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summer diaries #4: a day in the life of a quaran-teen

maya rajesh77 Comments

Hey everyone! This is the last Summer Diaries post this year, so I thought I’d do something special: A Day In My Life, but quarantined!! Every single picture you see in this post is mine (yes, I’m so proud of myself for that) so don’t use them (ask me and you most definitely can 😉

If you’re in the WordPress Reader, click here for the full experience!!

This isn’t something I usually do but since Pretty Little Scribbles is a lifestyle and review blog, I thought I’d expand my comfort zones and do a day in the life, but quarantine edition! The title idea goes to the lovely Lilly K on YouTube!

I’ve tried to have a productive day (what with the writing, the blogging, music, dancing, drawing, family-time, WandaVision, and reading). This ‘day’ you’re reading about is actually Friday, but you’ll be seeing the post up on Sunday. Let’s begin!

My day: Morning | Noon | Night

7:15 — out for a run: I’m usually up early quarantined, mainly because I go out for a run every morning. It’s often quite crowded later on in the day, and it’s hard to run with a mask on, so if I get out of the house by 7:15, I’ll be able to lower my mask (a bit!)

8:00 — breakfast: After my run, I’m always exhausted so it’s breakfast straight away! Toast with eggs and juice most of the time, but it’s subject to change. I’m also reading the newspaper these days, so I do that while eating and talk to my family. (My younger sister and father are currently obsessing over dog names because my mom said we could get one soon! We’re leaning toward a Lady Beatrix (Trixie for short;) what do you think? And, yes, it’s that character from my WIP!)

8:20 — planning: Once I’ve washed my breakfast down with some OJ, I get onto my laptop and draft my day. I go to Reedsy and set my writing goals, I list down some study material and I write down what should be done when (if) I want to draft some blog posts.

8:30 — writing: Since we’re in summer break, I’ve been trying to write at least 1k words a day, and that’s been working most days. I wrote for a quick 20-minute spree and plotted a bit of the rest of the chapter so I got only 100 words done (one quick scene).

9:00 — socials: I go to my WordPress Reader and leave some comments/likes on posts. I found some awesome book reviews and then I went to Goodreads to add them to my TBR, but got sidetracked with some polls I was invited to vote on!

10:00 — reading: I spent some time reading Divergent, after I bathed, which is what I’m reading now. I think it’s pretty fun so far, though all the factions are giving me major Harry Potter vibes. I’m just at the part where Beatrice picks her faction with blood and stuff. I just finished Six of Crows and I did a review for that, too! (PS. It’s my first time with Kindle photography, so these aren’t that great! My Kindle auto-displays the book I’m reading on the cover so I just picked a background and clicked.)

10:28 — garden: My father has a tiny home garden where he grows some basic veggies, and it’s my job to water the spinach! Today, I found that *these really cute butterfly eggs we’d been watching had finally hatched! My sister and I rummaged through our drawers for a magnifying glass and then looked at the larvae which was adorable. I also played with our guinea pigs.

10:43 — blogging: I actually worked on this very blog post, and read some help articles on setting up a blog theme, and edited mine for a bit. I finally got my theme to work and added some new side-bar graphics, too! Also, my sister helped me set up my header and we picked these really cute lavender cliparts! What do you think of it?

11:35 — math: I did a little Algebra from my textbook; learnt about monomials, binomials and all that stuff. I like to begin prep for the next school year 10 days before, and I started yesterday.

12:17 — lunch: We eat lunch as a family, while watching TV. My sister and I—when my parents are at work—are currently watching WandaVision (which is such an awesome addition to the MCU) and when we’re watching together, we see Modern Family, a hilarious sitcom like Friends. We watched two episodes of that and had some home-made fried rice with scrambled cottage cheese.

12:50 — Sapience: My friends and I have decided to start a school magazine called Sapience for the next year (and we have so much free time, too!) and I’m head of the Writing Department. We need to write short stories based on chosen topics, and I need to evaluate them, edit them and check for errors. I worked on my story for a bit, and emailed my friends about theirs.

