So…life’s been hard for many of us? Omicron just spreads around crazy and we’re on hermit-survival mode again! Because I want to stay away from all the negative thoughts, and believe me you don’t wanna drown yourselves in it, fostering these scary, scary thoughts of not getting sick, I have to do something to ease my mind out of it! So ✨ anime! ✨ I am only watching 3 series this winter: Kimetsu, Shingeki, and Koroshi Ai! My sister marathon Naruto during the holidays and it inspired me to do my own: I’m currently watching Bleach, I know, I know—I’d forsaken this and had the gall to prematurely announce that I’m not touching the series ever, but here we are. Oops?

For the sake of full disclosure, I didn’t really start from the beginning nor plan to watch the whole thing that I missed! I only plan to watch key episodes (of course total disregard to fillers, ugh) starting from where I stopped before! As of typing this, I’m episode 290+ and man, do I miss watching Ichigo & friends (and otp 😙)! And yeah, take this as my preparation for the upcoming anime!

I plan to marathon another anime series after this…not sure what though? An old time favorite again? Series that I put on-hold? New one? I need to give myself that much needed relax time every night; away from catastrophizing.

It feels like a whole month has already passed by when we are just truly 2 weeks in! The pandemic continue to define our lives, officially hitting the third year, and I’m just absolutely tired of constantly waiting for the unknown. The world looks bleak again, whenever situation looks a teeny bit brighter, things will turn sour in no time. December life was ok-ish, we were doing something with semblance of normality then boom, cases balloon 📈—recording all-time high at that! 😮‍💨

So again we’re locking down, no more casual grocery trips; back to online shopping again. We have postponed personal plans (not really trips, some stuff to sort out). Honestly, this pandemic just ruined all the amassed motivation I had for journaling and planning; so I called quits—for good (I have separate short posts about this soon) ‘Cos what’s there to plan anyway? I’m in this constant mild paranoia, because not knowing when this is over just doesn’t inspire positive thoughts, no?

We’re doing the best we can, following the health protocol! We also got ourselves boosted with Moderna 💉 (because we didn’t have the luxury of choosing the brand when we got our primary series, we opted to get the brand we want for our booster). So yeah, just doing our best to cope, we’re again in survival mode.

It’s that time again to honor my monthly faves! It was very productive 2021 reading year for me, especially when it comes to webtoons (and you think I’ll run out of series/titles to read but lo and behold my TBR is just overflowing still!) And today, I will give tribute in the form of simple shout-out to my monthly fave reads! It used to have fancy category but nah, too much work for little ‘ol lazy girl like me! And because moi’s just damn lazy, I’ll also add  2022 anime watchlist because well, there’s no point in making separate entry for it! (I only have few names in my list).

Anyhoo, before I get carried away and spout unnecessary blabbering, here comes 2021 best of the best! 🎉🥳

• December (2020) ᛫ When the Villainess Is in Love  (악녀가 사랑할 때)
• January ᛫ Wedding Impossible (웨딩 임파서블)
• February ᛫ Father, I Don’t Want to Get Married! (아빠, 나 이 결혼 안할래요!) & The Villainess Is a Marionette (악녀는 마리오네트)
• March ᛫ Elixir of the Sun (태양의 주인)
• April ᛫ The Man’s Games (그 남자의 계략) & I’ll Be the Matriarch in This Life (이번 생은 가주가 되겠습니다)
• May ᛫ Disguised as a Male Secretary (남장 비서)
• June ᛫  The Symbiotic Relationship Between a Panther and a Rabbit (토끼와 흑표범의 공생 관계)
• July ᛫  A Way to Protect the Lovable You  (다정한 그대를 지키는 방법)
• August ᛫ Finding Camellia (참아주세요, 대공)
• September ᛫ Before I Lose You (놓치기 전에) & A Beastly Scandal (짐승같은 스캔들)
• October ᛫ I Became the Wife of the Male Lead (내 남자 주인공의 아내가 되었다)
• November ᛫ Heeran Love Song (희란국연가)

• ❄  Winter ᛫  Shingeki no Kyojin Season 4 (進撃の巨人 The Final Season), Dr. Stone Stone Wars (ドクターストーン STONE WARS), Kemono Jihen (怪物事変)
• 🌸 Spring ᛫ Boku no Hero Academia 5th Season (僕のヒーローアカデミア), Tokyo Revengers (東京リベンジャーズ ), Fruits Basket: The Final (フルーツバスケット The Final), Mashiro no Oto (ましろのおと)
• ☀ Summer ᛫ ✖️
• 🍂 Autumn ᛫ Kimetsu no Yaiba: Yuukaku-hen (鬼滅の刃 遊郭編)

This is pretty much the titles I watched…there was not lot to choose from *hides*

So for 2022, there were few notable series that I do look forward to watching: Chainsaw Man, Hataraku Maou-sama! 2nd Season, Mob Psycho 100 III, Boku no Hero Academia 6th Season, Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen, Bungou Stray Dogs 4th Season, Spy x Family, Jigokuraku, and Skip to Loafer

So…life’s been hard for many of us? Omicron just spreads around crazy and we’re on hermit-survival mode again! Because I want to stay away from all the negative thoughts, and believe me you don’t wanna drown yourselves in it, fostering these scary, scary thoughts of not getting sick, I have to do something to ease my mind out of it! So ✨ anime! ✨ I am only watching 3 series this winter: Kimetsu, Shingeki, and Koroshi Ai! My sister marathon Naruto during the holidays and it inspired me to do my own: I’m currently watching Bleach, I know, I know—I’d forsaken this and had the gall to prematurely announce that I’m not touching the series ever, but here we are. Oops?

