2026-01-31 january in review

last time, i'd had some foresight in starting my writing of the review almost a week before the end of the month, but this time i am starting at the ripe hour of noon on the final day. writing that makes it feel like new year's eve all over again.... maybe it's a good thing to have more "new year, new me" chances. when you have a brain like mine you have to find every means of tricking yourself into functioning.

i'm in great need of such a chance after i spent the better part of january half-dead. i suffered a bout of routine exhaustion, went to a four day convention with my brother and his friends, woke up at fuck o clock in the morning on the fourth day to catch a completely unrelated 4 hour livestream, and then did a 10 hour marathon of a major story update for genshin, all in the first two weeks of the year. i've spent the remainder of january just trying to get back into a normal rhythm.

while i was getting back on the horse, i decided to make cringe little posters of my new years resolutions to paste up within major sightlines around my apartment, that way i remember what to point my horse at. it's embarrassing how easily i will just forget my greater goals; i've had many evenings conclude with "ah, fuck. that's what i should have been doing with that free time". no more!!

since my last review, i did end up adding a fifth resolution, which just says "draw!!". something so intrinsic to me has woefully fallen by the wayside since i started working; i now have to set aside time and intention to keep it in my life. quite sad.... on the other hand, having so little time has more or less killed my ability to do commissions or zine work and the like, which helps my intention to focus on drawing for myself.

so let's have a look at my progress so far:

1. read 12 books - finished one! digestible fiction is going to be the way to go if i ever fall behind the pace, but i'd really like to get through at least one of the less-easy nonfiction books i have on my shelf.
2. learn php (slightly reframed from the original) - basically no progress. i have permission from the big boss to be learning on the clock since it's useful for my job, but i've been too busy with day-to-day to spare the time.... i have an online course and a textbook i like, i'm still just figuring out where to fit these in with regularity.
3. work a year on lesvn - i put it down in late december to let it simmer before i revise the start-to-end plot outline, and i have yet to pick it back up.... my greatest fear with lesvn has been losing the "spark"; putting it down at all was a poor move if i wanted to preserve motivation. i know i need a weekend to sit down for the big brainstorming-- i think i've just got to schedule it with myself and work up the mindset leading into it.
4. spend less time on social media - i'm oscillating wildly between spending useless hours on some inconsequential corner of twitter and making myself proud by passing time with a book instead. i think the habit is starting to wear off a bit though.... just a matter of time to keep replacing it.
5. draw!! - i've produced a few sticky note doodles and one colored gacha catalyst this month. i'm so out of practice that even my imagination feels rusty; i've felt like when i do come up with "visions", there isn't an itch to bring them into reality, which is kind of scary after that very thing being the basis of my life for so long.... progress can be slow, progress can be nonlinear.... i'll return to form someday.

a couple of my slumbering hobbies, learning japanese and guitar, saw mention in my daily journaling as things i yearned to do. i've accepted for a while now that these just won't happen with my current life; they require too much time and maintenance to see to a fruition that won't decay back to beginner level when i fall off for a few weeks. i'd like to put a pin in them for next year's goals if things go well this year-- though i'll have to choose one to focus on, as i don't think i can climb out of beginner hell with both at the same time.

and now what i've been into this month:

books

• prince's gambit / c.s. pacat - sequel of last month's captive prince. devoured this thing in one weekend. while i'm only a pinch into the third book of the trilogy now, i can easily say prince's gambit is my favorite of the three. the premise of the trilogy alone is enough to identify the author as coming from fanfic, and her having lived in tokyo really puts some icing on that-- but the fanfic-esque indulgence manages to be quite good and fun.
• frieren / yamada kanehito & abe tsukasa - the first two volumes were the assigned reading for this month's book club. i read it using some manga app on fdroid that didn't clearly mark the division between volumes, so i accidentally blew past the end of vol 2 by almost 40 chapters and went "eh, fuck it" and read the entire rest of the manga. i wonder what the anime does to make early frieren so popular; i didn't start really enjoying it til later on. i don't intend to watch the anime until the goddess monument arc is covered.

games

• fire emblem heroes - i went broke a thousand times over trying to secure merges for my new years alts (ny!askr is now +10!) while remaining blissfully unaware that emblem byleth was just around the corner. his artwork is everything i wish cyl byleth had been.... i'm scraping up the funds to spark him by banner's end. also i missed two days of voting for cyl10.... elm is sooo not making top200 if i, no.1 elmfucker in the world, couldn't keep it together for a week.
• genshin impact - the big finale to the current story arc was a ton of fun. my brother and i were liveblogging to each other over discord, carefully checking each other's progress without spoiling and sliding between being 30 seconds to an hour apart as we went. i ended up spending some dottore funds on columbina because i really wanted access to the new lunar reactions; as of writing my half-built lunar crystallize team is racking up twice the dps as my fully invested kaeya team.... i'm thinking of using a little more dottore monies to grab varka's signature weapon for my razor. i've yet to break 40% on my tracker with all my here-and-there spendings....
• umamusume - i've been very casually playing uma since global's launch. my favorite is tachyon (no surprise there). the aforementioned gacha catalyst i drew was for fine motion, who i'd been coveting for some months because i think she's soooooo cute. managed to get her on my second to last pull :)

shows & movies

• umamusume: beginning of a new era - i had already watched this with my brother last month (seems i forgot it in december's review) and we liked it so much we had his friends watch it in our hotel room during the convention. super cool movie with satisfyingly good animation; it treats itself cinematically instead of just a movie-length anime thing. i've been trying to weasel it in front of the eyes of everyone else i know.
• nope (2022) - the bestie and i have a list of movies to watch together when the mood strikes, and this was next up. such an awesome film, and not as scary as i'd feared for the past few years of putting it off. another cool movie with horses i want everyone to watch.
• the italian job (1969) - my brother, a car nerd, had me watch both versions some years ago, and i remembered mildly enjoying them so i put the older one on the list. it didn't age well; my bestie opined that it felt uncertain where it was trying to be funny. i still liked the car chase sequence.
• neon genesis evangelion - i've had a specific recommended torrent bookmarked for literal years and finally got the impetus (i tried getting my other brother to watch the uma movie and he told me he'd think about it if i watched nge). i appreciate how direct it is that having children pilot war mechs is really fucked up. "well unfortunately we have to let the fourteen year olds do it" still waiting on an explanation for this ritsuko

music

• [redacted] - i'm not sure what led me to continuously anonymize this particular thing on my site, but i'll persist until i feel sure i want to share it. after the livestream, i got back into listening again, and a couple songs in the latest batch really caught my ear. it made me realize i hadn't really been listening to much music at all lately, and getting back into it has helped me regain my momentum in the latter half of the month. i'm going to miss them.

i can't find it now, but there's this thing about a "creative cycle" for artists wherein you shift between two phases of either "cooking" (creative high) or "eating" (reading/watching/etc other's works, gathering inspiration). i think i'm definitely in the eating phase considering the bigger list of media this month and the tragic neglect of lesvn. it's never good to force oneself if one isn't ready, but i think i've now spent enough time resting that i should start reinitiating the creative phase.

so next month my goals will be to keep up my momentum and shift back into lesvn mode. new month new me.... (1/12)