Reading Plans and Planning Plans (Ha!), week of 06-24-18

Hi everyone!

I'm sorry. I haven't updated here in a long time, and I haven't read much recently. This is because this month, I took a prelicensing course for the Florida Life Insurance exam. At the end of last month, I joined Primerica, which is a company that sells life insurance and investments. Now, if I study, I'm on track to have my life insurance license by the end of this week, as long as I can pass the state exam! That would be so exciting. My mom is taking it, too. So, since I have lots of studying to do this week, finding reading time may not be easy, but it is possible.

I have reading to do for my main job, things to do for Primerica, and I'm definitely planning to do some writing. I'm also judging a contest called Query Kombat. The last two rounds of it are this week. Here's more info: http://www.michelle4laughs.com/2018/06/query-kombat-2018-round-4.html

Then, there's church on Wednesday night, and I'm planning to make a custom planner for July, which will be fun. Finally, there's something called #FaithPitch on Twitter on Thursday. It's a pitch event for Christian fiction, and I feel like I should do it, because I edit Christian fiction, but I might just skip it to avoid additional stress. Things are not likely to slow down going into July, so it's good to be on the offensive this week. So I'm going to plan in a way that's more detailed than I did before.

With that said, I want to devote 1-2 hours to reading each day. These might be right before bed, but recently, I've tried that twice and fallen asleep after less than ten pages, hahaha. Maybe some in the afternoon and some at night. I'll have to try to block my calendar and see what seems to work best.

Today, I've read for about 1 hour and 21 minutes so far. That was split between two audiobooks: Defending Jacob by William Landay and If Not for You by Debbie Macomber, an author my mom likes. It was't split evenly; more than an hour of it went to If Not for You. I've only read bits of Debbie Macomber books before, but this one is nice. I started it today because I wanted something light to balance out the darker tones of Defending Jacob and my other current read, Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton. My main reading goal is to finish Social Creature by Wednesday night.

So, that's it for this week, at least up to Thursday. Depending on how things go, I might plan to participate in the Tome Topple readathon, which starts this Friday or Readehthon (the Canadian readathon), which starts next Sunday. Readehthon is a good opportunity to finish Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which I started months and months ago and returned to the library unfinished. But I'm trying not to overthink those readathons, so I can use my energy on things that are current.

What about you, readers? Any exciting reading plans, planning plans, or other plans this week? :) Let me know in the comments.