Hello, my name is Kendra Winchester. Welcome back to my channel, and today I'm
going to be talking about 2018 how it went, and some of my plans for 2019. I
don't have any resolutions this year, and we'll . . . we'll talk about that. So
typically, I would go back and look at my resolutions for 2018 and see how well I
did, but you know I got this migraine in April. Many of you know I have chronic
daily headaches and migraines, but typically I get breaks in between them.
But this one has lasted for about eight months. And some people have migraines
in cycles, or they have cluster migraines, but I have a single migraine.
And it starts as a low hum in the morning and by the evening it's . . . it's
pretty bad. So I've been working with my doctor on different things, so I am
getting the right help etc so and so forth. So rest assured, but I yeah that's
just been my year. And so I just threw out all my resolutions; I didn't even go
look at them before making this video, because I was like, "Well, it doesn't
really matter because I can't read in print." And that has really changed the
way that I read, and this is a reading channel. My job is in reading. All my
hobbies are in reading and books, so it was a year that I had to find
alternatives. So it also made me more aware of accessibility. You know I
wouldn't be able to read books if I didn't have audiobooks. In fact, I read a
handful of books in print this year. Most of the books that I read were on audio.
I'm gonna do some stats later in a different video, but I would not be able
to do my job if I do not have libraries and, you know, apps on my phone with
e-libraries and things like Scribd and Audible and all of those things that I
had the accessibility to be able to read those books through audio. So I'm
grateful for that, and it really inspired me to begin the process of
captioning my videos and working on that. It is still reading to edit the
generated text. So how I caption my videos is I go in you know the inner
workings of YouTube—which is not very accessible to figure out how to do
this, I'm just gonna point that out—but anyway, so you go in there and you look
at the generated text, and you can edit this generated text. So you fix
spelling, you add punctuation etc. so on so forth. You're just editing. You're just
copy editing, but that still is a very intense focus and actually has caused
several migraines. So if I'm behind captioning, I apologize. I try to do it in
chunks. If you would like to help caption my videos,
there's always information on that in the description box down below. So it has
been a very reflective year. Also I became even more aware—if that's
possible—of ablest creeps on the internet. They think they're being cute
and sassy in saying like, "Well, I have an unpopular opinion." And I just . . . no, no
you're unpopular opinion is my issue of accessibility. Yeah, just not . . . not here for
that. No. Yeah, I've been really irritated and a
lot of rants. And if you have been on Voxer listening to one of my rants, I
apologize. But I appreciate you, and you're a great listener. (Jaclyn, looking
at you.) So, I yeah, I've just struggled so much this year because I love reading,
guys. I love it so so much, and when you have migraines, or really wide range of
different disabilities or challenges, you can't read as much as you
would like. That's just really, really sad. One of the things I have made sure that
I keep doing is having the physical copy when I listen to the audio. Very rarely
do I not have the physical copy when I listen to an audiobook, just because I
want . . . I want to have that experience picking up the book and opening it. And I
feel lost an audiobook, I can always like go back and just read like
you know a paragraph or whatever to catch myself up or remind myself of
something. So that is what I have been doing. I haven't been requesting a lot of
ARCs at all because I know those are 1) more expensive than regular books,
but also 2) those are to promote the book particularly when it comes out. But since
I can't read it before it comes out or when the audio
book comes out, I'm pretty much useless on that end. So I've been sending them to
other people. So for 2019, one of the things I want to
just let go of is feeling guilty for asking people to switch to something
like Voxer so that I have better accessibility to communicating with them.
Texting is really easy, but any length of time texting I get . . . it makes migraines so
much more worse. I can even use words. So I would prefer to use Voxer. I would
prefer to do audio. I'm so thankful that we it's the podcast and not like—I don't
know—a blog or something. I would not be able to keep up with that. I've had to
outsource most of the reviews for the newsletter because I can't write them.
You know that kind of thing just letting go of that, you know, and saying,
"Hey, could we switch to this so it's more accessible to me?" Because I
know it's different a lot of people aren't audio learners and whatever, but
it's stil . . . it's not a preference for me. It's a need so just letting that go
going forward. You know, I always find it weird talking about my migraines on the
internet, because I'd typically don't talk about them to people in my general
life either. But so many of you have come to me and said, "I have migraines, or my
kids have migraines, or my parents at migraines, or someone I love in my life
has migraines. And you talking about them has helped me better understand them." or
"I feel seen in your story." Thank you so much for sharing, and it's for those
people that I really talk about migraines
and different issues in my life. Because migraines are invisible. Like, I have very
little outside showing of my migraines. Otherwise, you can't see them, so it's
just something in one's life to think about. So in 2019, I'm not setting any
resolutions. I'm not really planning on doing anything like that. I do want to
give myself a break on a few things. Also, I want to cook more. I love cooking. I
have a lot of food restrictions, medical food diet type stuff. And I have to cook
everything from scratch. So it was either eat
crappy food or learn how to cook. So I've really enjoyed cooking sharing
recipes with friends and testing out new things. So that's something that I really
enjoy. So if you have any recipes in the rice areas of the world that use less
wheat and dairy in their cooking, let me know. I'll be very excited to try those.
And yeah, I got a rice cooker for Christmas, so instead of standing over a
pot of rice for like an hour, I just let it go and it it just makes
fluffy quinoa for me. It's great. Anyway, so that's really been this year. I read,
I'd say, about 30 fewer books than I did last year. But I read the same amount
of pages, roughly, so that was nice. Probably all those poetry collections [from last year].
I will say that is something I've not switched to audio for. Poetry, unless it's a
poetry novel like THE POET X or something . . . but for poetry collection, I
want to see it on the page. That's part of the experience. So typically, I read
through the poem once silently, and then I read it through again and I'll read
the poem out loud to see how it stands up to actually, you know, the sounds that
it's making etc. And so I want to keep doing that. So there's a book by
the America's poet laureate. I wanted to read all of her stuff this year, but I
didn't have a chance. What I might do is get a print copy and then just listen to
the audio while I have it in front of me that might be a great possibility. You
know, pull a Shawn Mooney on that one. You see how that goes, so that's. Yeah, that's
been my year. So thank you all for your support. As always, I want to put
disclaimers on this discussion that I am NOT a medical professional, so I'm not
qualified to give any medical advice beyond go see and neurologist that
specializes in migraines, if you also have migraines. And also, I am under the
care of medical professionals, so I'm not really looking for any unsolicited
medical advice. I already use essential oils. Pretty much all the disclaimers
that you need in something like this. So thank, you so much for watching. I'm
really excited to go into 2018 and listen to even more audiobooks.
And yeah, I have a lot of different things planned for Reading Women. Very
exciting about that. But until next time, I guess I'll see you next one. Bye guys!
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