I’m not 100% sure I’ll do monthly reviews all year, but so much has been going on that I thought it might be good to wrap it all up at least for now! Not in so much detail as I used to do, though.

• Tarot of the month (full year, month by month, drawn Dec 2025): Temperance – Moderation, balance, doing things but not doing too much – in context of January, this card is telling me to ease into things, as I tend to go overboard in January // This version of Temperance comes from the Divine Feminine Tarot Deck. (not an affiliate link)
• Song(s) of the month: Atlantic (Sleep Token); Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden)

General Life Stuff
January is always a goal-heavy month for me, where I try to Do All The Things and end up running myself into the ground, as I said above. This year, despite my tarot of the month being Temperance, I’m not so good at the listening to wisdom thing, and I still managed to play headless chicken for awhile. In some ways, that led to a lot of productivity. Applied to a billion jobs (still no hits, boo), read 15 books/fics, watched Love is Blind: Germany with my partner (in German!), found a new therapist, visited a few new-to-me places in town, exercised more than I’ve been doing in awhile, made a new friend, and used my camera far more often than I have been. It was the reading, really, that drove me into the ground. Especially on my fics-to-read list, I was spending too much time reading things just to cross them off the list, not because I was enjoying them. More on this in tomorrow’s post, but I have felt better since I slowed down. Temperance, indeed.

Then, to really drive a spike into the month at the last second, I got notice today that my ex no longer plans to keep the house and the cats like he’s been saying over the last nine months. I cannot afford to keep them, especially without a job, so I have to begin the process of rehoming these babies, some of whom have been with me their entire lives. Two of them are 11 years old. I’m devastated, and I wish I’d had forewarning months ago, but honestly this is so in keeping with everything that has happened since April that it’s not surprising. I’ve been waiting for this news since the vet made that accidental phone call to me in November… I knew I was going to miss them after all of this, and I’d made my peace with that, but it’s harder to know these poor creatures are losing pretty much the only home they’ve ever known. It’s breaking my heart. I only got the news tonight (the 31st) and I haven’t stopped crying since.

Goals
Most of the progress made this month was on my book/fic priorities lists. In the end, I read/culled 10 of 28 books and 20 of 32 fics. More have been added since the 1st, of course, but those don’t count toward my goals. I’ve continued to study German, aaaaand that’s about it. Heh. To be fair, though, I wasn’t exactly working on my goals this month, outside of reading. I spent a lot more time on fitness (no goals made) and career stuff (same).

Writing
I’m currently struggling to settle into a project for the first time in about 18 months, and even then, it was only about a month of struggle. This is frustrating and I hope I can get over the hump soon.

Favorite Photos

Exciting stuff
I used to create a list of highlights for the month in these wrap-up posts, but since I decided on Jan 30th to write this, I hadn’t exactly tracked highlights. Instead, I’m just going to list out a few of the really cool things that happened in January. Experiencing Elsewhere with my friend Stephanie, where we had dinner and absolutely scrummy cookies, and I took really phenomenal up-close photos of sparrows (see above!). Discovering my twin-from-another-parent through fic comment exchanges, and the two of us realizing just how many braincells we share in addition to age, life experiences, communication styles, and more. The GO Prime accounts began to tease the fandom with promotional stuff, meaning we’re going to get more information soon, and the fandom collectively lost its mind more than once.

That’s about it for January.