Author: tozka

Late 30's former librarian traveling the world as a catsitter. More about me here!

reading log: a trip of one’s own by kate wills

Book Info

A Trip of One’s Own: Hope, Heartbreak, and Why Traveling Solo Could Change Your Life by Kate Wills (2021)

Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel

LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/work/28155352/

Acquired from: Little Free Library, [undisclosed location], USA

Started reading: September 19, 2025

Finished reading: October 28, 2025

Bookmark: Books, Inc. “Where the Bay Goes for Books” (came with book)

Review

I feel like she sold the idea of this book as her following historical solo female traveler’s travel routes and then it turned into a memoir about how she messed up her life and kept making probably bad choices and then somehow it turned out okay. Every other chapter is a “how to” for other solo female travelers and mostly they’re pretty good, but it’s weird to include those in a personal memoir type book when they seem like they’d better fit in a guide type book. I did enjoy reading about all the different historical women– many of whom I haven’t heard of before, and whose books I can’t find online despite them being in the public domain.

Notes

Page 0: I already travel solo extensively (in fact, full-time for years) but this seems more like a travel memoir than a how-to so I think it’ll be good to read.

She’s following the travels of one of the early travel writers, Egeria, who went on a pilgrimage which means visiting Israel and other nearby sites. In fact this author starts right off in Israel, just fyi.

Continue reading “reading log: a trip of one’s own by kate wills”

📝 weeknotes (sept. 14-20, 2025)

Life Updates

Well, that was a longer gap than I meant to do! From my last update to now:

  • have left my Ann Arbor catsit
  • flown to California to visit parents and sat in a SoCal heatwave for a week
  • bought new suitcase, repacked items, swapped out clothes, etc.
  • flew to new catsit in undisclosed location (in the Western part of the US, anyway)
  • settled into new catsit for about a week, then
  • became vaguely ill for a week and
  • only now picked up laptop and felt energetic using it

I’ll do a more precise (friends-only) catsit update to introduce y’all to the new kitties, but overall I’m really enjoying this new location– though I miss the garden from Ann Arbor! I do have a balcony with a view of the river with an enormous amount of ducks here, though.

Continue reading “📝 weeknotes (sept. 14-20, 2025)”

💻 pixietails.club main site temporarily closed

Dealing with a massive bot attack at pixietails.club, so have temporarily closed the site. Links to the main site won’t work for a bit, which is very annoying but it is what it is.

I’ve been planning a revamp anyway (moving from Docuwiki to HTML/CSS) so I guess this is good motivation to finish it on a deadline!

For now, please keep visiting me here or at fandom.ink. 💖

🧳 to do before tomorrow’s travel day

  1. Vacuum everywhere
  2. Clean kitchen, bathroom
  3. Swap out the kitty litter
  4. Take out garbage (including huge bag of kitty poo ugh)
  5. Make airport snacks (hardboiled eggs, cheese, olives)
  6. Pet the cats a lot!!!
  7. Pack my stuff and hopefully fit everything into my suitcase
  8. Add more ebooks to Kindle and music to iPod for airplane entertainment
  9. Drop off books to Little Free Library
  10. Book transit to airport (dunno if I wanna spring for a Lyft or do the cheaper shuttle…Lyft would be much easier as I can leave a bit later and it’s direct from here to the airport, but the price difference is like $35-45.

I want to get everything done today so tomorrow morning I only have to clean the coffee maker/coffee cup, pet the cats and then leave. Despite traveling full time for so long, I still hate travel days! Especially ones that involve the airport. There’s so much to think about that it stresses me out— lists help, though.

📝 weeknotes (aug 24-30, 2025)

Is it still a weeknotes if I write massive amounts of text? All the other ones I’ve seen are shorter and more list-heavy. Well, whatever.

📩 Writing this from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, with one kitty sleeping behind me on a heated blanket and the other two dozing in the homeowner’s bedroom (one on the bed, one under it). I have the back door open and it’s great weather, mid-60s and sunny– though my writing desk corner is shaded most of the day, which makes it easier to see the screen. I can see the garden from my desk, and so far have chased off the groundhog twice from breaking in and stealing tomatoes. I have on a new-to-me merino wool sweater on that I got from a thrift store a few weeks ago for like $7, which is my favorite shade of purple: a deep wine color. It’s soft and doesn’t itch like most wool things. The WALL-E soundtrack is playing as background noise.