13:09 — rain: So it started raining just after noon, and rain is the perfect weather to stay in and watch YouTube, so that’s what I did. My sister and I watched Jordan Matter’s latest YouTube video and I messaged a senior about career choices and we’re going to talk in a couple hours.

Anna McNulty from the video

15:00 — write, write, writing!: So it just stopped raining and that petrichor is simply wafting about, so I decided to get out into my balcony and write for a bit. It’s that perfect time when everything is fresh and wet, and I needed to work on Chapter 16: Embark so I got to that right away. Here’s a lil’ snippet!

Lady Beatrix strode through the winding corridors of the castle and once she came upon her father’s room, she realised she did not quite know what to say. Of course, she would not need to improvise yet another lie; she would repeat what they had said to Grimscare.

She would start with a greeting. Pull yourself together, Daisy, she told herself. It won’t do you any good at all if he sees through your blatant lie!

“Lady Beatrix?” came a voice in front of her. She whipped her head up, her eyes wide.

“Advisor Faville! Might I check in on my father? I heard he took a turn for the worse this morning!”

“Oh, I do assure you it is only a mild chill; you needn’t fret! Please, go ahead,” he gestured toward the door. “It would do him good to see you.”

“You wouldn’t mind terribly if I ask that I speak to him secluded, would you Mr Faville?” she asked as politely as she could.

With an awkwardly raised eyebrow, he replied, “Oh, no, not at all! I just hope you shan’t mind the medic’s presence.” He tugged at the doorknob gently, peeling the door open.

She murmured a quick vote of thanks to Mr Faville and entered the room, her hands tentative as they shut the door, her feet gingerly making their way to his bed.

“Papa,” she said. “Are you any better? I heard you were under the weather and came over here as soon as I was able!”

“My dear, you mustn’t bother,” he wheezed. He really was ill, she reckoned. “What is it?” he asked, searching her face. “Is there anything you wish to speak to me about?”

15:45 — snacks: I was getting a little hungry, so my sister and I got ourselves some hot chocolate made and we watched some WandaVision, our fingers curled around cups of steaming milk. (I need to snap out of the writing mode, don’t I?)

16:21 — blog and call: We finished eating and I decided to work on this post. I wrote some more, I added the pictures and I made some graphics. Then since my hair was a little frizzy after washing it, I decided to brush it out and Katniss-Everdeen-braid it. I called up my friends and we had a little Zoom call, too!

17:30 — cooking: We wanted to bake something for my grandparents, so we whipped up these custard-chip cookies from Pinterest. They came out pretty well, actually! And we added chocolate and vanilla chips to it.

18:45 — Pinterest: I was feeling pretty bored after that, and I didn’t want to do anything productive, so I went onto Pinterest for some ideas and ended up laughing at these Lunar Chronicles memes!

19:00 — dinner: We had some chicken-stuffed flatbread for dinner with potato gravy and ice-cream from Baskin Robbins! It’s been ages since we’ve had Baskin Robbins’ so I was so excited! These little things ought to be appreciated more.

19:42 — Scrabble: after dinner, we played Scrabble which I’m terrible at. Regardless of the depths of my vocabulary, I always lose at Scrabble and today I came second-to-last. Here’s our completed board!

20:30 — walk: We went on a 3-kilometre walk after dinner and everything was so fresh and beautiful after the rain. The whole place was free of people (a real misanthropist’s paradise) but hopping with little toads and frogs.

21:40 — reading: We came home from the walk, but we stopped at my grandparents’ house for a good twenty minutes (where I watched some YouTube). After I change and brush my hair/teeth, I spend a long time reading before I go to bed. I finished a little more of Divergent and it really is like every other YA novel so far. If it goes on like this (all trope-y) I might just give it a 3-star rating. I also wrote in my diary.

