Weekend Update – March 1st, 2020

dayne-topkin-6BY0TWIbKhY-unsplash.jpg

I’m finally back!

It’s been a much longer hiatus than I thought it would be, but it feels so nice to finally be back to blogging! My mental health is in a better place now that my psychiatrist has weaned me off the oxcarbazepine and upped my dose of Wellbutrin. The withdrawal process was rough. I missed a lot of work, had bad side effects, and felt foggy for the few weeks that it took to reduce and finally stop taking my daily dose. It was worth it though because now I have a clear mind and enough energy to get things done.

I uploaded my very first YouTube video last night, and I have an afternoon of filming planned out for today. I need to figure out what to do with my arms while I’m on camera. No wonder most people rely on holding up books!

I got a bonus at work in February, and I used some of it to sign up for a variety of subscription boxes. I love subscription boxesI’ve always been the type of person to love surprises, and it’s like opening birthday presents all month! My actual birthday is March 19th, so most of my first boxes from these companies will be arriving around my birthday, so I’m super stoked about that. I’ll do unboxings on my YouTube channel, but here’s a random sample of boxes you’ll be seeing soon: Owlcrate, Unplugged, Therabox, and FabFitFun.

For my birthday weekend, my boyfriend and I are going up to Charlottesville, VA for the Virginia Festival of the Book. It’s my very first book event, and I’m so excited! I’m going to film and photograph as much as I can so that I can share the experience with you guys! We’re still figuring out which days we’ll be there (Saturday for sure, at least) since it’s only a couple of hours away, but even more than the book festival I’m loving the idea of seeing mountains again. I miss them so much.

Mountains Gandalf Tolkien Lord of the Rings Hobbit.jpg

I’ve been living in Virginia Beach for years now, and it’s definitely not the place where I want to spend my life. I need those mountains I just mentioned. However, I did get to explore a few new-to-me places this past weekend with a friend, and finding cute and fun places to go definitely makes living here less terrible.

We went to Leaping Lizard Cafe, which had so much of an Asheville vibe that it cured a bit of my homesickness! The food is all high-quality and at a really doable price. My doctor recently recommended that I try going gluten-free for both my bipolar disorder and PCOS, so it was lovely being able to go to a restaurant where I had a ton of options.

56A8AA6F-E399-4C95-87A2-70906FF2FF08
Asparagus and goat cheese omelet. I didn’t eat the bread, but everything else was amazing.
IMG_1166
A completely raw chocolate peanut butter pie that blew my mind.
B3FE37F9-A794-4FAC-9DEB-06DB8D7B4A2C
Mimosa, of coursa!

We also went to one of the most beautiful plant shops I’ve ever seen. McDonald Garden Center was full of all types of healthy plants and it smelled amazing just walking through them all. In the past, I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever had very quickly, but I’m determined to keep all four of the ones I bought alive (which shouldn’t be too hard; all but one is either a succulent or an air plant)!  If I manage to keep everything alive until the end of March, I’m going to allow myself to get a larger, cat-safe houseplant.

8143FDB5-C65E-4B2A-9103-9C1F0ED03B70

IMG_1162

I want to thank all of you for being patient during the hiatus! You guys make all of this so much fun to do!




Don’t forget to follow me on social media:

YouTube | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram | Amazon Wishlist

If you would like to support Read Yourself Happy, you can donate through Ko-Fi!

2 thoughts on “Weekend Update – March 1st, 2020”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s