Read More. Believe More – Here’s my 2019 list of greats I will read.

Is it so terribly wrong that I’m already starting my reading list for 2019 when I’m still behind on finishing the last two for this year?

I got so excited with the list I have that I’ve just been researching, researching until I fell into this rabbit hole of anecdotal discovery.

1. The Lessons of History 
   • What are the possibilities of humanity? Where did it start and where does the potential go? Questions I believe we should all ponder as we look to past generations and hope for new.
2. The Sun and Her Flowers – Rupi Kaur
   • I received this for Christmas and finished it before the clock struck twelve on the 26th. It’s a great follow up novel to Milk & Honey. If you love soft poetry colored with beautiful personification, grab it off the shelf and read it to your beloved.
3. Laws of Human Nature
   • Robert Greene’s latest that I aim to finish right ater art of seduction
4. The Art of Seduction
   • a classic Robert Greene providing historical figure’s tools and devices in realizing charm
5. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
   • If you haven’t heard about this book, you haven’t been in the literary world recently. Praised by Captain America himself, Chris Evans shared that we must all understand our roots and how it lead our people (all people) to where we are today. I haven’t finished this just yet but I do want to share, this is what our grade school teachers should have taught in history class.
6. The Decaying Pillars by Steve Ruygrok
   • I know a published author! Proud to be a coworker of his, Steve Ruygrok dropped of this book for me to read before beta reading his next novel.
7. Herstory: 50 Women and Girls who shook up the world
   • Women lead. Women breathe life. Women are just as important as the men we remember from history. So why aren’t they on a pedestal as much as the great men? Let’s honor the women who long ago have broken the glass ceiling before Sheryl Sandberg.
8. East of Eden
   • This is a hefty read but who doesn’t love a John Steinbeck classic?
9. #GirlBoss
   • Sophia Amoruso is a special kind of person. She breaks all the rules and rebels with every bone in her body. I idolize her intrinsic nature to lead, mix personal style with passion and drive to help other women strive for what they deem as success.
10. The Golden Compass
    • This is a must purely because I received the collection (#11, #12 below as well) as a christmas gift more than 2 years ago now.
11. The Subtle Knife
12. The Amber SpyGlass
13. An absent mind
    • alzheimer’s touches me deeply with it taken my grandfather not long ago. This story follows a man’s struggle with the disease and the effect to his family in the final days.
14. Getting to Know Gen Z .pdf
    • I feel old when Gen Z is the major topic of discussion and no longer the “entitled” millennials. I will say after finishing this PDF earlier this month, it made me realize the affects my parents had in raising me with a “can do” attitude and how it lead my generation to come off as “entitled.” Gen Z is the safer generation learning from the failures of mine and reaching further than my cohorts did in fighting for their beliefs. Not just racial, gender, and sexual orientation equality but also a long winded battle for environmental conservation, social imprint in bringing people together and much more. They have a louder voice than we did and it makes me so happy, we’re all leaning in and learning from generations younger than ourselves.
15. The Autobiography of Malcom X
    • this was a recommendation and I honestly haven’t researched much.
16. Michelle Obama’s Becoming
    • Top seller towards end of 2018, Michelle Obama is a powerhouse but continues to spread kindness.
17. The Power by Naomi Alderman
    • What would happen if young women had superpowers balancing the status quo between genders? Will there be a shift in the superior gender juxtaposed to what it is now IRL? I’m curious to read
18. On Writing by Stephen King

19. Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive

20. The Day the World Came to Town
    • Come from Away, the Tony award winning musical guided me to understanding what I could not comprehend at age 11 when 9/11 had happened. I was 4 years into arriving on American soil, still picking up the English language when my 6th grade teacher made us all stand staring at the TV showing the planes flying into the Twin Towers. The Day the World Came to Town is a tribute to the kindness in others when the US needed it the most. Newfies (the locals in Newfoundland) took in the stranded for 5 days and showed a kindness I never thought could exist. We all think of how crude this world can be, but here was a pocket of land where people only shared kindness. It’s right there, above where we live and we just need to adopt that same philosophy. Help those in need, spread love and kindness, and give hope where we can. We’re all brothers and sisters to the land Mother Nature gave us, so why do draw lines on a map dividing each other?
21. Crazy Rich Asians
    • For the light hearted who want nothing but hilarity and couture mixed with of course much needed old school Chinese tradition.

My 5 Year Plan

So imagine grabbing a latte with an old acquaintance. Almost always, this is how the conversation starts out:

What have you been up to?

How is your relationship going?

How’s work?

These common 3 “small-talk” ice breakers are everything I dread about going out to see a friend I haven’t connected with in a few months.

The next question I absolutely resent people for even bringing up is, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

The younger me (okay so last year) would have mouthed off something to my interrogator and stood up on a soap box preaching the futility behind this inquiry. Partially for the below reasons:

1. There’s science behind those who talk too much about their goals and never achieving it. So it’s better to keep tightlipped until the deed has been done. What’s the awesome term for this? Oh yes, hubris.
2. Most people use this to evaluate what my priorities are. If I’m on a date for example, and I say I’d like to become director in the next 5 years, the other person would assume I’m too career focused. If I say, marriage, they probably would have bolted for their car on our first date.
3. A real goal feels too intimate to share with anyone. I rather not have my secret hopes and dreams passed on, then having them tell their cohorts, thus creating our entire social circle focusing on my foreseeable future at tea time.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

So here’s my 5 year plan. The goals I hope to achieve that aren’t wasted on defining who I am by who I will be bound to, or what desk I’ll be chained to, or which professional title to brand me for the new few years. My goals in life transcend beyond the mundane.

