Words of December || Wrap-up

The last month of the year is always a mix of different things. December 2024 was no different for me.

It's not the most busy month but it's not a chill month either. There's so much going on with family, friends, and work. Then there's all the reminiscing and 2025 goal-setting. It's an accomplishment if we get anything done.

I have a lot to say so let's get to it!

words on books

I read 4 books in December which is the least compared to other months. This number should tell you how busy my month was 😂 I read 2 books at the beginning of the month then something happened and I didn't have time to read again until a vacation towards the end of the month.

2 were paperback books and 2 were ebooks. I read one of the ebooks on my new Raspberry Kindle Paperwhite and the reading experience was amazing. I absolutely love the new Kindle and read the book quite fast. The dark mode is so helpful for my eyes. I don't think I'll switch it back to light mode.

Five Survive by Holly Jackson. I honestly didn't like this much. The main character's brain was very hard to be in. Most of the suspense in the book was created because the main character's brain was scrambled. All the reveals were underwhelming and the ending was.. something. The only good thing was that I could read this in one sitting.

Girl, Goddess, Queen by Bea Fitzgerald. I absolutely loved this book! I expected romance and got that but the book delivered so much more. I loved how the Underworld was shaped by Persephone and Hades in this book. The story and characters were great. This was an all-rounder. Check out my full review to know more.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston. This was a vacation read that I started at the airport. It wasn't very interesting but it was a light-hearted read that kept me company. The premise was interesting but I didn't like the main characters much and hated the way the woman put herself down the entire time.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I borrowed the paperback from a friend and tried to finish it fast to return it to her. I liked Never Let Me Go but this was a strange book. I didn't hate anything but I didn't like anything either. It was honestly a little hard to get through the book.

With those 4 books, I read a total of 122 books in 2024! It's actually the least I read in a year since I started tracking my reads in 2015 but it is what it is. Although it's technically the least, I still read a ton of books so I'm not disappointed. There were some big books and hard books among them.

I made a bit of progress on War & Peace and am close to finishing 50% of it. I also started The Sword of Kaigen after hearing a LOT about it. The latter is also a chunky book that I probably could have started in 2025 but it's fine. I don't care about starting 2025 with new reads.

My friend convinced a few of us to get Fable. I still like Storygraph better because it has a website (I use it a lot on the laptop so Fable is inconvenient) and has dark mode. But I'm giving Fable a try, mainly because of the social aspect. I want to see what my friends are reading easily. If you're on Fable, add me - @thewordyhabitat!

words on blogging

I planned to post five times and I did. That's the main thing that I care about. I mentioned last month that I'm close to burnout and that I really wanted to post consistently to finish off the year without a break. It took some hard work and carving time out on several consecutive days, but I did it!

2024 was my first proper consistent blogging year since 2021. The hardest part was keeping it up in November and December along with everything else in life. I'm glad that I managed it.

I've always seen an increase in stats in December and January but it was surprisingly not the case this time. December actually got fewer views than the previous couple of months. I was intrigued about the earlier pattern and now I'm intrigued about the outlier.

In case you missed them, here are the December posts:

• Words of November || Wrap up
• Girl, Goddess, Queen by Bea Fitzgerald || Book Review
• Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez || Book Review
• My 2024 Favourites

I was about to write a post on the books I want to read in 2025 but I wasn't happy with the post idea. The day I was planning to write it, I saw Linh's video on her 2024 favourites and was inspired. Hence, I spent a day writing the 2024 favourites post and I love how it turned out.

Although I haven't started working on them yet, I have my January posts planned out. Of course, the plan is flexible, but it's nice to have a plan for whenever I'm floundering about what to write. I've kept the cadence and types of posts similar to 2024.

However, there will be times when I won't have a book review to write or another big post so I'm thinking of doing daily/weekly blogs. It will be a fun post and let me off the hook from posting proper blog posts. I'm not sure when or how often I'll do blogs though. It'll be a spontaneous thing.

Meanwhile, check out some of my older posts:

• My Best Book Recommendations
• My Personal Knowledge Management System as a Software Developer

content consumed

Blog Posts

• Maya posted a diary on her Bali trip.
• Sophie shared a scroll through her reading journey.
• Caro is hosting the Out of Comfort Zone challenge again in 2025!
• Vanya wrote about Bisgod, an abandoned mining town.
• Mehek shared things she learned through Blogtober.

YouTube Videos

• My friend Manjushree did a daily vlog series in December which was so cosy and fun.
• Linh made a super cool video on falling in love with making art again.
• Cath's guide to annotating is finally up.
• I watched some of Zoe Sugg's Vlogmas videos. Unfortunately, I didn't like Vlogmas as much as Vlogust. Probably because it's filled with Christmas things and I don't celebrate Christmas so that was too much for me to enjoy beyond a point. The videos were great, though.

