A January Ramble

An entire month of the new year has passed and in some ways, it has been easy to settle into this new year. I’ve (mostly) written the dates with 2024 instead of 2023; I’ve started a new bullet journal, Bible notebook, and budget notebook for the year; I’ve made goals and to-do lists and lists of maybes.

I’ve even attempted to pick up with my reading journal again, since I apparently abandoned it much earlier in 2023 than I thought. (I spent the year thinking I stopped keeping track of my reading sometime in the spring, but the journal pages suggest I gave up sometimes in January. Oops.)

While I love the idea of a Word of the Year, I don’t have one. In recent years, I’ve had a quote or a Bible verse that stood out as something to keep in mind over the course of a year. I don’t have one of those those either. 

For the most part, my approach to 2024 has been more about taking my time and not trying to rush through getting a headstart on all the things to come. January tends to be one of the more challenging months with my anxiety, but so far it has been easier than expected.

That isn’t to say the month hasn’t had its challenges, or that I’m expecting the year to not have any challenges. There are several changes that I want (or need) to make in 2024, and some of those processes are already started. As a creature of habit and comfort zones, I’m not entirely looking forward to it.

But I’m also trying to be optimistic and hopeful, because I know what it is to be stuck in the same patterns and how difficult that can be too.

Usually, this would be the day I post a monthly recap here on the blog. I like having the recaps to look back on, to reminisce about certain moments or reflect on things. But I don’t really have anything much to recap in the way that I usually do. And I’ve also been thinking about maybe not doing monthly blog recaps on the blog. I do want to get better about posting here and maintaining this space, because blogging used to be one of my favorite parts about the internet! But I guess I’m still figuring out how I want to go about that. It’s a thought process I’m working through with other social media as well.

A lot of my approach to this year includes reevaluation, which isn’t a bad thing, but I am still in that part of the reevaluation that is a lot of wandering and wondering.

And all of this is really just a long way of saying that I can’t believe we’re at the end of January already, and that I’m grateful for it and looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year holds. 😅

What has been your approach to the new year so far?