2023 January recap

“I’ll stick to the recaps as well. And hopefully some improvements to this website will come (coding is also writing, after all) for a better reading and writing experience!”

Well, it turns out I’m already procrastinating this. I keep thinking that maybe I need a format/template to make it easy to get these done, but I don’t really want to spend time trying to figure that out, so I’m gonna try writing lists:

• I had friends visiting from Brazil for a week in January and it was super nice! They were our first sleeping guests in the new apartment and said our place is very heartwarming, which made us very proud! It was also nice to explore different parts of Berlin with new eyes after not doing much of that during the pandemic.
• I signed up for the half marathon on inline skates. Partly willingly, partly out of pressure. I actually wanted to do the 10k first, but no one was allowed to leave the dining table until I pressed the button.
• The very next day, my body crumbled. I’ve had some form of untreated hip pain for around 10 years now and I guess that button also triggered some desperate reaction in my body. I was in pain for a week and it was horrible. I’m loving physiotherapy now but need to find other ways to move more often.
• Related to this, I’ve been looking for a used Herman Miller office chair for some time now as I need to be convinced these chairs are actually worth the money they cost. This month I was lucky to find a Mirra One in a decent state for €50 on ebay! Will report back once I’m fully adapted.
• This article about how Netflix influenced the blandness of our visual experiences in recent years.
• Two movies that stuck with me this month were Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022) and Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022). I must admit it took me some screen time to understand what the hype around Aftersun was all about, but the “Under Pressure” scene broke me in pieces in a way that made everything else fall into place.
• I’ve read, and loved, Bluets, by Maggie Nelson, and I was happy to discover Ted Chiang has another collection of short stories, Exhalation, which I’m currently reading.
• And yes, I’m watching The Last Of Us, like pretty much everyone else right now.

And that’s it for January! I’ll leave you with this amazing video about February for now. Until next time!

Written on a Friday in February, 2023