22:30 — sleep!

Overall I managed to have a medium-productive day! I’m also pretty proud of the pictures I took, for I am not that great a photographer, so do tell me what you thought of them and any tips I could use to improve (there’s scope for that, surely.)

Now, I’d like to thank Ananya @ Drawing my fantasies for nominating me for The Dazzling Blogger award! I’m not listing down the rules, but you can see them on her post. Thank you to Helen @ Crispy Confessions for creating this lovely tag!

1. Who’s your role model and why?

I think my parents, Malala Yousafzai, and Cassie Clare are some of my inspirational models. I think I must be who I want to be most of all.

2. Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging as a way to share my words with the world. Pretty Little Scribbles is thus a lifestyle and review blog where I review books, movies, TV shows and talk about my life and also what’s happening in the world. Blogging is (to me) a wonderful use of my time!

3. Name your all-time favorite song.

Too many to list down here, but I love Perfect by Ed Sheeran, Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo (the song I listened to on repeat for.. three days??!) and Bohemian Rhapsody.

4. Have you ever been expelled/rusticated from school?

Nope! That’s a very Percy-Jackson question, but I don’t hope to be, ever.

5. Who’s your style icon?

Anna Mcnulty and Elliana Walmsley, maybe? I’m not too big on basing my fashion sense off of others!

6. What’s your dream job?

Writer and/or doctor.

7. What’s your favorite word in English language?

Too many to choose! Top three would be winter, aurora and starlight. They just look so pretty!

I’d like my nominees to answer the same questions because they were so fun (and I’m too lazy to come up with more) but anyway, here are the chosen ones (I just popped into my reader and picked randomly):

Akshita @ akshita1776

Krisha @ Krisha’s Twilight

Perplexinglexi @ Perplexinglexi’s Blog

Bea @ The Beahive

Chloe @ Confessions of A Reading Geek

… And whoever wants to do it! Link back to me and I’ll comment on your post!

As far as my day went it was relatively normal, but school begins in less than two weeks! If time permits, I might be able to get another Summer Diaries squeezed in, but in the meanwhile click here for all the posts so far! Thank you so much for reading ♥♥

What does a typical day in your life look like? Do you have any photography tips (please say yes!) When do you usually let go of productivity? Tell me in the comments! Until then xx

77 thoughts on “summer diaries #4: a day in the life of a quaran-teen”

  3. Woah! You had a really productive and awesome day! Those cookies look luscious, yum, yum, yum! Your guinea pigs are way too adorable <3. And you run every day, that is impressive! 👏👏
    Btw, even I'm watching Modern Family now 😉
    Congratulations on the award and all the best for your magazine!!! 😊😊

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  4. Great post, I loved reading this! (And that guinea pig is too cute??) I hope you like divergent, I did too, even if I didn’t enjoy the sequels as much as the first one.
    Congrats on the award!!

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  6. That was very enjoyable to read!!
    I’m not personally a photographer, so I think all of your photos look AMAZING…
    Also, I think WandaVision is wonderful as well! What point are you at in the series?
    Aaand… those cookies looked amazing!

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    • Aww, thank you for this comment! That is so sweet of you!!! (My photos do need a lot of development but I did try so thankss!)

      I just (literally just) finished wandavision and omg what was that finale??? vision and the twins? i actually kind of liked that open-ending, because it leaves more room in the mcu!

      thanks again!!!

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  7. That was very enjoyable to read!!
    I’m not personally a photographer, so I think all of your photos look AMAZING…
    Also, I think WandaVision is wonderful as well! What point are you at in the series?
    Aaand… those cookies looked amazing!
    -Naomi

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  8. Wow, your gunie pigs are just adorable. Also, your photos looks amazing( the cookies photo came perfect) Your writing seems interesting. This post is my favorite now!

