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first wrap up of 2025

In which I discuss the first books I've read in 2025...

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Feb 8

February Prompt | 2025 Bibliothecary Reading Challenge

FEBRUARY PROMPT:

Now that we know why your character came to Bibliothecary Town, where are they setting up their house:

Forest - your character sets up a cabin in the woods: read a book featuring a forest
Beach - your character sets up a bungalow on the beach: read a book you consider a "beach read"
Riverland - your character sets up a houseboat on the river: read a book or genre known for having twists and turns
In Town - your character sets up a flat above the local general store: read a book set primarily in a city

You can access the character sheet to edit via Canva:

Here is your character sheet - click here to access a template that you can make changes to yourself for your character.

(Note: If you are reading this later: you can still catch up! You don't have to read a prompt each month, that's just how they are being released. You can catch up on prompts at any time, you just can't use the same book for multiple prompts!)

xoxo Sam

Feb 1

Digital Minimalism: So Far

Here are a few posts that I orignally made on Patreon talking about my plans for engaging more with digital minimalism and what I had learned so far.

Digital Minimalism: How Will I Fill My Time?

Originally posted Nov 5, 2024

I've already mentioned that the biggest reason I want to do this is to get time back. But how do I plan to fill that time?

The biggest thing is obviously reading more. I am so close to reading all of the books that were on my physical TBR - I have 12 left. But I won't be able to do that if I am wasting a lot of time online. AND, Dragon Age: The Veilguard just came out which is a highly anticipated release for me and will be taking up a lot of time. So I cannot be spending the downtime I do have away from the game on social media of all things. And I don't want to see spoilers for the game anyway so that's another motivator for staying away from it.
I'm writing this on election day but election coverage is another reason that now is good timing for taking a step back. I'm not ignoring what is going on, but I find that my brain deals with things better when I have information like that in smaller chunks when it's actually important vs getting constant influxes of information. I want the time I spend on news coverage of any kind to be mindful and intentional vs. completely unfiltered. I have been trying to focus on sphere of influence vs sphere of awareness. With social media, we have a high awareness of everything around us at all times but usually there's very little we can do to influence those things. I want my time to be spent on areas of influence that I have.
Witchcraft. The dark half of the year is always a time when my witchcraft ramps up - it's definitely a seasonal thing for me. Similar to reading, I want to make time for this in my evenings. I've recently made a jar with witchy activities to pull from (let me know if you'd like me to share more about that and the activities I've put in it) so I can pull from that when I have down time vs scrolling on my phone.
Youtube. I want to get back into watching longer form content when I do want to watch something, and I've already started doing this over the last week.

Digital Minimalism: Findings so Far

Originally Posted January 9, 2025

Ok so there is some hyperbole in the title, as I'm not doing full digital minimalism and it's more about social media at this point. I've found that since November, there's been things I've noticed about this experience:

When I first got off Twitter and Threads, I found myself having a thought (usually about something media related or idk a funny joke about something relevant) and starting to construct it as a tweet in my head to post for consumption by others. I've never realized how much I must do this, even when I don't end up posting it. But now that I'm actively not using sites like Twitter and Threads, I'm realizing how much I think about my own reactions to things for other's consumption and entertainment vs just sitting with my own thoughts! I often struggle with meditation, especially if it's in a group setting which we often do with my circle of witchy friends, because I find myself already planning in my head how I'm going to talk about my experience and I'm wondering/hoping that not engaging in social media like this will help with that.
I noticed immediately after quitting most of these apps that I had a vacuum of down time that I didn't know what to do with. While obviously I could read more, sometimes that's not what my brain wants. Because of this, I started coloring which has turned into my new obsession! I've posted some of it in the Discord and then made an IG to post my coloring (@prismaticwanderings). Now you might be saying "you're supposed to be off social media!" But it's less about totally being off social media and more so not getting pulled into scrolling and coloring social media is something very easy to check and get inspired by vs scrolling forever. It's also been a nice place to document my progress instead of just in my photos on my phone.
I do think my emotions have been more regulated since being off of the social media that tends to be activating for me. Not knowing every single political or social media drama that is happening that I can do nothing about is actually good for me - who'd have thought :) I'm much more relaxed.

These are the big things I've noticed so far. I officially deleted Tiktok about a week ago, and don't miss it (plus it probably will be fully banned soon anyway so whatever).

Let me know how you fill your time away from social media!

Currently: I will be continuing to post here about digital minimalism and my journey with it, with some more updates about it coming soon :)

Jan 31

2025 Bibliothecary Reading Challenge & January Prompts

Originally posted on Patreon January 3, 2025:

Hi everyone!