Life Updates

The first half of the week was spent in a semi-sick state– not actually ill, but just bleh feeling, compounded by too much computer use tbh. I finally forced myself outside on Thursday and went walking around, and found a MASSIVE burdock just at the edge of someone’s yard which inexplicably cheered me up.

🐈‍⬛ The cats have been total sweeties this week (despite one day when a cat threw up his breakfast in 3 places, and another one left a poo just outside the litter box) and keep sitting on my lap/near me– compared to where we were at the start of this sit, when they were so nervous they hid under a bet all day, this is great! But of course I’m leaving in a few days and now all I can think about is how much I’ll miss them. 🙁

The only thing that solves that problem is going to another catsit, and luckily I have another one lined up right after this one.

Continue reading “📝 weeknotes (aug 24-30, 2025)”

🔗 memes, grant writing, rumicat

Happy Saturday! I figured out that I can bulk-open my synced tabs from my phone to my computer, which makes putting these posts together just a little bit easier. Huzzah!

On Dreamwidth

osteophage created some site logos (SVG format) for fandom-friendly websites, including Dreamwidth, Squidgeworld and AO3!

vampiremedia is hosting a friending meme!

journalsandplanners put up this 12 question meme for stationery fans that’s been going around a bit over here.

Continue reading “🔗 memes, grant writing, rumicat”

📝 weeknotes (aug 17-23, 2025)

Life Updates

Overall I feel really good! There’s the creeping sense of dread re: finances which pops up every month or so, but otherwise I’m excited for the next few months of travel/catsitting.

I think it’s helped that I’ve been regularly going outside and walking for ~45 minutes every day. I’m really bad about doing that normally, but this neighborhood is good for walking and has enough interesting things to look at that I don’t feel bored. My Health app even says my step count is about double what it was last month!

I’ve also been venturing into some of Ann Arbor’s nature preserves, which are much hillier than I expected. Very beautiful trees, though! And usually not too crowded, so it’s peaceful.

Continue reading “📝 weeknotes (aug 17-23, 2025)”

📺 watched: mary heilmann: waves, roads and hallucinations (2023)

🎬 Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads and Hallucinations: Directed by Matt Creed. A look at the life and influential work of pioneering abstract painter Mary Heilmann, who emerged from the minimalist and Beat Generation scenes in California. 🔗

I’d never heard of Heilmann before and her work doesn’t look familiar to me, but I still enjoyed this documentary because she’s such an interesting person.

It’s mostly direct interviews with her, with some tours of her studio and an exhibit she was doing at the time. They did a good job of going over her work from the 1960s onward, and sprinkling in bits about her life. She’s not afraid to say personal/emotional stuff and it doesn’t feel trite.

Early on she talked about how, when you think about being an artist, you never think of the business side of it. And she said nowadays art is so commodified, if you do it professionally you basically HAVE to sell out to actually make any money. People talk more about what a piece is worth than anything else, and art collectors are thinking of investments rather than pure artistic merit.

I also liked how she said that she did art to have an identity– refreshing!

A final good thing she says is: you have to find the good things about the new art world to be satisfied with your place in it. Smart!

💟 Her website / Public collections list (Wikipedia)

🔗 planner pages, river circus, portland punk

Happy Friday! I recently found out the homeowners’ sink does sparkling water using the nubbin on the other side of the faucet from the regular water handle. I coulda been having fizzy water this whole time!

On Dreamwidth

dolorosa_12 shares a warning about AI scambots from AO3 infiltrating Dreamwidth.

beepbird has written a book about plurality/multiplicty titled “For the Many,” and it’s available for free download (EPUB/PDF) at the post, or on their website here.

Summary:

Plurality is the experience of having more than one self in the same body. There are few guides written for those who don’t fit into “one person per body”, and it can be hard to figure out how to live a life where you’re never alone, especially if you struggle with internal conflicts or trust issues. For the Many offers over 100 pages of guides on self-discovery, communication, and developing an internal community.

(via ysabetwordsmith)

matsushima at longreads posted a selection of interesting articles and podcasts, including quite a few grouped under “AI is Bullshit.”

Continue reading “🔗 planner pages, river circus, portland punk”