Words of January || A Start and an End

January was how I expected it to be.

It was busy because of many things that I had planned and spontaneous things popped up as well. The overall vibe and pace of the month were how I expected it to be. January was so full that I started writing parts of this post in advance to have time to write all that I want to.

Settle down and be comfortable because this is going to take a while.

reading

My reading in January is usually good. I always start the year excited to read a lot and with many plans. I read 13 books but it was a subpar reading month in terms of enjoyment. There were a variety of books and I only kinda enjoyed most of them.

January saw me reading at least three books at once in different formats. I read 3 paperbacks, 8 ebooks, and 2 audiobooks. Yes! I got back to audiobooks! I listened to them during my commutes a lot and was able to finish a couple. One book was a reread.

I enjoyed Storygraph's January pages challenge last year and participated in it this time as well. The goal is to read at least one page a day. I wasn't able to finish it but I had a good time. I think I read 25/31 days which is good enough.

War & Peace was not picked up at all. It was gathering dust, honestly. I kept it in my shelf at the end of the month because I knew that I won't be reading it soon. I'm pausing War & Peace for a while. I've got other priorities right now and will go back to it when I can.

Bound & Tide by A.K. Caggiano was the first book I finished this year. It's a chill fantasy romance that I heard as an audiobook. The main character grew on me over time because he's a cinnamon roll underneath the vain and rude veneer he puts on. It had some stakes but felt low stakes because the characters did mundane things most of the time. It was a nice book.

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang. After several months of being on my TBR, I finally picked it up in the last week of 2024 and finished it a few days into 2025. I wasn't enjoying it much until halfway and then it picked up. I loved the story by the end. Could it have been better in some aspects? Yes. But it's a solid book for a standalone that's supposed to be a spin-off of another story. Check out my full review here.

Ahalya by Koral Dasgupta. This is a retelling of the story of an Indian diety, the first in The Sati Series. Two of my friends really loved the book (one of them wrote a thesis on the last book of the series) but I didn't enjoy it that much. Maybe it's because I wasn't connected to her story before the book or my faith in the dieties is not strong. The writing style wasn't my thing. There were many things to be read "in between the lines" that I did not get. I ended it knowing that this series is not my thing. I tried reading the next book but DNFed it.

A Five Letter Word for Love by Amy James. This was another audiobook read. This was nice and annoying at the same time. Pretty much every aspect of it was nice and cringe. I liked that it was based on Wordle but I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to. There was one thing towards the end that I hated. I'll write a full review on this soon.

Heartbreak for Two by C.W. Farnsworth. Finally, a romance book where the woman is the pop star. This felt like any other pop star story, though. The angst, the "what could have been", the insecurities, and the miscommunication were all familiar. It was fairly enjoyable but there was nothing new in the story. I've decided that stories with popular musicians will never be my fav.

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallager. I'm trying to read more books from my TBR and this was one of them. I expected to get at least some helpful advice or actions items from this but got nothing. It was 250 pages of research and facts while also saying that there's not enough research to go deeper and know how to improve attention. This was actually my bedtime read and it put me to sleep very nicely for a couple of weeks. Ironic that I used a book on attention to put me to sleep.

See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon. My friends and I wanted to read more books together this year and this was the first choice. It was nice enough but quite repetitive and I didn't care about the characters much. I liked the concept, the characters and execution could have been better. It was boring at times. The part at the end where they found their way out didn't make sense to me. Overall, meh.

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black. I enjoyed The Cruel Prince series and borrowed this from a friend expecting to enjoy it. I did not. The main character's struggles and growth was nice but I didn't like her love interest or any of the supporting characters. The charm and charisma that The Cruel Prince's leads had is missing in this book. I had to kinda force myself to read the book in the second half. I won't be continuing with the series.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom was a random pick from the bookstore and I loved it. I've heard of it but didn't know what it was about before starting it. It was so good! I loved the nuggets of wisdom. Morrie seemed like a force of nature and it was so nice to see people loving him and enjoying his company. It made me tear up multiple times. I understand why it's popular.

Cruel Winter With You by Ali Hazelwood was on Kindle Unlimited so I read it. It's only 73 pages so there wasn't much scope for depth in anything. The characters were okay. The romance is meant to be slow burn over years which suddenly took off at the end but it didn't feel like it because of the pacing. I hated how the book started with a few pages in present day and randomly took us through the past 25 years over several chapters. This novella is nowhere close to The Exception to the Rule.

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone was a random pick because I saw someone talking about it. I didn't enjoy it. The characters were super weird in the beginning and I didn't like them throughout the book. The plot was quite meh and character growth was supposed to be a lot but didn't feel like much. There was no third act breakup only because the couple started dating at 75% of the book. I was happy to be done at the end.

The Answer is No by Fredrik Backman. This was a short book on a few things about society. Featuring a man who prefers to live alone and be happy without influence of others' in his life, the book shows a few different aspects about society through a littering issue in his apartment. It's interesting and witty.

My reading was great in the first half of the month and then it slowed down because other parts of my life picked up. Several days passed by before I realised that I haven't read anything in a while. But it's okay, life takes over sometimes. I read whenever I could.

blogging

I kept up with it! That's my main goal nowadays haha. I posted 4 times in January and even wrote a few posts for February in advance because I don't know if I'll have time to blog then.

It's been a whole year since I've been blogging consistently and the schedule I've maintained seems to be working great for me. Posting once in 8 days is often enough but not so often that it'll put a strain on me. I'm going to keep the schedule until it doesn't work.

