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WELL HELLO THERE, FRIENDS. It's 2021 now! 2020 is behind us! Boy, what a terribly shitty year that I just... entirely lost the will to talk about in any capacity, tbh!

I honestly thought about not doing any year-end roundup stuff; I don't really want to relive things I did last year, and I don't really want to plan things for this year, because quite frankly "making it to the vaccine and then surviving that" is the only goal I really want to set myself (and then be pleasantly surprised if anything else happens!). But despite my somewhat limited media consumption, I do like revisiting those things through the year, and it's nice to have a record for it -- so welcome to my Great 2020 Media Roundup post! I am just... going to go ahead and put them all in one post this time around, because minimizing effort is what we're all about in 2021!

First, let's talk books! I read 113 books in 2020, which is the lowest number I've recorded since I first started keeping track ten years ago. (Fun fact: second lowest is 115 in 2012, the year I moved out of state for the first time and brought VERY few books with me!) It's... really not surprising that this happened, given that my usual library churn had to grind to a near-halt and my tendon/nerve issues really killed a lot of my creative desires, so especially in the fall, my reading pace slowed to a crawl. I'm pleased I made it over 100 regardless, but bummed by hitting a new low! 83 of these books were new books, meaning I clock it at 73% new books vs rereads -- the second highest in ten years, which does at least please me!

So among these, let's hit some highlights: the honorable mentions, the best, and the worst. LET'S GO.

( Five (Technically Six) Honorable-Mention Best Books I Read in 2020 )

( Ten (Technically Eleven) Best Books I Read in 2020 )

( Six (Technically Eight) Worst Books I Read In 2020 )

And next up on the agenda, movies! Unsurprisingly, I watched BY FAR more movies this year than I have in the past ten -- a whopping 160, even more than I read books, primarily thanks to the Hallmark movies that have become my default background noise, ha. More than half of these (90) were new movies -- again primarily of the Hallmark variety -- but I did also manage to rack up a solid set of new-to-me viewings that I genuinely enjoyed -- so let's talk about them!

( Ten Best Movies I Saw in 2020 )

Up next, TV! Hard to properly categorize this because of how differently I've consumed so many shows, ha, but here's some rough categories below!

( TV I Watched in 2020 )

Aaand finally, recipes! I made 83 discrete recipes this year, cooking or baking 139 times if you include the repeat recipes (about 20 of those are bread, too!), which is not only the widest variety of different things I've made in ten years, but also the highest proportion of new recipes (47, aka 57%!). Perhaps not surprising, given pandemic free time! I definitely tried out a bunch of new exciting things, both savory and sweet (as evidenced by the below lists!), as well as getting really into quick pickling for a while, and of course my delightful sourdough experiments (I cannot WAIT to start a new starter in the spring, once it's warm enough in the apartment to nurture it to life!). It's nice to look back on this after a year that honestly felt pretty useless; looks like I got a solid amount out of it in this respect, at least!

( Twelve Best Savory Recipes I Tried in 2020 )

( Five Best Sweet Recipes I Tried in 2020 )

( Five Best Sourdough Experiments I Tried in 2020 )

Hello hello, friends, and welcome to my SEPTEMBER UPDATE POST (only a couple days into October, we are WINNING this time, kids!!). As alluded to last time, I've shaken things up a bit -- moved some things around, added some things, just fiddling with format and priority to figure out how best I want to do these and what matters to me to keep track of/talk about!

Probably the biggest change is that I've added a little General Life Things section up top, to talk about some of the stuff going on with me -- my mental state, updates on work/diss stuff -- that just isn't really Twitter-friendly or better suited for, like, an end-of-month reflection rather than consistent daily updates! Otherwise I've trimmed some things, reworked the Duolingo section, and otherwise set this up to be a fun update on where I'm at and what I've been doing wrt the things that matter most. \o/ I'm pretty sure no one reads these, ha, but I've enjoyed putting this together and hope to be able to do more like this in the future!

( Update post below! )

Hello, friends, it's... almost halfway through September, lmao sob, but I AM DOING MY BEST UNDER THE DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES OF LIFE IN 2020. We're getting there!! Maybe one day I'll actually get this right!! sobbbb

I'm going to aim to shake up the format of these a bit -- I'm trimming down a couple things to focus on what I really care about, and moving forward I might put a little life-update blurb at the beginning, just to satisfy my desire for a personal-life newsletter, which definitely won't be happening anytime soon, lmao sob again. And that way I can just stick academic and/or work updates in there as they happen! So-- let's see how this goes for now and what that might look like next time around. ♥ And in the meantime, ( UPDATES BELOW! )

Oh, I was doing SO WELL with getting these out something close to on time... sigh!!

Work was absolutely fucking insane for most of June and into the start of July, and I only managed some recovery time mid-month -- and by the time I was even most of the way through this, it was already most of the way into July, so uhhh COLLAPSING TWO MONTHS INTO ONE AGAIN IT IS, SOB SOB. I know no one but me even really cares about these, ha, but I really did want to try to keep them consistent and I regret that I'm not able to do so!! Maybe August will be better?? (Truly the rallying cry of this year, tbh; "maybe [next month] will be better!" It has yet to be true, but HOPE CONTINUES TO SPRING ETERNAL, DAMMIT.)

In the meantime, ( two-month updates below! )

Hello, friends, it's only about a week into June, which is definitely an improvement on me getting these out, ha! I'm getting better!!

