january 26' - eggshells
I hereby declare January 2026 a write-off that we will never speak of again, thanks
On the glorious morning of 5 January 2026, I plopped my ass cheeks on my chair and plugged in my working laptop after two weeks of non-use.
Keyboard on. Desk lamp alight. Mouse scuttling with movement. It was the first office day of the year, and truth be told I was looking forward to it.
I clicked the textbook under my name and the oh so dashing and professional picture of myself and proceeded to type the wrong password multiple times in a row.
You see, I was more than happy to grab a train into the city, visit the IT HelpDesk, and get everything resolved.
I was, however, as sick as a twenty-year-old dog. I’m stunned that Singapore Airlines didn’t quarantine me into an empty bathroom because I spent the whole eight-hour flight coughing my lungs to mush, taking a sloppy shit every thirty minutes, and glancing at other passengers like I was contemplating my future (i.e. blanking out). Somehow, I arrived in Gadigal country, scorched as an overclocked microwave, in desperate need of electrolytes and not being able to go for two hours at a time without a five-minute nap.
Despite the sky-high level of aspirational planning that goes in January, it is often an exceedingly unproductive month for anything that isn’t a gym.
The same happened last year where January was a nothing month, with action and renewal only happening around Chinese New Year in February which is arguably the better month to get shit rolling.
I have a lot of eggshells — in my head, in my inbox, in my to-do list, in my sink, in all the things I’d like to do and all the things I’d love to do and all the things I have to do that get in the way of things and am admittingly having a lot of trouble identifying which one is which, this recap being one of them.
So perhaps, by clearing through this January review and officially writing it off like a car in a total loss incident, I can look to lovely February and impeccable 2026 with better energy.
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We’ve been doing some house hunting in January.
I’m pleased to say that I did in fact find a house which is not in the suburbs I had initially intended, but is also in a format that I never thought I’d be able to try out.
It’s structured much like a house instead of a unit, which is usually nigh-unattainable here in Sydney, and will be the first time I ever live on a ground floor style property where I can open my car inside my unit and everyone leaving the train station can get direct line-of-sight to my living room sofa.
I’ve spent the vast majority of early February moving into it with all heavy items having already been transported and am currently arranging end-of-lease cleaning and between you and me this is one of the many reasons I’m a bundle of anxiety and self-deprivation with a short fuse to get pissed off or no fuse because I had emotionally removed myself from the scenario. You will hear this so abundantly in my February retrospective unless I meet an untimely end, possibly self-imposed.
Really though, I’m grateful. I really am. Just a few weeks ago, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a place, needing to have difficult conversations of extending the lease, incurring cost after cost and giving up more weekends that I would hope to. That hasn’t been the case and first impressions show that I’ve made a good decision in where I’m going.
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There has been a lot of consumption this January. It feels like so. This includes shows and movies and articles and podcasts and food and a ton of it occupying my peripheral vision which isn’t quite the healthiest because it points to an utter inability to sit with my own silence.
A handful of highlights include:
Tess Barclay and Busy Blooming showed up out of the blue on my recommended podcasts and it’s a great, warm-hearted entrance to this world of content creation, albeit not necessarily content creation in the domain that I’d like to do myself. I think it’s very applicable side-knowledge though and it’s helpful to have an encouraging voice in your ear as to no you’re not insane for wanting to give it a try.
Season 2 of Culinary Class Wars aired on Netflix and without spoiling too much of it… I liked Season 1 better. And it’s not because of the more likable cast but because the format of the competition this time around just created to lower stakes and weaker tension. It’s still a fun time though!
The best article I read in January is Tisha Evite’s Why we don’t have hobbies: A day in the life of a “time-poor” Filipino, where she shared the abysmal state of Manila traffic and public transport and how that time-sink lends itself to not having time for yourself or find yourself; much in contrast to Western countries. I’ve always known of this Eastern vs Western phenomenon, but I’ve never seen in articulated as a problem with time, which is an unknowing byproduct of crippling commutes — one that I cannot full relate to but still get frustrated by every day.
This B2B DJ set by Knock2 and Zedd at Nitehearts Festival. Zedd is probably my favourite artist of all time and in another timeline this newsletter would be named some variation of the word ‘Clarity’ — while Knock2 is a new-gen and my current favourite EDM artist. To hear these two have a DJ set together is nothing short of ambrosia.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think I saved money in January. I can’t find that many food pictures on my phone which means we didn’t go out very much but one place we did trial was Hatch Restaurant at Hurstville which was a casual dining joint known for innovative desserts. It’s… pretty solid, but I would be back solely for dessert and nothing else though.
Last but not least, the Joy of Missing Out podcast featuring Chloe Shih and Eric Wei had finally returned for its next season. This and soju with sarah are my constant shows and I’ve happened to follow both from day one, even without knowing the creators, because they just happened to be the two to show up on my feed when I wanted to start getting into podcasts.
