Howdy, gang! I hope everyone’s doing well.
I’m going to try keeping things brief for this February 2024 recap, but there’s a reason for that. As of this posting, it will be just one day shy of the two-year anniversary of my blog, with my first post arriving back on March 7, 2022. When I started the blog, one of my goals was to use it as a means to keep myself writing things on a monthly basis—it was all to help myself maintain better writing habits. Thankfully, between this, my regular writing group meetings, and otherwise just being more responsible and doing my work when I’m supposed to, I’d say the whole mission of keeping up with my writing has been successful.
Given all of that, I’ve grown of the opinion lately that the strict monthly recaps aren’t as necessary anymore. Obviously, I want to keep everyone up to date on the goings on in my life (for those who care), but also in fairness, I’ve had plenty of times when not much has happened in a particular month, yet I still force myself to grind out words for a post that barely has two feet to stand on.
Point being, I want to move away from the previously established model for this blog. I want to keep posting consistently, of course, maintaining the once-a-month frequency, but with more focused substance and not necessarily dropping on the first Monday of every month. As of late, I’ve been failing to do that latter part anyway, so getting away from that idea just makes sense to me. I want to give myself more flexibility on when my blog posts actually drop, and I want them all to have a proper point, talking about movies, music, and books, recapping fun trips, or just sharing exciting news and writing updates.
To that first point, my writing group recently started a book club, which has helped me tremendously with getting back into some proper reading habits. For February, we read Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, a harrowing dystopia novel not unlike George Orwell’s acclaimed Nineteen Eighty-Four. I intend to do a full review of the book in the near future, possibly also alongside reviews for Marieke Nijkamp’s Critical Role: Vox Machina – Kith and Kin and Andy Weir’s The Martian; I’m currently wrapping up reading the former and listened through the audiobook for the latter just last week. I finally jumped on the audiobook train via Audible, and oh my god it has been life changing.
On the topic of reviews, I also fully intend to review Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, because holy crap, what a movie. That review will likely arrive sometime next week; I’d like to see it again before writing down my full thoughts on it. But even on first watch, I can already say this is an early contender for film of the year.
Furthermore, I know April is going to be a big music month, especially with ERRA’s forthcoming album, Cure. Alongside that, Northlane are dropping their Mirror’s Edge EP, and Alpha Wolf are dropping a long-awaited new album, Half-Living Things. I intend to at least touch on ERRA’s latest work when it drops, but I’d also like to dedicate a small post to the others as well, as they’re highly anticipated in my book.
Another post I want to do sometime in the near future is a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki roundabout review. Back in the beginning of January, my friends and I saw Miyazaki’s latest film, The Boy and the Heron (also known by its more fitting Japanese name, How Do You Live?), which kicked off something of a Ghibli binge for me. I hadn’t seen any other Ghibli movies aside from Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, so I set myself to watching as many as I could. At this point, I’ve covered almost all of Miyazaki’s work, and I’d really like to talk about them all.
So, with all of this being said, this will likely be the last proper “monthly recap” blog I write for a few months. I might still drop one of these every now and then if a month just has way too much for me to talk about and it’d just be easier for me to do a general recap, but for the most part, I fully intend to be writing more focused posts moving forward. Above all else, I think this will be a great way to help me maintain all this momentum I’ve had lately. A lot of things are looking up, between getting back into reading regularly, enjoying all my other hobbies, and, most importantly, writing my novel.
I hope all of you reading this post have had the same luck as well with anything and everything you’ve got going on. This year is off to a pretty good start, I’d say, so let’s do what we can to keep it that way. Spring is right around the corner, and I’m positive it’s going to be a grand old time.
So, until next time, peace!