“Building the Book Fort” is a weekly post where I track my bookish life.

Currently Reading:

• Hunted by Meagan Spooner
• The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
• The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• The Colossus and Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
• The House Witch by Delemhach

Finished:

• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
• The Tea Dragon Society by Kay O’Neill
• Goblin Mode by McKayla Coyle
• Guidebook to Murder by Lynn Cahoon

Total pages read this week: 808

Total books read: 16 of 75

TBR (goal is -24): -6

#ShelfLove Challenge: 10 of 51

TL;DR: You’ll be seeing me reading a lot of cozy books for a while. Please give me your cozy recommendations!

I’ve heard the saying, “Life happens when you’re busy making plans,” and I thought I understood that. Nope. As with so many other bits of wisdom, you don’t really know what they mean until you learn them through first-hand experience. I had planned to step down from full-time work, hoping it would help me with my mental and physical health. I calculated, planned, cut as many unnecessary expenses as I felt comfortable doing, discussed it with my boyfriend on multiple occasions, and squirrelled away as much money as I could in preparation for this huge change. Everything was falling into place. I updated my resume, applied for several part-time jobs, and got an interview to one of them. I was feeling pretty good about my life and was looking forward to when I could put in my two-week notice.

Then, wham!, my situation changed enough that working part-time would no longer be sustainable financially. On top of that, there has been a whole lot of upheaval at my job that has destroyed my chances of advancing my career for several years and might result in me getting laid off. I’m not happy at all with what has been going on, but the stability my job provides (if I can keep it) would be nearly impossible to find anywhere else right now. I feel stuck, and like I now have to do everything I can to keep a job I didn’t want to stay at in the first place. I’ve been trying to feel grateful about the fact that I have a job at all and about so much else in my life, but I’ve been feeling so angry and disappointed that I’ve retreated into coziness whenever possible.

While there are a couple of books I’m trying to get through for book challenges before the end of the month, everything else I’m reading is pure Cozy with a capital ‘C’. I’ve already binged a couple of books that I checked out from the library, and I have a lot of Cozy books on my shelves that I will be reading sooner rather than later. I know that I will get through this and that things will eventually get better. However, if you have any Cozy book, podcast, show, or movie recommendations please leave a comment.

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments!