Digital Minimalism

January felt like 20 years and February felt like 2 days. 2026, explain

新年快乐 (Happy New Year) to those who celebrate Chinese New Year! 🔥🐴 The celebrations have been really spread out in town, but I've chosen to go to one on on the 1st in Decatur, since I know I can get vegan food from some of the vendors, and it's super easily accessible by MARTA.

( Drag shows and drag fandom )

Things I Read That I Liked

I read Black Water Sister by Zen Cho (which also got me up to four Asian authors in my "read 10 books by new-to-me Asian authors goal). I really enjoyed it. It gets really heavy about misogyny and sexual violence, especially at the end, but I loved the gods, and I really loved the dialogue. I don't know Hokkien but I am learning Mandarin and have a good sense of basic grammar, so it was pretty neat to see the grammar written out from the narrator's family rather than just using standard English translations. I think it's a fun and effective way to give certain vibes when you're writing mainly in one language but the characters are speaking different languages and dialects.

I also finally finished Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil and I really loved every single second of Sabine's point of view but didn't care much for the others. I support women's rights and women's wrongs. I am always gonna love the villain more than the hero, I dunno what else to tell you. I understand why this book was recommended to me by so many of my friends, because it really was right up my alley. I unfortunately disliked the ending, which brought it down a star on Storygraph for me, but it didn't ruin the whole book for me.

February Concert Zone

I saw Meet Me @ The Altar, who are SO FUN. The lead singer sounds better live than she does in the studio tracks, imo. Incredible stage energy, and the crowd was really great. It might also have been the most diverse crowd I've ever seen at an alt rock show, which is killer, absolutely love to see that. Their first opener is a local artist named Caroline Reilly, and I really, really liked her, enough to follow her on Instagram to see when she has any upcoming gigs.

My random kpop show of the month was All(H)Ours and I thought they were pretty good! They didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking for me, but definitely enjoyable. They land pretty much in the middle of the ranking of kpop groups I've seen live. My favorite song on the setlist was Psycho Mantra.

I just need Monsta X to announce North American tour dates. Please, boys, my crops are dying.

50 albums update

In my quest to listen to 50 albums this year, I listened to six new-to-me albums this month. You can see my top three songs from each one on this Spotify playlist. My favorite was WEEDKILLER by Ashnikko. I realized I was adding literally every song to the playlist, so I had to go back and curate my top three. Definitely going to listen to more of her!

( More album thoughts on Hilary Duff and QQQ )

Other Goals

I made progress on some miscellaneous 146 goals this month. Karaoke fell on Chinese New Year so I took the opportunity to sing Wu Ji and I'm proud to say I got every single word correct 😂. I've sung a total of 10 new songs at karaoke so far this year, so 40 more to go.

In my quest to quit soda, I've been trying out different brands of sparkling water, and most of them have been a miss (either too sweet/full of artificial sugar or have basically no taste whatsoever) but I was recommended the Spindrift brand, and I REALLY like the blood orange flavor I bought! Excited to try more flavors when I run out of this one. My kingdom for multi-packs of different flavors but my local grocery stores just don't carry them, apparently. I've also been recommended Liquid Death, so I might try those eventually too. I'm currently two months soda free, so we'll see how long I can keep the streak going.

I didn't write much this month, mostly because I just got very busy socially and on the days when I wasn't, I was honestly too wiped out to have thoughts.

I have a busy March ahead of me, but I'm hoping to get a little better at time and energy management. It's kind of a constant struggle, isn't it? I hope March treats you all well!