A Good Reset
Just wrapped up the first month of the year. This time around, to my surprise, January did seem to speed along, bringing February bills quickly to the horizon. Rent, the most notorious of my escalatingly numerous expenses, is due in a week, are you crying with me yet? It was a pretty good start to the year nonetheless, so I thought to journal a bit about what I have been up to so far.
Every year, I find January is always the best time to reset & start over. Very contradictory to the climatic feeling of relief and accomplishment that December offers for reaching the end of a full year, January makes rooms for a fresh start, with a new baseline. Nothing earned, nothing accomplished, just as there is nothing tried and nothing failed, January starts out filled with childlike excitement for what’s to come. Towards the end of last year I published my goals for the year What do I want to do more of in 2024?, eager to get cranking. I’ll try to do a mini check in on those as I share how my January went.
To start with some stats… In total I had 19 unique visits to the gym, with a workout time of about 25 hours across those visits. The Pure Gym group in london have a decent mobile app that makes these stats (Although I believe they are approximate), very accessible. Most of these sessions were early morning weekday sessions, and I enjoyed them so much, as I have been trying to switch back to a morning routine which I had while in college. This allows me to spend more time in the evening working or catching up with friends and family. My relative consistency at the gym was also good for relieving stress, considering the month got hectic really quickly.
Which leads me to talking about work. This month was fairly intense. Started with a two week long sprint, prototyping new product ideas. Easily up there among the most draining two weeks I have had so far at work, but also one of the most exciting ones in a sense. I worked with a few new technologies, (Compose, Kotlin, Gen AI 👀, etc) all at once. Trying to build something useful (I hope). It’s an ongoing effort. The remaining two weeks were business as usual. Sometimes I think it’s because I know too little, but I’m always learning something new. It’s cool that I am, I don’t mind it, as it keeps me on my toes. I also have a side project that I am taking on, I did not have as much time to work on it this month but I have set things in motion and will keep hacking at it. Hopefully I can share more about that once it’s done, I think it’s decently cool.
I got to do some reading this month as well. I am quite the slow reader so I would probably continue reading these for a bit. But I am currently reading “The C++ Programming Language”, by Bjarne Stroustrup and “Seven Gothic Tales”, by Karen Blixen. Whenever I feel too guilty from watching endless anime (Solo leveling, One piece and Mashle really held the month down!) / limited netflix series, I sneak in a few pages. Balance I guess LMAO.
Random note, I have a lot of friends born in January, and I have always suspected that people born on this month love their birthdays a bit extra compared to the rest of us. I confirmed my suspicion this year. January born babies are the main characters.
January came with good vibes, spent some time with friends, playing games, also made some new friends. I forgot a friends birthday among the plethora of January birthdays. I was a good friend to some and in some other ways I was the problem. A couple of scandalous relationships never hurt I guess, though this does not really help in my love life. There’s still little progress there however, that is to be expected if we’re being honest.
I have been listening to a lot of Jazz. Discovered it while working and now it’s just the most soothing thing. French music too but I need a curated playlist. low-key can’t wait to see my spotify wrapped for this year already. I can always trace back to my mind state. I guess I am looking forward to see how it evolves.
It’s the month’s end and the beginning of another. Feels like a good reset once again. Let’s see how it goes!