Sorry for the disappearing act at the end of the month, it's been so busy at work! Let's review the month and I'll catch you up on anything you might have missed.
Can't Stop Listening
Let's begin with the song I've had on repeat lately. It came up on one of those Spotify created lists one day and it just caught something in my brain and I found myself going back to listen to it often last month. Not sure why, but it reminded me that I do really enjoy Rogue Wave's music. I used to lsiten to their song Eyes all the time, anyone else think of Heroes when they hear that song as well?
Life
My February has been very work focused. Way back in January I offered to help out with a culture group which had been formed to try and focus on improving our team's culture as it's grown rapidly and managers are concerned good work culture has been lost in the rapid growth. I agree culture has been less than great so I agreed to assist from an employee perspective. It was proposed it would just be about discussing future changes and ideas for change from the team perspective rather than management. It turned into a presentation role all about presenting things to the managers and inspiring change and after speaking to a key communications person within our company she's changed the whole concept of the group to be team members pushing culture change and being a comms committee who will relay team communications and help keep everyone informed. It actually sounds like a really positive role and I am happy to do it with some of the people I work with… but if I had known the amount of work involved I would have planned things very differently and not let us plan the day so late because it was stressful having only a vague agenda and there was lots of miscommunication along the way which I really didn’t need. It was very full on and I was glad to have a couple of days off of work at the end of February just to relax. I also should mention that within that whole culture project there ended up being some push back from managers on what we were doing that created a whole heap of drama and basically meant we had to go over their heads to get action to happen. It was an uncomfortable month for me, I won't lie. But it's over now and there's still loads more work to come but I'll worry about that later.
Apart from work I’ve not done too much. It was my birthday at the end of February so it was all about me relaxing and doing as little as possible. I watched a lot of Netflix, ate a lot of cake. One of my friends made a red velvet cake for me and it was delicious but so much cake! Mostly because my mom also bought a cake so there was cake for everyone for a few days. Apart from my birthday, though, February was fairly low key. Just lots of time at home with Artemis (who is now fully vaccinated) and mostly trying to teach Artemis I am not a chew toy and she should definitely use the toys I’ve bought for her.
Reading
I entered a bit of a reading slump in February. It wasn’t a slump exactly, my mood reading was just been strong so I spent a lot of time uncertain what I felt like reading. This led to a lot of half hearted attempts to read things and spending longer reading books I would usually fly through. It all came to a head when I started House of Blood and Earth and it was bad! I struggled to get into the book because it was so info dumpy at the start and eventually I hit 50% and decided to abandon all hope of it getting better. I have seen other bloggers rating it 5 stars and I decided they were deluded because I didn’t care how much of a twist there was at the end, it simply wasn’t worth me entering a genuine reading slump to find out. I was annoyed as I actually own the second book but if a publisher won’t edit down an unnecessarily long book then I won’t waste my time reading it. Especially when the romance itself wasn’t good. I won’t complain anymore because, thankfully, I did manage to fit in a few decent reads in February. My reading numbers weren’t as high as January but I did find I read a few amazing books. My first 4 reads of the month, Only When It's Us, Book of Night, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, and Girl Gone Viral were all really good reads for me. And I did start Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry right at the end of February but I finished it in March so I'll talk about it next month instead. So I suppose I started the month strong with my reading so that's better than nothing.
Challenges
Romanceopoly
It was a pretty strong month with Romanceopoly. I've kind of been letting the board guide my reading as I've not been sure what I've been in the mood to read. I finished 5 prompts, although I do feel like I didn't trule finish the gym prompt as I never finished that book but oh well.
Monthly Key Word
Watching
This time I wanted to include what I've watched lately too. It's a weird mix of stuff, I've hopped back onto the k-drama bandwagon full steam ahead. I flew through the series Love To Hate You in just a couple of days and definitely recommend if you want a fast but brilliant romance watch. It was short enough it didn’t get bogged down in some of the unnecessary drama that occasionally creeps into K-dramas.
But I also indulged my F1 obsession and binge watched all of Season 5 of Drive to Survive when it came out. To say I'm pissed off the show missed out major events in the F1 season from last year is an understatement. There was genuienly a lot of drama last season without Netflix needing to manufacture some and yet they glossed over it to try and create the narrative they wanted. They could have actually made a statement about some of the situations in F1 right now, like the bombing near the Saudi track or the safety issues following the tractor on track during the Japanese grand prix but instead they focused on pointless things and overdid the crash at Silverstone. I am angry about it but at least F1 is back with a new season with hopefully new drama. I can't wait, even If my favourite drivers aren't in it this year.
What were your highlights in February? Can you recommend any good shows? And what was your favourite book of the month?
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