sure. wait. what?

I’ve decided to impose some (sort of) structure on my monthly logs this year. Instead of writing my monthly reflections in freeform, I will break each post into sections, giving shape to the ebbs and flows of each month.

Sections

1. Money
2. Fitness
3. Reading
4. Social
5. Finds and Firsts
6. Fails and Flops
7. Looking Ahead

This is a way for me to track my goals and see if the days are pulling me forward or are simply drifting past. It’s my attempt at measuring time, not just in dates and deadlines, but also in movement and meaning.

So, with that, here’s where January stood.

Money

I started splitting my savings into three buckets: Long-term, Travel, and Gifts. I set a minimum target for each bucket — I will not disclose the specific amounts, but I will track how much I saved relative to my targets.

Savings Bucket	Savings Goal Met (%)
Long-term	100%
Travel	100%
Gifts	100%

So far, so good. I actually already dipped into my Travel savings from January. I booked a trip, kind of, but I’ll share more about this when the time comes. Weee!

Fitness

My goal is to workout at least 15 days a month. In January, I fell short by one day. Here’s a breakdown:

Exercise Days	14
Indoor Run	8
Barre	4
Pilates	1
Indoor Walk	1

I want to run more this year, but my knees are not fully cooperating. Right now, as I’m writing this, I feel discomfort on my knees. Not pain, no — just a strange, abnormal sensation that tells me my knees aren’t knee-ing. Oh well.

Reading

I read three books in January:

• Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
• Hilma Wolitzer’s Today A Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket.

Social

January is generally a quiet month, but I still made time to hang out with other people. I visited the Diaz Mansion and met the nutty cats, I had lunch with K and S on a random Tuesday, and I joined the Lunar New Year festivities with family. Pretty chill stuff; nothing wild.

Finds and Firsts

• NY Times Games. I started playing Wordle again. I also got into Connections and Spelling Bee. Fun!
• Dionela’s “Marilag” and “Sining”. I wouldn’t have listened to these songs if not for the Reddit threads bashing Dionela’s lyrics. Bad publicity is still publicity, eh?
• Bar dish soap. I bought a bar soap for washing the dishes in January. I’d say it’s better for the environment, but it’s not as potent against thicc grease. It’s alright.

• Carbon laser peel. I tried this facial treatment for the first time and it was great. My skin was glowing for about two weeks. It’s quite expensive though, so it’s not something I would do regularly.

Fails and Flops

Personally, January didn’t come with any major fails. But since the personal is political (and vice versa), it’s worth mentioning that Canadian politics has been… tense? Is that even the right word? Chaotic? Unhinged? I wish I could write more about it. It’s wild.

Looking Ahead

January was an easy month for chasing goals. Hopefully I can carry this momentum forward and steadily grow my savings in the coming months. As for my other loftier ambitions, I’ll let them take shape in their own time and write about them as they happen — or not. You never know.

I hope the year also began kindly for you, dear reader. And if not, that’s all gucci — we still have the rest of the year and our lifetimes to turn things around.