For the sake of full disclosure, I didn’t really start from the beginning nor plan to watch the whole thing that I missed! I only plan to watch key episodes (of course total disregard to fillers, ugh) starting from where I stopped before! As of typing this, I’m episode 290+ and man, do I miss watching Ichigo & friends (and otp 😙)! And yeah, take this as my preparation for the upcoming anime!

I plan to marathon another anime series after this…not sure what though? An old time favorite again? Series that I put on-hold? New one? I need to give myself that much needed relax time every night; away from catastrophizing.

I never thought the travel would be far-fetch dream again…for simple people like my family. We planned our once a year travel many months in advance, tried to save all the money we can save so we can explore foreign places! But I never would have imagined that travel is far out of our reach again. Gone are days we are stalk local airlines for ticket sales! Or reading lots of travel on budget blogs so we can save with our travel!

This is such an iconic photo that I have taken from our latest travel back in January 2020, before the pandemic shutdown tourism to its knee. I miss circling the calendar dates, packing, exploring! I miss walking down the streets of some unfamiliar place. 😔

I kept deleting my intro ‘cos I’m struggling to come up with something witty (sarcastic?) yet true to sum up this year. I came empty handed obviously. Well, pretending not to sound overly cliche, if I were to sum up the year, the first word came into mind is whirlwind! There’s defo so many ups & downs this year—some were from both extreme end of the spectrum. And as always, I was—er, still full of anxious thoughts. Life has been better recently but my mind still plagues me with doomsday thoughts, which is sadly so hard to get rid easily (the irony is on me, if I’m not over worrying, I feel agigated, like something’s missing).

• I did some personal (offline) projects which has come into fruition this year. It’s nice to see it finished & so happy that fam were all in it. Even with limitation we still made it worked! There were still some ongoing, which I plan to work in slow pace.
• I already shared my reading/watching highlights here and here, icymi. 😉
• Work wise, it was nice year too! I got promoted 👩🏻‍💻 and with that comes with new responsibilities and role. This is one of the reason I stopped my hustling. I now dedicate my free time recuperating or do my projects and hobbies instead. Too much screentime may result to eye strain nausea, vertigo, and migraine. So for health reason, I am letting go (temp? permanently? idk) of this amazing gig.
• It was also one of the reasons why I recalibrated and rehauled my cute little blog yet again. I just have no time to blog like I used to, the tl;drs style as I called it. But I couldn’t let it go ‘cos I ❤ it so much, so here’s a compromise—micro blogging!

Overall, it was good year even though we’re still in pandemic. The vaccines are continue to help lowering the numbers (we came from scary 5 digits daily to 3 digits for now—with omicron looming, 12/30/31 – welp, back to 4 digits but sentiments remain: hopefully it wouldn’t be as bad as peak months 🙏) and keep the hospitalizations at bay.

I solemnly pray for 2022. So many things at stake: pandemic still, and then the national elections. If the pandemic is completely managed by next year, some work related stuff will get ironed out. But most of all, and as always, my humble prayer includes health, safety, faith, financial stability, and overall security in this unsteady situation for me and the family, and to you my lovely readers & friends as well. I am very grateful for 2021, it wasn’t the best for sure but I’m just happy we’re still together greeting another new year ahead! Happy New Year! 🎆🎇 今年もよろしくお願いします！🙇🏻‍♀️

There’s something to rejoice whenever Taylor hints on something! I really thought that the next album she will re-release was either Speak Now (chronologically speaking, it did come out after Fearless) or 1989, because all the buzz and hype that surrounded it prior to the announcement! But Taylor didn’t come around playing, she all got us excited when she officially announced that it’s gonna be Red! And you know what, I love RED! It was the album that I kept on repeating as my lonesome company because of all those things that happened to me (a lot of painful ones though T.T), so for sure I’ll (re)listen when it finally drops this November!

I mean, can we all agree that we’re all so looking forward to finally listen to All Too Well and it’s glorious 10-minute version?! Yes?! I once told my sister this that while I’m happy that Taylor has now a relationship for keeps, when she writes heartbreak songs, you can totally feel the sadness and all the emotions! As much as I love Death by a Thousand Cuts, it isn’t as heart-wrenching and soulful as ATW! But oh we are blessed truly! Taylor Swift, queen of productivity! 👑