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  10. wow! sounds really fun! I LOVE your guinea pigs, they’re adorable! And your cookies look amazing! I wish I could try one! Ooooh Baskin Robbins! What’s your fav flavour? I used to love Cotton Candy since I was 3 but now I prefer Rainbow Sherbet! I love them all though. Idk tbh XD your cookie photo is great! I guess the trick is to focus directly on the object itself because sometimes it blurs slightly and the background is sharper. Does that make sense? XD anyways, great post!

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    • Thank you so much for this comment, Layla!

      I love cotton candy, but there’s one branch near where I live which once made it taste like toothpaste so from that day on, I’ve been scarred. My favourite is mint-chocolate-chip! I’ve seen the rainbow sherbet one there, but never got a chance to taste it, but I should try it soon 😉

      Oh, I get it! Thanks for the tip! I’ll definitely try it when I take photographs next time! Thank you so much for reading!

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  11. this is an awesome post and congrats on being nominated <3!!

    Your days seem busy and productive! That's awesome that you're such an avid writer, I definitely need to put more of my day into writing! I also watched Wandavision recently, are you liking it? I'm eagerly awaiting the MCU's next show Loki!!

    Hope you have a great day!

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  13. This was so fun to read! I love day in my life posts! You did so many different things. The pics are great especially the chocolate Ice cream one. And congrats on the award!

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  15. Tysm for the nomination!! Wow you are so organized!!! And those pictures are amazing!!!! Malala is definitely an awesome roll model, and especially my parents too. You want to be a doctor when you grow up?!? You have some guts girl. 😂 that’s cool you set writing goals for yourself every day. I should probably do that too come to think of it. I am still in school right now and my summer vacation starts in three days (Woah that’s so crazy to think about!!! 🤯😁) Aurora is a nice word, I agree. I feel like this comment is all over the place 😆 but all around nice post! I can tell you worked hard on it 😉

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    • Ahh thank you so much for this lovely comment!!! I’m not as organised as it seems but yes, I did try to be productive in the summer! Hope you have a great summer, Chloe!! Yeah, Mala is so inspiring! Yup, I’ve been working on this since Friday! Thank you for reading!!

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      • Yeah! Same here, I can be organized and unorganized, hehe…
        I think I’m going to change up my summer routine this year compared to other years. Other years I’ve been lazy and thought about it as “my time to relax, as in sit in front of the TV all day” but this summer I’m going to have some sort of structure.
        Yeah, she’s just amazing! *sighs wishing I could be as brave as her*
        Wow! Well the work payed off! This post is awesome!!!
        Yeah, I loved reading it! 😉

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  19. Just loved your schedule and how you’ve managed to plan every single thing out: I really appreciate all the effort put in to it! (Which is something not seen in my routine 😂)

    Also, congratulations on your nomination!! Your answers were pretty epic, btw

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  20. I came across your blog after I recieved notifs of you liking my posts (all of a sudden, but I’m so glad you did. Thank you) and we share a lot of things in common! And Wanda vision is just the best, well after Falcon and the winter Soldier. Great post!
    I can’t wait for more!
    -Divi.
    P. S.- have you heard the SOUR album yet?

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  34. Gosh, your day sounds so productive, yet fun at the same time – I need to take some tips out of your book! And that WIP of yours sounds super interesting as well 🤗 I think naming your dog after its MC definitely wouldn’t hurt 😉
    Also, I love scrabble!!! Not trying to brag, but I’m actually very good at it, so my family will no longer play it with me 😪 So maybe it’s not the worst thing to only have mediocre scrabble skills… (However, since I don’t have any mentionable photography skills, here’s a scrabble tip: learn two letter words and start laying parallel to the words that are already there. It’s like a free double letter score tile 😉)

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    • Ahh, thank you for this comment! It made my day :))
      Oh, it does? Thanks!
      I’m not so great at scrabble at all so that tip should really help! (I’m always stuck adding an S to all the nouns, haha!)
      Thanks for reading ❤

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