Julia Tannenbaum's Blog, page 2

New Year, New Diagnosis

As those who have been following my journey are aware, I began to struggle pretty significantly with my health last summer, after years of things not feeling quite right with my body. In late July, the worst joint pain of my life led me to seek the assistance of a rheumatologist, who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, a condition characterized by unexplained widespread chronic pain and fatigue. I was so desperate for answers–and validation–that having a diagnosis, any diagnosis, was a huge relief; ...

The Best Books I Read in 2024

As I wrote in my last post, 2024 was a difficult year, one that challenged me in more ways than I could have ever anticipated. On the positive side, being forced to slow down and rest more meant that I was able to read more books than any previous year–over ninety in total. There was so much incredible literature I consumed this year that it was hard to choose just ten, but here they are:

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is a beautifully-written work of literary science-fiction t...

2024: A Challenging, Frustrating Year

It’s hard to believe that December is already halfway over. These last few months have felt excruciatingly long, yet looking back on them now, they seem to have passed by in the blink of an eye. Since I finished my book in late-September, my time has primarily been divided among reading, conceptualizing my next project, and trying to get a handle on my persistent–and ever-perplexing–health issues. There’s a lot of uncertainty in my life at the moment, and I feel like I’m suspended in time, bidin...

A Huge Life Change and Growing Stronger from Adversity

Fall is finally here. The days are getting cooler, the trees are beginning to shed their multicolored leaves, and a scurry of squirrels has inundated my backyard to stockpile nuts for the upcoming winter. This year, the arrival of autumn signifies more to me than merely the changing of seasons, but also a fresh start, and the long-awaited end to what has been one of the most challenging summers of my life.

Back in June, I wrote a blog post about the positive mental transformations I was experien...

Managing My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (So That I Can Write!)

OCD isn’t something I’ve really discussed much, even though it’s been a part of my life for going on four years. This is partly because, for a long time, I didn’t have the terminology to describe the worsening compulsion that was wreaking havoc on my writing, and partly because, until about a year ago, I wasn’t able to admit to myself that I even had a problem. As infuriating as my disorder was, it was also extremely familiar, and I wasn’t yet ready to face up to the truth and change my counterp...

Simplifying Life and Quieting My Mind

At the start of the calendar year, I made it my goal to prioritize my mental health; I wanted 2024 to be the year I overcame–or at least began to overcome–the mental health issues that’d been negatively, and significantly, impacting my life for the last few years. Mainly, I’m referring to my anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which, as my eating disorder progressively got better, have progressively gotten worse. And as the latter, in particular, had begun to wreak havoc on my wr...

The Best Books I Read in 2023

Well, the time has come yet again, to rank the top books I read in the past year. This is the third installment of my best books series (fourth if you include the LGBTQ+ ranking I did for Pride 2022), and with each subsequent year, I feel as though my love of literature only grows stronger. I’m no longer tracking my reading on Goodreads (that got a bit competitive so I deleted the app with the rest of my socials eight months ago), so I don’t know the exact number of books I read, but between two...

A Few Big Changes This Winter

It’s that time of the year again. The days are getting shorter and colder, Christmas music is playing everywhere, and the cacophonous leaf blowing that dominated the last two months has finally fallen silent.

This winter feels very different than winters past. For starters, this is the first year my family isn’t doing anything special for the holidays. Growing up, holidays were a huge deal in my house, and I always eagerly anticipated the traditions and piled-high presents that defined Christmas...

Frack No: Inside My First Environmental Protest

I arrived early and made my way over to the small group of people who had gathered behind the Hartford Capitol. Although the day had been unseasonably warm, the sun had begun to set, and the temperature had plummeted to the low forties. My mom had come with me, and we were each given a sign. PIPELINES ARE OUT; CLEAN OIL IS IN, mine read. My mom’s simply said: #ENDENBRIDGE

Enbridge is a large Canadian energy company with fossil fuel infrastructure throughout the United States. Recently, the compa...

The Best Books I Read in 2022

Well, the official tally is in, and according to my Goodreads bookshelf, I read 70 books this year! Considering I only just got back into reading regularly in 2021, I’m pretty pleased with that number—and I’m even more pleased with the fact that I’ve rekindled my love of reading after straying from it in high school. Check out my previous top reads list for why that happened.

While the majority of the reading I did in 2022 was for pleasure, a smaller percentage of it served as research for a cli...