When Life Gives You 🍋 - Busy, busy, busy!

Instead of the usual Monday meme, I bring you this new-ish thingy 😂 It's not gonna replace the Monday meme, that's just for today. It will become a permanent part of the blog and I'll use it whenever I have something interesting to share with you guys 😄

Basically, Lemons is one of those "what's been going on recently in my life" type of posts. As you probably noticed, I've been absent this past week, and worry not, this is not a hiatus, a break or anything. I did want to offer an explanation and sort of a sign to show you I'm not dead 😂

Since December, I've been taking part in a work-related course that required me to attend classes in the evenings 3 times a week and have the occasional essay-type assignment. That meant that for the last 3 months, I had work in the mornings, and classes in the evenings and I would either study in between or do my usual chores around the house. 

That meant that I had very little free time which I would divide between blogging, reading and hanging out with friends/family. I did that pretty successfully (I think), because my blog post number was the same and I finished lots of books. Here's the thing though - I tried so hard to excel at everything, that by the time I finished this course (I had my final exam last Saturday and I passed!! 🥳), I burned out. 

Maybe "burnout" isn't the correct phrase, because I can't say that I've been stressed during this time. I truly wasn't! Our teacher and mentor was a wonderful person who offered great advice and mentioned real-life situations that could happen.

For those of you who don't know, I work as a "special educational needs teaching assistant." Hopefully, this is the right description 😅 I tried Googling my job description and I guess this is the American equivalent. I've been helping the same kid for the past 4 years and I'm so happy to have this job, I truly enjoy it. There was a new requirement recently that all of us that do this job, have to finish this 3-month education if we want to continue doing it next year.

Personally, I think this is a big improvement because many of us didn't get proper education on how to deal with all of the situations that can happen in a school environment depending on the child's diagnosis. Not only did I learn a lot about various types of special needs and methods of approaching education - we got this opportunity for free. Basically, the government decided they wanted to keep as many of us as they could (the pay isn't that high so there's a lot of turnover) so they paid the course for anyone who already works in this position. 

I'm slightly off track, but the point is - I've been very busy. After I passed the exam, obviously I didn't have to study anymore, but I sort of stopped doing everything else as well 😂 I stopped reading, I stopped blogging, I stopped drawing...I literally turned my mind off and just chilled for a couple of days. It was bliss 😌 I guess I just got tired of everything and needed time to cool off. 

The chilling time is slowly ending so you can expect me to blog more this week 😄 Now, I realized I talked about my job too much 😂 I'm not used to all this sharing but hey, maybe someone wants to know where I've been 😂 

In any case, book-wise, I'm halfway through This Time It's Real. The book is truly excellent and I only dragged this so much because I've been too tired to truly appreciate it.  

I'm hoping to finish it in the next few days, but my main goal for this week is to catch up with all of your blogs. I haven't even opened any of them last week, so I wanna get back on track and drop lots of comments. I'm excited to see what I missed and what you guys have been up to 😄

I've also been watching this new cop drama where a sibling duo solves crimes in a small town, and it's THE BEST!!

It's cozy, quirky, and tons of fun + bonus points for Leighton Meester!! 

Also, I forgot to mention, I've been on a short family trip to Plitvice Lakes! It's this gorgeous national park with waterfalls and walkways over numerous lakes. We chose the perfect time to visit because there were so few people, it was almost like we had it for ourselves. I felt so calm and happy looking at all this nature, it was beautiful. Here are a few pics! 

  

That's all for the life updates!

 What have you been up to?