2024 was a doozy of a year for me, and not in a particularly heartening manner. In some ways, it’s a marvel that the sun came up on the first of the new year to see me still breathing and in one piece. Yet despite the ups and (mostly) downs, I am committed to bettering myself. Maybe in the past I would start a year with plans of grandeur– things like waking up at 5:30am to take virtual Spanish and Japanese lessons or reducing my calorie intake to a simultaneously laughable yet scary point. But with dawn of 2025, I realize that the things I need to work on are very different now.
I want my spring semester to be focused on lab work and have slow, restful downtime. I won’t even plan what comes after yet. Maybe summer will have the same goals, who knows? I have to be okay with not hitting the benchmarks I used to be able to reach. If I push myself too far, I’ll fizzle rather than shine. I think I’m at a point where recovery will actually be the thing that permits me to be myself again.
In past lows, I found that journaling was really helpful. A bit back I actually tried a truncated version of this by keeping track of one thing that made me happy per day [here]. It weirdly worked, more in the long run than short, but still it was a net positive overall. I think it’s time to do the same. For the month, I’ll write down things that made me happy in my phone or planner and will periodically update this post. At the end of the month, I’ll reflect on both how January went, as well as if this process helped me at all again. There may still be a lot of woes, but it’s too easy to focus on bad, right? So, feel free to enjoy, well, my joy.
January 2025
- Post-pizza date listening to funky music while putting up crooked shelves in the living room
- Reading a silly book we got as a gift aloud with Alex before bed
- A cute new outfit for cafe writing time and a quick workout
- Eating Culver’s in the car while listening to a Dropout show
- Being über-cared for while sick
- Ice sword fighting on the porch!
- Resting and finding time to paint and relax
- Starting a cozy new book
- Crunching a huge area of ice with my boots
- Hot pink, shiny packaging that lab reagents came in
- Crying over a bittersweet moment in the book I finished today (twice)
- Thrift store shenanigans and people-watching some folk trying to get inside a closed book store
- Monday night sushi date (with a really good deep fried roll?!)
- Trying a new recipe for shrimp cabbage rolls and sipping a fancy soda while cooking
- Analyzing new microscopy data for the first time since the move
This is where my end-of-the-month reflection will go when it’s actually the end of the month!
Happy reading,
-Beppa