What’s a pillar anyway? I have questions. The internet has jargon.

This week I went down an organizing rabbit hole.

I was feeling like I didn’t have enough ideas for TikTok and Instagram, so I decided I needed a system. Which is how I discovered I have roughly 2,000 screenshots, 10 notes, and 9 tabs in a Google doc.

Apparently my idea management system was “save everything and let Future Laura deal with it.”

I’m still working on getting it down to three tabs: video ideas, carousel ideas, and an actual schedule.

The organizing spiral quickly became a content spiral.

I started reading about content pillars, which apparently are the categories your content falls into. This raised several questions.

What are content pillars?

Do I need content pillars?

Have I had content pillars this whole time without knowing what they were?

Am I behind because everyone else seems to know what these are?

The more I looked at my own content, the more I realized I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about colors, fonts, templates, and book reviews.

But some of the things I’ve enjoyed making most lately haven’t been reviews at all.

They’ve been skits, recommendation lists, adaptation discussions, bookish observations, and random thoughts about reading.

The organizing spiral somehow turned into six episodes about a woman trapped in a small-town romance novel.

It was genuinely fun to make.

My views definitely went down.

You never really know what’s going to take off or what you’re going to enjoy creating. Every once in a while those two things overlap and something magical happens. Most of the time, you’re just trying things and seeing what sticks.

Which led me to the question I’ve been turning over all week:

Am I trying to build a book account or a content account that happens to be about books?

I don’t have an answer yet.

I do know that I’m going on vacation next week and would like to stop thinking about content long enough to sit on a beach with a book.

We’ll see how that goes.

Most “This Wasn’t What I Expected”

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

I went in expecting an atmospheric literary mystery.

What I got was a book that had me wondering who killed people and, at times, who was even dead.

I’m still not entirely sure why it won The Lolly at Book of the Month, but it was a solid read and definitely stranger than I expected.

The Break-Up Retreat by Camilla Sten

A journalist goes undercover at a wellness retreat to investigate a missing woman.

Sounds straightforward.

It is not.

Everyone is sketchy. Nobody feels trustworthy. The atmosphere gets increasingly unsettling, and I actually dropped my book when someone told the main character, “There’s someone behind you.”

Read this one when you’re feeling brave and preferably not alone in the woods.

Best Audiobook of the Month

The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly & Jennifer Thorne

This was my audiobook of the month and it wasn’t particularly close.

The story unfolds through interviews, news articles, and behind-the-scenes accounts surrounding the disappearance of an actress from a late-night sketch show.

Part mystery, part entertainment industry drama, part oral history.

I flew through it in a couple of days and immediately started looking for more books with the same format.

May By The Numbers

• 20 books
• 7,769 pages
• 8 audiobooks

Apparently my solution to feeling overwhelmed was reading even more books.

See you next Sunday.