For this year's reading challenge, we will be building our own cozy game character! Think Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, etc. though not necessarily a farm sim. Your reading choices over the next year will build a character from a cozy game. You'll choose their house, how they decorate, what they do in the town, their backstory, etc. And there will be seasonal events like in most cozy games which will be a readathon, readalong, reading sprints, etc - those events will be decided closer to when they come out but expect seasonal fun.

Here is your character sheet - click here to access a template that you can make changes to yourself for your character.

In Canva, you can make edits to this such as the character image (I just added a random one as a placeholder) as well as changing up colors, etc. You can even make your own character sheet if you don't love this one and share it in the Discord for others to use - this is just a baseline for you to work from so you see the vision!

If you are familiar with cozy games, most of these prompts will be known to you as we are going off of classic cozy game archetypes. The prompt selections will also be based on those classic archetypes to keep things easy and nostalgic :)

You'll also notice that there are event prompts - these are optional but we will be having little mini-events seasonally in addition to the prompts here.

JANUARY PROMPT:

Your character has recently arrived in Bibliothercary Town to start a new life. We need to know your character's backstory before they came to town:

Recent breakup - your character needs a fresh start after lost love: read the book you've most recently added to your TBR (physical or virtual)
Fleeing capitalism - your character hates their current desk job and is looking for something new: read a book from a genre you aren't familiar with/don't read often
Inheritance - someone in the family recently passed away and left your character a home in Bibliothecary Town: read a book recommended by someone you know
Returning to hometown - your character grew up in Bibliothecary Town and is returning after time away: re-read an old favorite

I hope you enjoy this year's readalong! Please remember that if you create challenges for this to track your reading elsewhere that you make the challenges private as this is a challenge exclusive to The Bibliothecary.

xoxo Sam

Jan 30

Honorable Mentions of 2024

In which I discuss the books that almost made my favorites of 2024!

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Jan 29

Psychic Witch by Matt Auryn | READALONG

Hi friends

If you've been following my witchcraft content for a while, you may have heard me mention Psychic Witch. It's a very popular witchcraft book that came out a few years ago, and while it is a book for beginners, it can be overwhelming because of the sheer amount of exercises that it includes. These exercises by themselves are fairly straightforward, but they all build on each other and there are a lot of them. As such, even after 3 attempts on my own, I have never finished reading this book. I never find the motivation by myself to do all the exercises and keep at it. Plus there's a lot of cool ideas and concepts to discuss in this book, so I thought it would be the perfect book to do a readalong for!

Now, as I mentioned, there is a lot of interactive content in this book. So this readalong will take place from February 2025 to roughly August 2025, depending on if we need to extend some weeks. I've laid out all of the timing for reading and discussing so that we should have plenty of time to engage with the material on our own and discuss it.

Each month, I will post the schedule for reading and which exercises to do. There will be a channel in the Discord (join if you haven't already) where we will discuss week to week, and then we will have occassional scheduled live chats as well as an end of book discussion.

This book is available on audio, which may be helpful to have a copy of in addition to a print format, as many of the exercises are meditation based so it's helpful to not have to read something while trying to focus on a meditation and instead have someone walk you through it. There's also the option to record yourself reading the exercises to play back later, if you don't have access to the audiobook.

So without further ado, here is the schedule for February:

We will start the week of Imbolc, as that is a holiday about following the light, setting intentions for the spring, and starting something new :)

FEB 1: FORWARD & INTRO

FEB 10: CHAPTER 1: THE POWER AND THE SIGHT

FEB 17: CHAPTER 2: MEDITATION AND RELAXATION

FEB 17-24: Exercise 4-7
FEB 24-MARCH 3: Exercises 8-11

Let me know if you have any questions about the readalong! I'm really excited about this project :)

Jan 29

2024 Reading Goals Wrap Up

In which I discuss my reading goals for 2024 and how I did... ★ Reading spreadsheet I use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twhrdlRfnRs&t=626s ► End ...Show more

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Jan 23

Digital Minimalism

Originally posted on Patreon October 28, 2024:

Hi friends -

If you've been around for a while, you're probably familiar with my tumultuous relationship with digital minimalism. The push and pull of both wanting to be completely off social media while still enjoying some aspects of it has been part of my life for a while. For years, I've had digital minimalism as a goal and I have achieved various levels on the spectrum over that time. For the last few years I've been using an app blocker on my phone to cut me off from certain apps at certain times, limit the amount of time I can use certain apps by completely blocking my access to them, etc. Even that goes in waves, as sometimes I turn those blockers off and sometimes I have them much more strict.