TV Shows

• When The Phone Rings was the only show I watched in December. I started it after 4 episodes were out when everyone was talking about it online. I immediately got hooked on it and have been watching new episodes as they are released. My friend and I even watched episodes 9 and 10 together and spent a lot of time guessing things and talking about theories. It has been fun.

life

The highlight of the month was my Nainital trip. There were supposed to be 6 people on the trip but 2 had to drop out due to different reasons. So it was only 4 of us who finally went but we had a lot of fun.

We took a really nice 3-bedroom Airbnb in Bhimtal for the entire duration and we loved it. The stay was so good. The rooms were well done, the living room space was great to hang out, and there was a patio space big enough for 10 people which had a great view of the mountains.

I was the first one to wake up on most days so I spent alone time on the patio with a new ep of When The Phone Rings or with a book. My friends and I stayed up until late every night to play games and have midnight coffee. We played so much and had a lot of fun.

Almost all the food that we ate was really good. There were great cafes in Bhimtal and good restaurants in other places. I would have come back heavier but workouts were included in our daily routines so I actually lost a bit of weight.

Uttarakhand is filled with steep slopes. Our stay was only a couple of levels up but the road was at a 45-degree angle which made the walk like a hike. Our driver didn't want to drive up that steep slope so we climbed up on most days and we'd burn the calories from our dinner in that 10-minute walk 😂

Although it was a 5-day trip, we spent only 3 nights in Bhimtal. The travel time to and from there was pretty long. We took a flight to Delhi and a bus from there. The return journey was shorter because there was zero free time between our train and flight.

We thought that maybe we should have kept the trip for longer because 3 and a half days isn't much. But it turned out to be perfect. There wasn't much to see beyond 3 days. The last half day was like a bonus where we visited one extra place that wasn't a must-see and killed the few hours before our train playing games in a cafe.

I'm usually not the person who pushes for taking a lot of photos but I tried to be in this trip because otherwise we wouldn't have taken as many photos. I made sure to take an outfit photo with my friend every morning and at least one group photo with the scenery before we headed out for the day.

Nainital is the coldest place I've been to so far. We expected to see snow but it snowed a few days before we arrived and a day after we left so we didn't see any. However, we did experience the cold. It was so cold and I was wearing gloves every night before reaching back to our stay.

I took a cold shower when it was 6 degrees Celcius in Pangong, Ladakh but didn't expect the same in Bhimtal. It was like 5 degrees and unfortunately, our water geyser did not work because the power went out and the house was running on an inverter. I didn't know it when I went to take a shower! So I had to deal with freezing water at 8 am. It had to happen the one day I wanted to wash my hair. Thankfully, I didn't fall sick.

December was also a busy month of meeting friends and trying to be productive before half the office goes on leave. We don't get the last two weeks off so we have to take PTO ourselves. I took it for a few days for the trip and on the last two days of the year. When I went to the office on the 26th, there were a whole 6 people including me 😂

Two of my friends are back in India for vacation so we've been meeting a lot. We met at a friend's house one of the times and spent the day playing games. The game of Ticket to Ride took 30 minutes to understand and 2 hours to play. My friend and I who got teamed up were lagging for the entire game but surprisingly won at the end because of how much we struggled. It was fun. I like playing games with friends as hangouts instead of going to pubs etc.

Another friend invited us to her place for a Christmas get-together which was fun. Her place was decked up and she made cookies. We watched Home Alone 2 and spoke a lot.

My birthday was really nice. I started it with a light run. Later, I met my close friends, received cute gifts, and had a lovely day. I welcomed my 27th year with my favourite people <3

There was one other highlight in December which rounded off the year well but I'll speak more about it later when it's in motion. My life's about to change a whole lot.

My organization system worked well until now but I realized that it was not enough considering a few things and especially wouldn't be enough with the changes coming. I considered a physical planner after seeing my friend's but all the ones I saw wouldn't be very functional for me. I like flexibility and they're not it.

I tried bullet journalling again after 4 years. I did it for a couple of weeks in December. Although it was better, it still wasn't as good. I don't like spending time on making spreads anymore. I don't have that much time or patience, I'd rather spend it blogging or on another hobby.

Finally, I decided to use a digital planner! The idea came when I saw Amanda RachLee's digital planner for 2025. It was really cute and I almost bought it but decided to research a bit more. I found other planners that I liked better and finally decided on a minimalistic one from Haus of Planner.

Haus of Planner's 2025 planner came with a mini December 2024 planner so I could also try out digital planning immediately. It took a bit for me to get used to it but I like it so far! I used it for the last 2 weeks of December. I'm glad that I could try it immediately while my motivation was high instead of waiting till 2025.

I'll let you know all of my thoughts on digital planning after using it for a while. There's still a lot for me to try out. I hope it helps me keep up with everything.

how was your december?

What did you do for the holidays? Did you go anywhere on a trip? Did you meet friends or family? What did you read in the last month of the year? Tell me in the comments!