tracking olivia

Jazz, Books, & Aspiring Writer

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is instagram essentially a mini-blog?

is instagram essentially a mini-blog?

hey. It’s me. I suppose it’s been established that I don’t regularly keep up with a WordPress blog.

I want to ask you (for the – if I’m lucky – 2 of you who’s reading this), do you write consistently? Because throughout my life, I’ve always found it very difficult to keep up with it. [That’s probably because I haven’t established a schedule for it].

I started my bookstagram (on instagram,…

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quick book reviews: january roundup

quick book reviews: january roundup

I managed to read 7 books in January (a mix of short and long ones), and I’m glad to have started the year off on a strong note! Here were my reads:

The Woman Destroyed, by Simone de Beauvoir

The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler

The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!, by Gloria Steinem

A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf

Sorry I’m Late, I didn’t want to come, by Jessica…

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2020 reading goals

Yes, I am aware we are 15 days in 2020 and I’m late to the party, but hey — better late than never!

Happy new year, everyone. I hope you’re all having a great and powerful start to the new decade. For me, I have been occupied, stressed, and sick, but I am moving forward and prioritizing my goals.

Last year, I read 20 books. My Goodreads challenge was actually set to 10 books, but I somehow got my…

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quick book review: the secrets we kept by Lara Prescott

quick book review: the secrets we kept by Lara Prescott

Female spies. The Cold War. And the most dangerous of all, a book.

This is what stories are made of. The Secrets We Kept tells two narratives: one of the Agency’s female typists, and the other about the life of Boris Pasternak through the eyes of his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya. More than that, it tells the story about the Agency’s involvement in retrieving and distributing the famous Docto…

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quick book reviews: the nickel boys & the feminine mystique

quick book reviews: the nickel boys & the feminine mystique

Over the past two weeks I finished two very interesting books — one fiction and one non-fiction, both speaking about very important subjects: racial equality and feminism.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is probably my favorite book of the entire year (and I don’t say this lightly). It is a heartbreaking masterpiece that left me in tears at the end. There are few books that will captivate me…

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no music runs

This morning I decided to do my 4 mile Wednesday run with no music. It was just me, my feet, the sound of cars driving by in a hurry to get to work, and the -3 degree celsius winds in my face.

I’ll do this every now and again, running with no music. I did it more often in the summer — mostly due to the fact that I changed phones and I didn’t want to carry it in my hand as it was slightly larger.…

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quick book review: small is beautiful by E. F. Schumacher

quick book review: small is beautiful by E. F. Schumacher

If you’re an environmentalist and/or an economist, chances are you’ve heard of this book originally published in the early 1970s, written by economist E.F. Schumacher.

What you need to know: for me, it was a challenging book to read because of the way it is written (as an economist), and some chapters were not easily digestible. Nonetheless, an important and still very relevant book for our time…

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a cosmo or two never hurt nobody

a cosmo or two never hurt nobody

Now and again – and by that I really mean every week – I like to make cocktails for my mom. It’s funny being in a French household, yet she prefers hard liquor like vodka or tequila as opposed to wine. But that’s alright, because we’re inclusive of all types of alcohol in the Oudinot house. Allllll types.

After visiting my boyfriend’s family this past week, I was itching to make a cosmo. He also…

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wordpress design is not intuitive...or maybe it's me

wordpress design is not intuitive…or maybe it’s me

I’ve just spent the past couple of hours on WordPress trying to figure out how to create a ‘menu’ at the top here, and I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s because I don’t have that much experience in design, but that took WAY longer than I thought it would.

Turns out, I needed to add the categories for the menu tab or something so that the posts would automatically show up once I tagged and…

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“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye – that was the trouble – I wanted to kiss you goodnight – and there’s a lot of difference.” – Ernest Hemingway

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Harassment while running

Unfortunately, harassment happens everywhere.

This morning I was running in my neighborhood, enjoying the slightly cooler weather and thinking about autumn (my favorite season), when my peaceful time was interrupted. A random man (I’m not sure if he lives in the neighborhood or if he’s a contractor that visits often) shouted at me that I should be “wearing a thong” while running. Not that it…

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Writing as a habit + my return + on the book "Butterfly"

Writing as a habit + my return + on the book “Butterfly”

The truth is, I’ve had a major writing blockage for the past…well, since February 2018, I guess?

I mean, I still write here and there, but I’ve lost sight of writing as a priority. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Over the past year, I’ve: moved to France to do a Master’s (which I’ve finished, yay!); ran the Semi de Paris (half marathon) in April; traveled to Rwanda; traveled to where I was born in…

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My lovelies, (can I get away with calling my readers that?) What is a minimalist Valentine’s Day? Doesn’t matter. I was reading my post about Valentine’s Day from February 2014 and was quickly reminded of all of the things I cared about then, and still care about now. I provided a whole list of activities to do with your friends or special someone, ranging from building a pillow fort to watching…

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Minimalistic Writing?

“Clutter is the disease of American writing.” What a line. This sentence comes from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, a book I am quickly adding to my favorites. The best chapters I’ve read so far are on Simplicity and Clutter, to nobody’s surprise. “But the secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that…

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30-Day Minimalist Challenge

One evening in late August I was drinking my nightly chamomile tea and scrolling on Instagram, as per usual, when I came across a post by The Minimalists. With September about to roll out, they posted a picture of their “30-day Minimalist Challenge,” #MinsGame. An opportunity! I thought, as I spilled tea on myself. The challenge goes as follows: one the first of the month, you get rid of one…

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Well, Don’t You Wear a Tie Everyday? I’m a strong believer of signs. If we’ve talked, you can guarantee that I’ve said at some point, “all for a reason,” “that’s a sign,” and “even if we don’t know the reason yet, it has a purpose; we may even never know the reason too!

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Vacationing Solo & White Roses

Vacationing Solo & White Roses

As you may have seen through my [annoying] Instagram posts, I took a vacation in Cancun in the beginning of January 2017. After who knows how long, I happened to have some time to myself before I switched jobs and decided to take a break. It looked like I was going by myself, which I had absolutely no problem with the decision. However, I wanted to read about women – or anyone in fact – who had…

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