Year 1: Fill my brain with beautiful stories – as many books as I can possibly read

Year 2: Master flexibility outside the physical entity of my being

Year 3: Understand the value of success is more than the digits in my bank account

Year 4: Observe and indulge in other cultures. Distance away from the routine provides fresh perspective

Year 5: Persevere through all things that pass through my way and continue spreading positivity

This is what I want to discover in the next 5 years. Career or love life… they’re just small percentages of our daily life and yet we attribute way too much in both. There’s more to our existence than how we make our fun coupons and who we choose to spend it with.

Start with this Reading List

2 weeks ago I pledged to finish 12 books before the clock struck midnight on 2019. I’ve since finished another book and am well underway with my next few targets.

Okay so this isn’t some soapbox exclamation that my list is the recipe for happiness for everyone but I love to fall down a rabbit hole and explore everything these books have to offer. It’s an escape where I’m screaming YESS YESS YESSSSSSSSS — tell me more and teach me deeply. Knowledge & wisdom from books will always transcend further than mind-numbing telly.

• All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • What makes me happy about it?  Have you ever tasted something so decadent and rich in flavor it felt like swimming in the river of chocolate from Charlie & the Chocolate factory? Doerr’s prose makes you experience it all.
  • Status: I’m currently Day 2 in Shanghai and still plan to have this wrapped before I touchdown back in Cali.
• Wildcard by Marie Lu (Book slated for Q3 2018 release)
  • What makes me happy about it? Three words: Female power overload
  • Status: About to pre order!! Those of you who haven’t heard of Marie Lu need to 100% make sure you do now. She’s an amazing writer for the YA and I’m seriously honored to have met her last summer. She tweeted to me on my birthday out of a request from a dear friend. She’s just an awesome human being and her stories inspires me to write and perpetuate the female protagonist.
• Meditation by Marcus Aurelius
  • What makes me happy? Ryan Holiday swears by this, my life has 180’d since I’ve exercised Stoicism, and the excitement itself that I’m about to read the teachings from one of the OG’s simply makes me leap with joy.
  • Status: Book ordered & delivered. I’m so excited to open my package when I get home in July!
• The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris
  • What makes me happy about this? Ferris found the loophole we all need. The key that frees the chain around our ankles. Life has never been about work for me, I just thrive to be in it and yet he found a way to do it with more efficiency.
  • Status: book delivered to my flat in Cali. I love having physical copies.
• Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
  • What makes me happy? Rhimes is a creative storytelling demigoddess. She guts us with plot twists. She champions other women and she’s human. She’s so god awfully human like all of us and that motivates the hell out of me. I can be fabulous and so painfully human at the same time as well.
• You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
  • Status: I’m awful at self-help books. Its been a bit rocky to finish them out. (I received & 7 Effects during college and it’s still sitting on my nightstand waiting to fulfill it’s destiny with me) But! Sincero has humor, Sincero has realism. I’m going to finish this because I’m already a baddie, I just need a reminder every once in a while.
• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
  • Status: delivered to my flat! I’m ready to sink my teeth.
• My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella
  • Status: We all need fiction in life, especially Kinsella’s casual light read stories to fulfill the days when we just need a homegirl by our side.
• [REMOVED] Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them By JK Rowling
• [ADDED] The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
  • Why it makes me happy: You mean to tell me the tactics I’ve used in life has been an actual device for power?! This is the Yoda for all things power and I am the young Padawan thirsting for more.
• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• [CODENAMED] My friend is writing a Trilogy and I’m beta reading Book 1.

9 more books to go, 4 of which I’ve basically sprinted through half. It’s rather cathartic to read and thrilling to log about it with a mission.

I hope you all find this list helpful in your journey to happiness.

The new love trend: Love Bombing

Back in my first couple years post college, I would literally not have anything to do at work and constantly end up falling back to Elite Daily. Now? Given my busy 11 hour work schedule, I get ED newsletter subscriptions curated to select the top articles for that week.

This week, in particular, a post really carved in my stomach and pulled out my gut.

Love Bombing– the new love trend. So first there was ghosting, then breadcrumbing (seriously WTF?) and now there’s LOVE BOMBING. So what the living hell is this?

Taken from Elite Daily: Love bombing is a form of romantic manipulation in which your partner showers you with love from the get-go, only to have things go south fast, according to the New York Post.

Psychiatrist Dale Archer explained in a Psychology Today post that this happens when someone tries to win your affection by showering you with “love, attention, presents and promises about the future.”

Why the sudden urge to punch myself in the throat?

Well, I never knew there was a term for the same cycle I fall into with well, almost every person I think I’m falling for.

They always over-promise, under deliver.

They always shower with so much attention you’re about to drown in their TLC, like it’s waterfall. (yes I went there)

Based on the extended article from Psychology Today, it seems the love bomber is an insecure manipulator that just wants to make themselves seem like a great catch.

First, wow. What a reality check for me.

Second, dear god. This is the REAL fuck boy!! Fuckboys get so much hate for barely texting back, flaking, cute man buns, grungy beards, and massive flirting but at least they don’t swear by a future with you 3 minutes after meeting you and tell you you’re the one.

Lesson learned. Stay the F away from Love Bombers and take things slower…

Shit, can’t tell which one is easier to work on between the two.