with links to each individual post, as well as a link to ALL the posts in one place. My "Adventures of a Makeup Noob" blog has now become a smaller "series" on From Kristen's Brain, since it will have more infrequent/ unscheduled posts. 

Since this blog has completely absorbed the other ones, you can find all of the posts from "From Kristen's Brain...", "CDs On My Shelf", and "One Day Tumblr Challenges" in the Blog Archive in the sidebar. Their original post date has been retained, so all 3 have been intermingled. All of my blogs (save Makeup Noob) are still available for viewing for now. I'm not sure how long I'll leave them up for- they might be removed soon.

I hope y'all enjoy this change, because it's a bit easier on me. In the next few days before the New Year, I'll be working on my fanfic that I promised you. My plan is to release the teaser on January 1st, and from there, I'm going to choose a day of the week to release sections (I can tell you now, it'll probably be Saturday). I plan to release them every 2 weeks (Or maybe every 2nd/4th Saturday?). I'm also in the process of creating a schedule of when different things get posted, to get at least a little organized with my life. When that's done, it will be posted under a NEW top tab (which may or may not be finished by the time you read this. It's next on my to do list). This tab will be called "About Kristen's Brain..." and it will be an about me/about the blog page. So, that's what's going to be going on in the next few days. 

I'll see y'all again in a couple days. Thanks for reading, y'all.

I Want YOUR Advice!

Check out my other blogs as well:
The CDs On My Shelf... Each post is about a different CD I own.
One Day Tumblr Challenges... I do entire Tumblr challenges in a single post
Adventures of a Makeup Noob... I talk about and review makeup products.

Hey, y'all! Another update post. I know I don't have many subscribers, but I'd like input from anyone who sees this. So, if you're reading this, I'd like your input, whether you're subscribed or just stumbled across this! As part of a new year's resolution, I'm wanting to begin posting sections of a fan-fiction I've been working on for fun. My question to y'all is whether I should post it on this blog or create a different one specifically for that fan-fiction. Which would you prefer? Aesthetically, I would enjoy a separate blog, since this one is often a hodgepodge of everything. However, I would really like plenty of feedback on my writing and I might get more from this blog. I've also considered posting it on both this blog and having one separate which is dedicated solely to the fan fiction.

So, which would y'all prefer? I'm going to post at least the first section on this blog, either as a teaser for the new blog, or as a (hopefully) permanent installment on this blog. And you can expect that... sometime after the new year. When? TBD. But I'm assuming sometime before the 6th because that's when I head back to school.

As always, thanks so much for reading. Comments are always appreciated, ESPECIALLY for this post. Happy Holidays, y'all!