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In turn, there has not been as much creation — but at the very least, creation that actually occurred was that to which I intended.
Let me explain.
January Sav had one goal in terms of content and writing and that is to publish something on not-Substack, namely portrait short-form carousels by drawing text from one of my Substack posts. I had chosen 'the day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit', which I had written in a structure that is easy to convert from long-text to another.
This is loosely inspired by xanthe appleyard’s reflections on the owned-media movement and her concept of a ‘hero post’ that splits into short-form for distribution and reach. I talk about this in a follow-up post called why can’t it be both?
Success in this instance was, you know, hitting the post button.
With that metric I have very much succeeded on both Instagram and TikTok.
I wouldn’t say this tickled my creative brain too much because I, on average, just put some templated text against pictures I had taken before — which makes me interested in going for talking-head, green screen, or even simple cinematic videos to trial a storytelling medium I hadn’t done before but, as always, is an extension of writing.
I’m still on the fence of whether it’s a good investment of my time, and yes, it being ‘fun’ in the short-term does immediately make it a good investment of my time because time in the present is just as valuable if not more than time in the future1.
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Towards the end of January, I took half a stack of Post-it notes, sat down at my desk, and wrote down everything I needed/wanted to do. I kept doing so until I either ran out of things to say or ran out of Post-it notes.
I arranged these pink blobs based on ‘things I had to do’ vs ‘things I want to do’ which almost never overlap, with ‘want to do’ being decidedly less pressing and internal driven and ‘have to do’ being more urgent, more time-bound, utterly annoying, troublesome, difficult, boring, or costing money.
I’m reminded of this diagram I shared when my laptop had spontaneously exploded, though conveniently with Black Friday around the corner:
The image that comes to mind is an omelette with eggshells cracked into it. I’m not sure why. I’m enjoying this soft, fluffy, golden masterpiece with ham and cheese and mushrooms but thanks to this added organic crunch, I’m forced to eat it slowly, to be careful with every bite I take, to remove them from my mouth bit by bit before swallowing.
It makes me question whether this omelette is worth it.
Especially considering I prefer sunny side up.
Probably the most frustrating aspect of this pink post-it exercise was that I had plucked these off the office shelf at around 10am, genuinely looking forward to decluttering the battlefield of my mind via paper and Sharpie — but I didn’t actually do so until two days later. To add insult to injury, it was about 11pm when I sat down to actually do this and with a mild level of distraction, spent till midnight organising these ideas.
This goes in contrast with the voice in my head, that belongs very much to me, declaring that I will sleep earlier — and very much in-line with the narrative that it seems I cannot be trusted even with the things I care about, that I will trample of everyone’s trust especially my own, and I am undramatically fracturing less a glass marble dropped a little too high.
Whoops, getting a little cryptic there, big guy. Worry not, despite the increased verbal attestations of “I’m going to not alive someone” whenever I make the wrong turn on a highway — I do not dream of murder, especially not of myself, because at the prime age of 25-years-old I have a lot of life to yet uncover.
I pointed some accusatory fingers at analog systems recently, but with my retinas starting to sear against computer screens and dusting off a calendar whiteboard that I hadn’t used since July last year2 — I am suddenly craving having that tactility of handwriting, of shaping each day with intention, like gel pen on paper notebook.
I want my intentions to stare back at me in the face as if it were asking me if I got games on my phone.
struthless has a pretty convoluted way to which he organises his projects. I want something like this, with less DIY and eccentricism, admittingly — a plain whiteboard to the side of my desk, a printed A4 page that outlines intentions for the day, an overpriced e-ink tablet that I am convinced will solve all my organisational and note-taking problems, etc.
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I’ve got a lot of boxes to climb out of, and I mean that both digitally in the form of an inbox and physically in the form of literal boxes on the ground of a new unit. These first two weeks of February have been physically and emotionally challenging, so much so that I’ve caught myself spacing out in front of a client and sometimes on the road. This comes and goes in phases. I’m just acknowledging that I’m at a macroeconomic low point.
There are a lot of pink blobs to juggle — some being glass, some being rubber, some flying ablaze — that putting myself first is starting to feel unsustainable and inexplicably selfish.
Though, there is a pretty overwhelming and all-encompassing and incredible reason as to why I should though.
I’ll leave it to you to suppose what it is.
Until then, I declare January 2026 a write-off.
Signed: sav, Journaling in Public
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Note to self: Some variation of this would make a great article. The same way short-term instant-gratification cycles perturb me, I get frustrated when plans are so disgustingly long-term that they forget about today’s joys and put undue stress on the journey. The medium-term needs love too.
I had only used this whiteboard for two months mainly because I never ended up following through with what was written. It was only five bucks though.