But recently, as I've been getting increasingly busier in my real world life, I've been feeling that desire for digital minimalism soar. You may have noticed I've been less present (with creating content) on apps like Threads, IG, TikTok, and even the Bibliothecary Discord. But I've still found myself lurking on those apps and scrolling through content mindlessly without contributing anything.

Now, you can't go back too far (on an iPhone at least) to get screen time history, just the last 3 weeks or so. But in the last 3 weeks, I've been averaging 2.5-3 hours a day on social media of some kind, with the most being TikTok coming in at usually 1-1.5 hours a day. The other apps are much less time but still add up to another 1-1.5 hours combined.

The magnitude of that is that if I had applied that time to reading instead, which some of that I probably couldn't since I'm multi-tasking but for the sake of argument, let's say I could: I read about a page a minute so that's 3,150 more pages in the last 3 weeks and if most books I'm reading are on average 450 pages, then that is 7 more books read since October 6th. Like I said, all of that time couldn't be spent physically reading since I'm also listening to these apps while getting ready or cooking or something, but even if you account for that, that's probably still about 3-4 more books read (not even factoring in audiobooks if I switched that those for the additional multi-tasking time).

I'm continuing to consider how much these apps really aren't contributing much to my life. For a while, I didn't want to get off TikTok because I was creating videos on there. But I really haven't been in months. Then I thought that I have learned a lot from TikTok, which I'd say I have - witchcraft, permaculture, climbing techniques, etc all got introduced to me on TikTok. But, I don't think I've learned a proportional amount to how much I am on the app. And I probably could have learned some of those things elsewhere. Lastly, I don't want to miss out on the memes and trends. There is something very connecting about speaking the same online language. But even that is starting to lose it's luster. TikTok has definitely made my attention span go down. I barely watch YouTube anymore, which I think is a much better learning platform anyway, because long form video cannot hold my attention like it used to.

I often get on social media after work because I feel emotionally drained and can't picture myself doing anything else. I tell myself that I just need some time to de-compress. But social media isn't actually decompressing. The algorithms are garbage these days because they feed you what's popular more than what you like - just enough of what you like to keep you scrolling. Even the Following page on many of these apps is crap because it's not chronological. I've found on apps like Reddit and Threads that the algorithm feeds me posts that are popular and a bit click-bait-y and I get sucked into those when it's not even about a topic I actually care about.

I've watched videos about people engaging in digital minimalism and social media detoxes for years, and literally every single one says that their life changes for the better. For a while, in addition to all of the reasons I posted above about TikTok specifically, I also had a fear about losing my following on Booktube if I stepped away. But since I have limited my posting there for a very achievable 1-2x a week and my following has very much leveled off/decreased, I've realized that that is fine. I feel much more calm even now before the full digital minimalism changes I plan to make than I did at my peak in 2016-2020 when I was so plugged in to everything going on online.

Now when I say digital minimalism, everyone is going to have their own definition of what that looks like. Minimalism is about keeping what works for you and getting rid of what doesn't, so my plan is to:

Fully limit TikTok. I do not have access to it and am locked out by my App Blocker except for select times when I can unlock it if I want (mostly on the weekends when I'm busy anyway). I'm actually hoping I can get to the point where I can delete the app permanently but we'll see.
I've deleted Threads from my phone because I find the algorithm to be awful and keeps feeding me things I don't care about. If I want to make a post, I will from my computer.
Limit IG to 1 hr a day total (which I don't even hit usually so I may limit it even farther). My partners and friends send me IG videos of cute animals so I don't want to limit it entirely.
Delete Reddit from my phone. Ever since Reddit made it so 3rd party apps couldn't connect to Reddit, it's turned to shit. Their app is garbage and has a similar function to Threads where it would keep showing me things from communities I didn't care about but was click bait enough to get me interested (like AITA or AIO posts which are so hard to turn away from). I still enjoy aspects of Reddit though but I will check it from my laptop if I need to, but only communities I'm subscribed to.
I am not limiting YouTube at this time because I'm actually hoping I can get more into long form videos again. But if I find myself using Shorts for example, I will make changes and limit that as well.
I'm still allowing myself podcasts and Spotify because even though that is digital media, it's not social media, and social media is definitely the part of online life that has the most negative impact on my brain. I find podcasts, music, and audiobooks to still be fulfilling.

I'll be making a few more posts about this as I continue to create a plan for moving forward with less social media in my life, as well as updates down the road for how it's going. If you have some aspects of digital minimalism in your life, please share in the comments! I'd love to hear what this looks like for other people.