Monthly Digest, January 2025

The first month of the year has flown by, and I have the feeling that the next one will be as fast. Luckily, I'm still going strong with the Bullet Journal, and in that I now have another neat list of what I did in every day of the month, one line per day. It really helps me to see that actually, a lot has happened.

Life

In January, I added a single-line gratitude log on the next page after my single-line monthly overview. I know that it kind of became a cliche at this point, but it is really nice to have one, and if you don't have a gratitude log I highly recommend you start one. Reading it back now just gives warm feelings, but I also now notice things during the day, being more mindfully grateful for them in the moment they happen.

In general January was, kind of like last year, a month of reflection and trying to be more mindful. See also the section about reading, which I did (almost) every day of the month, most of the time in the metro to work. Having this daily check-in with a book about being mindful made me more mindful throughout the month.

As for what happened: lots of boardgames again, some pizza, some pasta, some improvisation theater. I also visited family more often, went to a storytelling evening in Mezrab, the PhD ceremony of a friend, and to the presentation of the new book of poetry by Wout Waanders.

Health

A lot of people have said this to me, but I finally did it: I went to the hospital for a new perspective on my foot, almost half a year after the fracture. The last one was five weeks after the fracture, and was basically: "go do what feels right, if you have pain, you should slow down, good luck." I still have pain, or at least discomfort, and I didn't really know what direction to go in anymore.

Turns out: the bone has healed fine, so it's probably mostly the muscles and ligaments that are painful now. So my hunch was correct: this is indeed pain I should ignore, maybe even seek out, in order to get on the other side of this. (I just didn't want to do that before seeing a doctor.)

The photo was last week, so I've been trying to stand on one leg a bit more, doing calf raises and stuff. In terms of pain nothing has changed much, but at least I have something I can work towards again.

Reading

I have finally finished reading The Name of The Wind, which is a thick book, but I also just didn't find the time for it, and now I did. It's a very unique take on the fantasy genre and I really liked it. I have already bought The Wise Man's Fear, aka "day 2", but since 722 pages took me six months to complete, I am kind of delaying my start of these 1107 pages.

I also have been reading a lot in Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, which is the book about mindfulness and self-compassion I mentioned in the 'Life' section. I have three more chapters to go, but I also want to focus more on actually practicing these things, instead of just buying the next book and hoping that that solves all my problems. But it's a good book.

Watching

I did omit this from the last Monthly Digest, but that was because I didn't watch any series or movies in December. In January, I allowed myself a bit of relaxing with this medium. I just have to be careful that I don't disappear in a series.

I (re)watched the first four episodes of De Geheimen van Barslet, a series made by the Dutch public broadcaster in 2012, but is now streaming on HBO. It was nice because I had mostly forgotten what happened, and I think it's a relatively good series for Dutch standards. I just didn't see the last three episodes again, so maybe that says that I am not really sold?

I watched Dune 2, which I probably should have (and certainly could have) watched in the cinema (I had a Cineville all year but just didn't go after May). I rewatched Tenet and this time I kind of understood what was going on in the movie. And I also rewatched Goodfellas, in the background while doing other stuff on a weird evening.

My favorite movie of the month is absolutely Triangle of Sadness, which is also a rewatch for me, but I liked it all the same as the first time. Somehow Henrique hates the movie – he told me several of his friends share this opinion – but I just have to disagree on this one.

To add to my list of rewatches: The White Lotus, both seasons, because a third is about to air next month. I am very curious what the new season will bring, because the first two are so good, but also in such different ways.

Intentions

My previous intentions of stretching have been working out, but the working out was a bit of a stretch this month. The healthy eating also didn't really happen (but I borrowed Ottolenghi's Simple and I looked inside of it twice). Let's just carry these over to the new month. And as previously mentioned: the reading part of the intentions went well.

For the next month I did write down a lot more intentions in my Bullet Journal. One that I want to share here, is that I want to do a daily check-in in mindfulness. The intention is to try to be more mindful during the day-to-day, but in order to get a checkmark on my day, I need to take a few minutes of silence, and in that pause, I want to check in with whatever I feel at that moment. Too often I just run around in life pressing down some feeling I have no time for. Like with the gratitude log: I hope that a daily check-in will improve my day-to-day relation to feelings too.