January 2026 Breakdown

Well, friends, 2026 is off to a wild start, isn’t it? I think a lot of us are tired and pissed off as we’ve been watching the recent events unfold in Minnesota and watching as the narrative gets changed right in front of our eyes. It’s almost as if the dystopian novels clocked it…

The past few weeks have been anxiety-inducing, especially as a person of color in the US. Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m walking around (well, that’s been the case since November 2024 really, so it’s just a bigger feeling now) with a target on my back as a person of color even though I’ve basically never stepped one foot out of Missouri. I know I joke around sometimes with the dog on fire or dumpster fire meme but it’s definitely not fine out here.

Anyway, I’m tired and surviving and still kicking. The horrors persist, but as do I. January felt like a repeat of December, only without the sickness. It felt like I was trying to catch up on everything I wanted to do in December but didn’t get to do.

Did I catch up on all the things amidst the horrors that continuously persist, though? Let’s find out.

January Musings

• [6 Jan] December 2025 Breakdown
• [16 Jan] 2025 Blogging Stats Transparency Post
• [20 Jan] 2025 Look Back + 2026 Aspirations
• [30 Jan] Dreamslinger by Graci Kim ★★★★

Book Hauls and Reading

I got quite a few books in January: 1 was from Booktrovert, 2 were intentional purchases, and the rest were bargain/Dollar Tree finds. I decided for 2026 I want to do a low buy year, so there’s a tiny budget I allocated for bargain finds. I’ve gotten pretty good (or at least, I would like to think so*) at being more intentional about what I buy from those since the costs eventually add up – plus having a budget forces me to think about if I really want to read it/search for reviews from friends.

*Certainly better than stationery.

But anyways, back to book hauls and reading from the month!

The first book I got was A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang, which was absolutely surprising to find the special edition in a bargain bin. I’ve not read any of Liang’s works, but I do have a few books on my TBR and a few of my friends also enjoy her works a lot or enjoyed this one specifically, so I’d like to think I’ll enjoy this one when I get around to it. That being said, if I don’t enjoy it, at least I can pass it on to the next person who will enjoy it.

The other two books I also got at Dollar Tree were A Venom Dark and Sweet by Judy I. Lin and Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling by Elise Bryant, both of which also seemed interesting. A Venom Dark and Sweet is a sequel, but one of my closest friends (who also has a very similar reading taste to mine) has read this series and enjoyed it a lot, so that was definitely a deciding factor in the purchase. Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling hasn’t been read by anyone I know, so it was more of an “on a whim” purchase that I feel I’ll enjoy.

The two books I got intentionally were Elise Kova’s Dragon Cursed and Arcana Academy. I got a copy of the former as an ARC late last year and it was my first read of the year that I absolutely devoured, so I wanted to get my own copy as well. I’ve been eyeing the latter since it came out and have peeked at a few pages when a copy comes across my path, so after enjoying Dragon Cursed so much, I’m fairly certain I’ll enjoy Arcana Academy just as much.

The last book I got was The Aftermyth by Tracy Wolff. I read Crave and DNFed it, so it likely means I might not enjoy this one or even DNF it as well, but I feel like one book isn’t enough for me to write off an author completely. Here’s hoping this one goes well for me, but if not at least it was free and doesn’t hurt my wallet. 🤪

As for reading, January was a fairly good reading month, though I did stop reading the last week and a half of the month in favor of playing Palia. I’ve read 12 books in total, 4 of which were novels and the rest graphic novels.

What I’ve been Reading:

• Dragon Cursed by Elise Kova – I’m super excited for the adaptation that was recently announced for this!
• Dreamslinger by Graci Kim
• Homebody by Theo Parish – I really just loved the color palette used here.
• Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen
• The Legendary Mo Seto by A.Y. Chen
• Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand and Tara Anand
• Float Vol. 1 by Kate Marchant
• Tripping Over You Vol. 1 by Suzana Harcum
• This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki
• Girl, Goddess, Queen by Bea Fitzgerald
• Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol
• The Lost Heirs by Sam Prentice-Jones

I spent so much time playing Palia that uhhhhh everything else media wise kind of fell on the wayside… so this section is probably the shortest of the post.

Music

• Panorama by Taeyeon
• Silence by DxS
• Crown by EXO – Also enjoyed the songs on the rest of the album!
• No Brain No Pain by Joohoney
• Eternal White by WayV

Movies

• The Count of Monte Cristo (2024 version)
• The Fantastic Four: First Steps – and with that, I’m all caught up on the MCU movies. I have maybe a tiny speck of an idea of what’s going on after probably phase three. I guess I’m just here.

The Breakdown

A breakdown of what the universe had in store for the month (or longer).

The first week of January was spent kicking off the sickness from December and then it was basically playing catch up on everything.

I did a little cleanup on my Pinterest and claimed the new, rebranded domain; archived my old boards for blog posts and created new ones for the rebrand. I think I planned on doing that right after the rebrand but it kind of slipped my mind. I also worked on a few posts that were kicking around in my drafts like my Blogging Stats Transparency post and a few mini reviews – you can say I’m on a blogging roll recently, though I think that’ll probably die down a little soon since I’ve been a little distracted for the past few weeks (I got around to writing this wrap-up last minute). The blogging motivation ebbs and flows.

Some of my binders that I got to organize my stationery finally came in, so I spent some time organizing my collection. Things are looking a little less messy by my bed now that I’ve cleared out and consolidated some things, though I can’t say the same for the other side of the room considering I still have the box of books I need to drop off at a bookstore for selling. I think that’s something I’ll take care of sometime in the next month or two.