In case you missed them:

• Words of December || Wrap-up
• Chapters of 2024 || hobbies, travel, social life, and more
• My Newsletter Journey || How I started, Learnings, & Looking Ahead
• The Sword of Kaigen || Book Review

I meant to post two book reviews as usual but the newsletter post was written instead. If you haven't read the post, I moved my newsletter from ConvertKit to Substack! It's been a month of getting used to the platform and making mistakes (sending a newsletter without proper formatting, sending my February newsletter 2 days early because I missed to select the schedule option while editing) but it'll get better. I'm excited to see what I can do with the platform.

January was a good month because not only did I write a lot on the blog and the newsletter, I also got a bunch of new ideas. I have two ideas that I really want to write soon not including the ones I already planned for the next couple of months. It's an amazing feeling to have more ideas than time to write them.

It was a great month in stats as well! I expected an uptick in stats in December like every year previously which did not happen. However, there was an uptick in January in line with the pattern from previous years. This blog got 13k views in January! That is 3k more than what the blog was getting in the last months of 2024.

In 2025, I'm considering trying to work on multiple drafts at once. My usual style is having many notes but once I start writing on the WordPress editor, I finish the current post before starting another one. But lately, I've been wanting to write on posts based on my current motivation or mood.

It can be good to work on a post over time and come back to it whenever I have something on my mind. I know friends who do this (mainly Clo). It might or might not work for me but I won't know until I try.

Grammarly tagged me as "The Enthusiast" in 2023 and "The Inventor" in 2024. I love the description:

If coming up with ideas were a sport, you’d be the reigning champion. The Inventor has a wealth of ingenuity and inspiration that often shows up in their writing. Their creative thoughts, open-minded approach, and natural curiosity make them an asset to any team.

This sounds more like a professional pitch and quite close to what my colleagues said about me recently haha. It's true, though. I came up with so many random ideas (like My Life in Beverages) in 2024 and I'm looking forward to write more intriguing posts in 2025!

Until I post the ones in my notes, check out a couple of my older posts that I'm proud of:

• A Year With an Apple Watch
• I Hope This Doesn't Find You by Ann Liang || Book Review

content consumed

Blog Posts

• Riza's 2024 wrap up & 2025 goals.
• Yesha's 2024 Reading and Blogging Reflections.
• Erin's in the company of solitude.
• Naemi's 2024 wrap up which was as chaotic as her life.

Newsletters

After moving to Substack, I've been reading a lot of long-form content there too. I wish there was an "Explore" option to find more articles without scrolling through short Notes to find them, though.

• Rose's AI is not a toy if you kill me with it.
• Womanhood is the process of understanding your mother which I LOVED.
• Longing for a time we never knew.
• Life in the 10-minute delivery city i.e. Bangalore.
• Blake Lively and Amber Heard: When history repeats itself before we learn our lesson.
• In the restful houses of women who live alone.
• The Ugly Truth About Spotify is Finally Revealed.
• Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? is a brilliant article.
• What is Creator Gravity?
• I've already seen a video on Barnes & Noble's turnaround recently but this article on B&N is really good too.

YouTube Videos

• A few years late but I loved this documentary of BTS and Coldplay making My Universe together.

life

January was a full month. Maybe it's because everyone's enthusiastic about the new year and their goals or because all the business take off again, the energy is buzzing. I didn't set any goals this time but I couldn't help but be affected by the energy and live life on super charge.

Firstly, I have to talk about planning. I used a digital planner every day and it was great. It reminded me of my bullet journalling days but easier because the templates are already made and I can flip to different pages through hyperlinks. The planner I bought has a section for notes in each day's template which I used for adding pictures from the day and short journalling.

Since I was planning, I made weekly and monthly goals which allowed me to do much more than I expected in the month. I may not have gotten everything done and may have procrastinated for weeks on something but I got a lot done. I love looking at the final pages because it shows how full my month was.

Whatever is on the calendar are the planned things. There were some unplanned/spontaneous events as well. I had such a great time with so many friends. My social energy was so low one weekend that I didn't go to meet friends one day. I needed rest.

A few of us went to Mangalore for a friend's engagement ceremony and made a quick weekend trip out of it. We barely slept and made the most out of those two days. We drove about 400 kilometres! Well, one of my friends did because the rest of us aren't very familiar with driving a car.

My friends introduced me to The Local Train (a Hindi rock band) in the Nainital and Mangalore trips. I became obsessed with their songs and listened to their discography on repeat for about 10 days. My favourite songs are Dil Mere, Choo Lo, Aaoge Tum Kabhi, and Khudi.

I journalled a ton in January. I believe I wrote about 100 pages. Each time I journalled, I wrote 3-4 pages easily. I wrote almost every day too because I had so many thoughts and memories to document. My notebook is filled with memories and heartfelt thoughts. I'm looking forward to reading it several years later and reminiscing these days.

January was my last month at work. It was my first job and leaving was sooo emotional. Even though it was tough at times, I kind of got comfortable there because I knew the people, the processes, and the work. But it's time to move on. There's a lot to say about my experience there but I already journalled a ton and my emotions are a bit wrung dry so I won't say much now. Just that I'm sad to not see my friends at work in February and that I'm excited for the next chapter. I wrote more about leaving here.

chat with me!

How was your January? Did you set any goals or new routines? What did you read/watch? Did you go to any event or on a trip?