Hello lovely readers! Remember me? I run a little corner of the internet where I like to ramble on about books every now and again. Sometimes I say something interesting, but most of the time I don’t really know what I’m doing, and that’s half of the fun. Not ringing any bells? It’s been a while, I know, so I’ll forgive you if you don’t remember me. Promise.

This post is going to be a little different from what I usually publish, but I wanted to write a little something to let you all know where I’ve been for the past couple months because, as you’ve probably noticed, it most definitely has not been in the blogosphere.

So, what have I been doing for the past couple of months?

At the beginning of September something very exciting happened – I started my first year of university (*happy dance*)!. I am currently a freshman at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan (see pictures below), which is made even more exciting by the fact that I am the first person in my family to attend university and pursue a four year degree.

I’m learning all about the ancient Greeks, analyzing works of 19th century French art, immersing myself in the world of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and studying the intricacies of the Italian language. I’m expanding my horizons, learning things I never could have dreamed of, studying at one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States, and working alongside thousands of students from all across the world. I’m also quite stressed, a little bit sleep-deprived, and couple thousand dollars in debt, but who cares?! I’m loving it!

Adjusting to the life of a full-time university student has been no small feat, let me tell you. For the last couple of years I’ve been doing my high school work online, which means my usual morning routine consisted of rolling out of bed, eating breakfast, and staggering across the room to my desk where I can complete all my work from home, in my pajamas. It was glorious. University is no less glorious, just a rather different brand of glorious. My morning routine now consists of waking up at 5:15 in the morning, hurriedly showering and grabbing my breakfast to eat in the car so that I can leave my house at 6:15, drive 30 minutes to the bus stop, catch a 7:02 bus and make it just on time for my 8 am Italian class.

I know I’m completely privileged to be attending university at all, as there are girls in other parts of the world who don’t have access to an education in any shape or form, so don’t think that I’m writing this post to complain about how hard I have things. I don’t have things hard, I completely understand that. University has just been a very large change for me, and everyday presents a whole new hoard of fresh expriences as well as a whole new hoard of challenges. As someone who suffers from relatively bad social anxiety, sometimes getting up in the morning and navigating my way around a busy town full of people and places I don’t know can seem like an impossible task. But I’m loving my university experience so far, and am so grateful to have the opportunities I’ve been given.

On my severe lack of blogging

Now here is my dilemma: I have loads of ideas for blog posts I want to write. Tons. I have stacks of books I want to read and review, tags I want to complete, discussions I want to write, and analyses I want to conduct. I want to take part in all the bookish revelry that the blogging world and bookstagram have to offer – I want to do all the things and read all the books. And every morning I wake up with the best of intentions to write, to read, to photograph something. Yet everyday, by the I’ve come back from uni, taken part in all of my extracurriculars, and finished all of my homework, I have neither the energy nor the motivation to even read, never mind write something. Hence why nothing has been posted on this site in weeks, and hence my rather sporadic bookstagram updates as of late.

Before I forget, I would like to announce her that my Sunday Morning Book Chats series will be taking a break for the moment. I’m not sure how long this break will go on for, but I don’t feel I properly have the time to put together those posts at the minute, and everyone answered so wonderfully that I really want to do them justice. To those whose interviews were scheduled to be published, I apologize profusely. Your interviews will go up at some point in the future, I’m just afraid that now is not that time.

I love university and my courses, but I’m also learning the importance of having hobbies and doing things that make you happy. It’s taking some time but, little by little, I’m learning. I’m learning to manage my time and keep up with my university readings. I’m learning the importance of self love and taking the time to treat yourself. I’m learning, slowly but surely, to set aside time to do the things I love, like blogging, not because I need to, not because someone is telling me I have to do, but because I want to. And this, taking some time out of my day to sit down with my computer and write this post, this is a start. A really good start.

If you are a university student or work full-time and have any tips on how you blog when life gets crazy, please let me know down in the comments! Also, feel free to leave the links to any posts you’ve been enjoying lately – I’ve been a little out of touch lately. Until next time, readers. 🙂