The last few weeks I’ve been playing a couple of games, though one of them took up most of my time. I started the new year playing Royal Alchemist, which I played a demo of in 2024 or 2025 and enjoyed a lot after playing a demo of Royal Order, which is set in the same world as Royal Alchemist and is the sequel to it. It also kind of reignited my interest in world-building for fun after playing the demo since I wanted to wait until the two were on sale, so I spent a good part of last year just building up a random fantasy world* like a kid who got a shiny batch of Legos. It’s been collecting a bit of dust since, though, but I can always come back to it or scratch it completely and start over.

*It’s full of tropes and clearly belongs to Wattpad if I ever write anything out of it. Oh, and I grabbed a few characters from past novel drafts that we never talk about populating the world just because I can. Maybe I should play The Sims 4 again…

The game that’s had me on a chokehold for the last week of January was Palia, which I finally started playing. Perfect timing, considering we also got a snow storm. I ended up stopping about an hour in my first time since I was getting motion sickness from hunting (I always go into the settings first thing) and the controllers didn’t seem to be as optimized on PC (but note I’m also playing with my laptop), so I was getting annoyed and decided to take a break. I pulled out my controller the next day (I got it specifically to deal with games that cause me motion sickness, though sometimes that doesn’t work even after adjusting settings) and decided to give it a second try – let’s just say I’m a little obsessed, even if I’m spending most of my time mining and foraging.

Low Buy

For 2026, I originally wanted to do a no buy, but I figured a low buy would be the best option for me and adjust from there. I wanted to make the list in December, but since I spent most of the month unwell, I didn’t make the list until around the second week of January. I also decided to write down my expenses and income in a notebook (which uses a notebook, yay) and modified a budget spreadsheet that I got from Etsy (I didn’t feel like doing the math or making a template for myself) so it better fit my needs.

Most of my tracking will be on stationery, but I also included a few other categories as well – those are little less restricted than stationery, though. I ended up making a spreadsheet in the same file for my inventory that tracks what I use up and add in 2026; sadly the inventory has been abandoned a little (aside from what washi rolls I have) because it felt like too much work eventually, but I do have a bit of an idea of what my collection looks like which is ultimately what matters.

For January, I got two writing tool replacements: 1 pen for work (converted from a plastic barrel to a metal barrel this time so they’re not living short lives) and a fineliner that’s been standing on its last legs for awhile but I didn’t get around to getting a new backup so I kept using the one I originally got last year. I also got some dual ended mildliners that come with stamps on one end (it came with a set rather than just one :c)  that I’ve been using for income and expenses notebook so I can mark which purchases are specifically for my mom and not have it count against my allotted low buy budget or no buy categories whenever I forget to make it each day.

I didn’t have a B6 notebook with the number of pages I wanted for my gaming journal (unless I wanted to blow through my 48 page notebook within a month or two), so I did get 3 notebooks: 1 for immediate use and 2 (1 A5 and 1 B6) as backups. B6 is hard to get in my area so I usually have to wait a week or two to have it shipped to me from Jetpens or another shop if my local Barnes and Noble doesn’t have any available for pickup. While I do have a suitable cover for my gaming journal I can use, that cover is currently being used for my commonplace notebook, so I did get a cover for it.

I also got a few Sailor Moon stickers that I allotted to complete an existing set. In total, January had 19 items added. I decided to count the mildliners as individual items even though they came in a set.

For usage, I used up a total of 43 items and that does not count any washi usage since I measure those differently, so they’ll be in a separate section. The sticker sheets in this instance are the small ones that are about half the size of the STICKII sized ones, and individual stickers refer to die-cut vinyl stickers. 5 of those stickers are being given away. The STICKII sheets also include sticker sheets that are about the same size as those since I didn’t want to make a separate category for those and very rarely purchase sticker sheets outside of STICKII these days.

• 14 individual stickers used, 5 given away
• 10 STICKII sheets
• 9 sticker sheets
• 2 writing tools
• 2 journaling cards
• 1 notebook cover – I’m not sure yet if I want to count this as “used” since they’re not one time use like the others and I can reuse them, but for this month we’ll count it.

For washi, I decided to measure by page length and width, the number of emotis (I have a few TCMC ones) and by stamp rather than going through and measuring them. Unfortunately I’m not like my mom who got the luck of the genetic draw and can literally eyeball the length. For washi samples, I counted the entire sample as one since I was also not going to measure them. I opted not to separate out by page size but most of the time I use A5 or B6 so I combined them together.

In January:

• 1 page length
• 36 page width
• 103 emotis
• 9 stamps
• 1 sample used, 10 samples given away

I’m sure I missed some things in my count or added a few extra because I forgot that I already added the numbers, but assuming everything is fairly accurate, it’s not bad progress for January. I’ve always guessed that I use about 2 STICKII sheets a week so it’s kind of nice to get confirmation that I do, in fact, use up 2 STICKII sheets a week. I’ll likely get through a chunk of my collection later this year if I skip a few months of my subscription (which I have no problems doing if I don’t like at least 5 of the 6 spoilers).

Let’s talk!

All things considered, I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves! Drink water, eat food, step back and touch grass (or I guess snow?), etc. I did this post pretty last minute, and I’m feeling pretty sleepy (it’s almost midnight as I’m finishing this up aaaaaaaaa, so I skipped out from the usual bolding that I do in these posts. I still tried to keep this as readable as possible without huge blocks of texts, though. 🙈

How has your January been?