Hi, I’m so happy you’re here! Let’s catch up with everything that happened last week.
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✨ THIS EDITION’S VIBES
⭐️ ON MY RADAR
Watching: Formula 1, 2023 season.
Race days are back, baby! After a three-week-long summer break, F1 is back on my screen every weekend. This past Sunday was the Dutch Grand Prix, where home hero Max Verstappen took his ninth consecutive win of the season in a very exciting race. The French driver—and one of my faves—Pierre Gasly also took his first podium! I’m looking forward to the second half of this season and hope to see more of a mixed bag in the top three too.
Book Review: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ )
I’ve finally managed to finish the sequel to Harari’s Sapiens, and it was equally (if not more) chilling than the first one. Although I think many of his theories are a bit far-fetched and more fitting to the plot of a sci-fi movie, I found the book quite interesting overall. It gets three stars from me.
Reading: Die Biblioteek Aan Die Einde Van Die Wêreld (Transl: The Library At The End Of The World*) by Etienne van Heerden
I’m very excited to tackle another Van Heerden book after reading Ancestral Voices and Leap Year in 2022. Van Heerden is a respected South African writer known for his crafty storytelling that often incorporates otherworldly elements. This book deals with life in the digital age—like how a viral Tweet (or X?) can change your life—and how we navigate it.
*The official English translation of this book is titled ‘The Library To Flee’.
📍 ON MY MAP
01: Not much to see on the map this week unless you count my obvious trip to Platō for a standard silky flat white. I did get a complementary oats cookie, though, which definitely made my day!
02: My fiancé (still getting used to that!) and I also spent some time in the lovely Stellenbosch over the weekend. We had a braai on Friday and met some friends for breakfast on Saturday morning before strolling through town. Whenever I visit Stellenbosch, I’m always reminded of how much fun it was to live there as a student, and this time was no different.
🥐 ON MY PLATE
It was a (mostly) chilled week at home and work, with lots of homemade meals. I think this was one of the first weeks where I didn’t have any takeaways—also largely due to the fact that payday was only on Friday, haha!—but it made me feel so good. For the first time in a while, I stuck to all my prepped meals and actually had an amazing time making (and eating) them!
As things go when you’re really enjoying yourself, I forgot to take a lot of pictures (sighs in the digital age). But I’ve compiled a rundown of things I’ve loved this week below!
Breakfast: I’m a big fan of something sweet in the morning, enjoyed with a lovely cup of coffee—the plunger situation I mentioned last week has elevated my AM routine so much, it’s actually crazy. This week, I had a ton of overnight breakfasts and mug cakes (yes, if you make them right, they can actually be so nutritious and protein-packed!). My favorites were a coconut Weetbix brekkie and a banana bread mug cake 🤤.
Lunch and dinner: Leftovers were the order of the day, and I loved every second of the parmesan chicken lasagna I made. I also had a spicy pulled chicken bowl with black beans and avo (which I did take a picture of!) that was very yummy. Buy the taco seasoning from Checkers, and thank me later.
🎧 ON MY SPOTIFY
Have you ever listened to a song and could just picture your life as a movie with it playing in the background? That’s how I feel about maybe any Bleachers song ever. This one has been on repeat these past few days, and it’s a vibe:
A few podcasts on my list this week! My favorites were this episode from The Mel Robbins Podcast:
And The Celebrity Memoir Book Club’s episodes on Paris Hilton and Madison Beer—not linked because you definitely need to give the whole pod a listen:
September is around the corner, which means a new monthly playlist is in the works. Keep an eye out for that one in next week’s newsletter! For now, here’s the last bit of August tunes, as always:
✨ ON MY PINTEREST BOARD
As we all know by now, I love my Pinterest so much—it will probably always be one of my favorite forms of social media. Here’s what I pinned this week that I really loved:
💭 ON MY MIND
Remedies for a bad week
Do you ever have one of those weeks where everything is just off? Your energy is low, work is über busy, and you seem to be stuck in traffic wherever you go. Well, that was me this week, and it was not fun. It felt like no matter what I did to fix things, something else would just go wrong. For me, when things like this happen, I feel an impulsive need to do something extra, like booking a trip or spending all my money. I also tend to complain a lot. Which is bad, I know. And doing these things really doesn’t make me feel better. So, how do you remedy that?
I recently read a newsletter about something called A&B weeks, implemented in some European schools. The basic premise of it is that you have one week (A) where you’re hardcore focused on academics, and in the second week (B), you would finish school early and have a bit more time to dedicate to extracurriculars. The author started implementing this sort of thing in her adult life, and I thought it was absolutely genius.
Basically, she would structure her life like this: In her ‘A week’, she does as much work as possible, plans her content, writes, attends events, and so on—literally as much as she can stomach. Then in her ‘B week’, she dedicates time to things that serve her. This doesn’t necessarily mean self-care and drinking expensive coffees, but she does try to put more time aside to see her friends and do things she enjoys, compared to the ‘A week’.
Now, I know not everyone can be a content creator who can take every other week off work to go to pilates and dinner with their friends. But hear me out; A&B weeks can work for anyone.
For me—a full-time employee who works 9-5 most days + has to commute often—this might look something like:
A: Focused on work, writing content, trying to get ahead with planning (as much as possible), spending time in the office, and being a bit more focused on things I don’t always enjoy doing but have to. Spend the weekend recharging, see friends, but do a little less socializing and focus on restoring my energy.
B: Date night with my fiancé, intentional plans with friends, spending the weekend doing something fun, doing laundry, going for longer walks, and catching up on wedding planning admin. Generally just being a bit gentler with myself.
I get that it might sound like I won’t be working hard in my ‘B week’, but I will. It’s still a priority to focus on doing my job and meeting my weekly goals, but now I am sprinkling some fun things in between.
I think in my case, if I have two busy weeks after the other (mostly socially), it just burns me out too quickly and sets me up for a chaotic Monday. And since I’m not in the position to take every other week off work, it comes down to managing my personal life a bit more sustainably. For me, this also means using my flexible hours responsibly so that I’m not stuck working in the evenings or over the weekend when I should be recharging.
I’m definitely going to be giving this on/off week a go to see how I like it. At the very least, it might help me build a routine that I enjoy without having to sacrifice the things I love.
Next week, same time, same place—see you there?
Nicola