Awww shieeeee I’m here! Happy 2023! 💃🏻

I’m just a little bit excited for the new year because even though I don’t do anything specific with regards to goals, I love a bit of a fresh slate. I can’t deny that. Last year was a weird one, lots of unfortunate things happened around the world and for many people it was extremely tough. It felt strange in that it felt like another repeat of 2020—like when’s it gonna end, y’all?

I got my second COVID booster shot just before the end of last year (fourth shot overall), so checking that one off the list. With regards to health, after what felt like a month of eating a lot of decadent food, I’ve been making conscious choices to avoid eating too much food that doesn’t agree with my body or that I don’t even enjoy. It’s different for everyone, but small things like eating a little less bread (or selecting gluten-free bread), balancing my meals throughout the day to contain more vegetables, picking up a piece of fruit as a snack, and just having a little less of those calorie-dense foods—but not cutting them out completely—has me overall feeling a lot better. I distinctly remember having a period of time last year where I was just feeling bloated and gassy AF, and eating less processed and more nutritious foods really helped.

A tiny change is the way I’ve been writing em dashes—these ones surrounding this phrase—although acceptable, I was previously surrounding the dash with spaces, but my now preferred way of typing out that piece of punctuation is without the spaces. I’ll be doing that from now on, although my older posts will remain as they are. I’m not about to do a find-and-replace across my entire database… also, if you know me, I’m a counter-stereotype, or just plain weird, and automation freaks me out (despite being a software engineer, I know), and I don’t often trust myself to run find-and-replace correctly, and I’ve also screwed up my mySQL database enough times to just want to stay away from that shit. 😆

Moving on from that absolutely nerdy tangent, and returning back to health: I’ve been staying fit by focusing on powerlifting at the gym. My personal trainer has been coaching me well! I’m on a short peak program and then we’re going to strength test in a couple of weeks. I’m hoping I’ll exceed my numbers of 75kg squat, 45kg bench, and 100kg deadlift. 🤞🏼

Since I’ve started skateboarding, I’ve improved a little in that I feel a lot more confident on the board, just coasting along. I’m still not itching to try any tricks or anything too complex, my goal is still just to be more comfortable on the board and be able to travel at least a little bit with it. I’m still enjoying it. I’m trying not to force myself to practice, for fear it will simply become one of those hobbies that feels like a chore. I have been wearing my skate shoes casually as well, which I think in combination with getting a sports massage last month, has improved my foot strength and stability. I’m feeling less like I need my orthotics as often, and my feet generally just feel like they’re in far better health than they used to be. I’m also ditching most of my pointed-toe shoes to allow my toes to splay a bit more naturally, or at least be under less stress. 🦶🏼

Identify and demolish my toxic traits

Although I’m not doing specific resolutions or goals, going ahead this year, one of the main things I want to work on is being punctual, maybe even being early. 🫣 It’s something we’ve joked about in our family, that traffic in Jakarta and Java in general has meant that being late is kind of in our blood. But I refuse to let this be the case! Too many times I’ve rushed to make an appointment or to get somewhere, and now that my mental health is in a better place than it was ten years ago, it becomes scathingly obvious when rushing to be somewhere causes stress. I really don’t like it! I’ve tried to also adopt the mindset that being late is quite literally not the end of the world, and the repercussions are usually quite small in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t make it OK to be late. I want to make sure I’m respecting other people’s time, as well as not stressing myself out. Recently I’ve almost been rushing to be early… which is funny, when you think about it. But I’m going to accept that it takes me longer to get ready than my current time estimate, then give myself that time, and make sure I’m a little early to appointments and events instead of being late and being in a rush.

I’m always prioritising my mental health, but I vow to do better at dealing with situations where I exhibit toxic traits. I’ve recently been discussing with my friend Pauline every time I identify a toxic trait or when I’m saying things like, “Why do I do this?” or “Why am I like this?” and she does the same. My toxic traits are mostly to do with overworking myself and feeling guilty that I owe people my time or energy, even when some people might not be deserving of that, or it is simply irrational. They also relate to, quite plainly, symptoms of hustle culture, which, when I think about it, is entirely hypocritical because I am anti-hustle culture. 😰 So I want to catch myself when I am working late hours, responding to work messages outside of hours, or even just feeling immense guilt over not working on my personal projects.

I did have a little joke about this on Twitter this morning, tweeting a happy new year but with an empty inbox screenshot, hinting at my almost-obsession with reaching Inbox Zero. I kid, I kid—I stay on top of my inbox, and it is a personal choice. I’m not out there berating anyone who has thousands of unread emails.

#blogeverydamnday

Although I don’t want to give myself shit for not spending time on my blog, I do really, really want to reconnect with it. I am not dependent on social media, but social media makes it easy to post and share, and that kind of stuff wasn’t around when I first started blogging. Myself and other bloggers spent time on our personal online spaces, connecting with each other and reading each other’s posts. I miss feeling more connected with my blog like I used to be, so I propose that this January, I am going to try and blog every day.

It might be a little tough and I really don’t want to call it a “challenge” per se, but that seems like the most appropriate word at the moment. I want to embrace whatever imperfect words I write, or the simple photos I might post, or the random things I might ramble about, or the things on my mind. Writing weeknotes for a year really encouraged me to do that, but I want to take another step. 💙 I have a holiday planned at the end of the month, so that might make it more challenging, but I don’t want to let it get in the way. I want to give this a solid effort. Really put aside the time, and put in the time, to write. Heck, these posts could even be partially written before they are published. But I promise, I won’t backdate stuff. A decade ago, I would have “cheated” by backdating—no judgement if you do this, by the way—but the point is that I want to try and write regularly.

This was inspired in part by yoga teacher and body positivity advocate Jessamyn Stanley, who started challenging herself to practice a yoga posture every single day and posted it on her Instagram account. She identified that yoga practice made her feel good, but she needed to establish a daily practice. She tagged this as #yogaeverydamnday. I used to do yoga and I’m not that much into it anymore, but I respect and commend people who do it. And I love Jessamyn’s narration in general—her voice is so soothing!—that I was liked watching her videos even though I didn’t feel compelled to participate. But I did like the tag #yogaeverydamnday, and so I’m going ahead with #blogeverydamnday.

I think if it goes well, I might be up for trying this at other months in the year, for sure. I fully accept whatever I end up writing. I think I’ll still write about my personal style, and travel, and weeknotes are still going to be a thing, but it’ll be like… daynotes? Whatever. 🤪 Overall, I would say, don’t have any expectations of my writing, really, other than me being my usual self. I look forward to really giving this a shot. 🎊