
2020…what a major dumpster fire. Finishing college and graduating into a pandemic has left me with a lot of uncertainties, but not all of them are bad. Remote opportunities have been popping up all over publishing, which is a huge deal for many people living outside of New York and hoping to break into the industry, especially BIPOC (now if one of them could just hire me…). For a while, I had what I thought was a concrete, post-grad plan, and the pandemic completely threw that out the window. For someone like me, who relies on structure and certainty, this was terrifying for a while – and honestly, I’m still terrified sometimes. But I’m also really excited about where the future will take me as I figure out what I’m truly passionate about. I’m a pragmatist, so my career and education plans have always focused on stability and security, but I’m learning to take chances on myself and my future in order to ensure that it’s the one I want.
I’ve been a reader for my entire life. I’ve fluctuated between wanting to be an author, an English teacher, an editor, a lawyer – I still kind of want to be all of those things, actually. My aspirations have shifted throughout high school and college, but my core interests haven’t; whatever I ended up doing, all I knew was that I wanted it to be related to my English degree. Love Yo Shelf has been an integral part of helping me realize that I’m still very much a book nerd at heart, and whatever I do in the future, I want it to relate back to books. 2020 most definitely and objectively sucked, but here are some books that provided some much needed comfort along the way.
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