The world continues, uh, terrible and generally metaphorically on fire, which is very unfortunate in terms of trying to accomplish anything other than general existence -- but I continue to be doing my best, and attempting to figure out how best to consistently continue doing that. So below I will continue keeping y'all updates on that particular journey!

( Updates beneath! )

Hello, friends, it is... mid-May, WHOOPS, ONE OF THESE DAYS I'LL FIGURE TIMING OUT, which means it is time to update y'all on what I've been up to for the past month! Things are still, uh, Happening in the world, so it's still been a weird month -- but I've been plugging away on much of the things I've been wanting to work on, and I like to mark my progress on them, and I hope y'all enjoy hearing about it, too!

( Goal updates below! )

(Boy, what an appropriate icon, huh?)

Hello, everyone! It's... well, it's no longer the end of any month, I'll tell you that much, BUT I did really want to have end-of-month recaps for my goals every month this year, so that was the intent of this post... key word there being was, because then I spend the last half of February both intensely sick and wildly busy, and then the world fucking imploded in March and continues to do so in April. Woof, y'all. Woof.

But I've been trying to revise this post for about a month now, and at a certain point it became clear I was just going to have to subsume February and March updates into one post, since -- well, two terrible months equals one standard month, right?? -- which means I really gotta get my shit together and post it before it becomes THREE terrible months, which I really can't justify, ha. So... let's talk goal updates from February and March, which are for the most part few and far between, but I'm gonna own the little I did accomplish because I'm proud of it, dammit!! So LET'S GO BELOW.

( Goal progress! )

WELP, I meant to post this way sooner and life very much got away from me, but... better late than never, I guess?? We're not SUPER far into the second month of 2020, so I guess it's not too ridiculous to post my goals for the year now?? :")) Especially since January was so busy I gave myself a break from working on them, but JANUARY IS OVER AND SO THE TIME FOR GOALS IS NOW, FRIENDS!!

I said in my recap and on Twitter that if 2018 was my rebuilding year, 2019 was the year that made all of said rebuilding come to fruition -- so 2020 is going to be the year in which I finally have a stable garden in which to sow the seeds of said fruition (pardon the extremely mixed metaphors in play here). I finally have a stable foundation off of which I can springboard into the future, so I want to use it, and I want to keep moving forward in the best and healthiest way for myself.

And it's relieving to know, looking at these goals, that they're similar ones I've been setting in the past several years! Some of them are a little depressing, since they're returning goals I haven't achieved in years prior, ha, but many are just continuations of the things that remain important to me and that I want to keep working on. It's nice to have achieved that sense of consistency, and to learn from years of honing how I work best and what I hold most dear.

So having said all of that -- let's get to it! Read on to learn what's (hopefully) in store for me in 2020!

( Goals! )

Now, since it's ALREADY WELL INTO FEBRUARY, SERIOUSLY, WHERE HAS THE GODDAMN TIME GONE, I'm not going to hold myself to these goals till the end of this month; I'm going to try, though, starting at the end of the month, to make a monthly update post on the more concrete goals, to keep everyone posted on how things are going, to keep myself accountable, and to relish in all the progress I've made, even if it's minimal! And I hope that y'all will be there cheering me on along the way for all of it. ♥

Aaaand time for my final recap of the year: recipes!! I made 67 distinct dishes in 2019, which is, by my count, more than I've made since I first started keeping track in 2011 -- which is very exciting!! But the first half of 2019 WAS spent entirely unemployed and in my parents' big kitchen with access to their food budget, ha, so it definitely does make sense. :") (I also spent the past several months making a LOT of "throw a bunch of stuff in with rice" dishes, which I don't really count as recipes, though maybe I should??)

But of those 67, while most were old favorites, some were new standouts that I really look forward to coming back to again and again in the future. So let's talk about my NEW favorites of those!!

( The Ten Best New Recipes I Tried Last Year )

Recap post #3, TV and movies! Movies first: I watched 61 full movies last year (not counting the many, many fractions of whatever was on TV at the time!), consisting of new movies watched with friends or Boyfriend, new releases, fond rewatches, and Hallmark holiday classics alike, ha. 33 of those were new movies, making this my second-highest proportion of new to old movies since 2011, which is pretty cool! I've highlighted some of my favorites from either of the first two categories above here, my favorites of movies I've seen that were new to me AND new to the world at large. :")

( The Six New-To-Me Movies I Enjoyed Most )

( The Six New Movies I Enjoyed Most )

And as usual, the TV recap is the shortest one of the entire set, ha, so some rough groupings of all the TV I consumed, both new and old, contained below!

( TV talk below! )

The year in review continues with the biggest and most anticipated (I mean, I assume) of the 2019 recap posts: books!!

I read 167 books this year (less than last year because, yk, I got a job), 142 of which were new -- which means I read a whooping 84% new books, which is my highest ratio ever!! THANK YOU, REGULAR LIBRARY ACCESS MAKING ME FEEL SILLY ABOUT REREADING BOOKS I ALREADY OWN. I'm pretty behind on Goodreads reviews, sadly, BUT I'll link to the books below -- both my best and worst -- which happen to have them!

( The Ten Best New Books/Series I Read Last Year )

( The Six Worst New Books I Read Last Year )

WELL HELLO, FRIENDS, [surreptitiously brushes dust off of this journal], and welcome to ~~the only reason I ever use this anymore, whoops~~ the first of my annual recap posts: my personal life recap from 2019!

This was a very weird year in that the first half bore ALMOST NO RESEMBLANCE to the second; if I called 2018 my rebuilding year, 2019 was the year in which it aaaaaall came to fruition, in full and fabulous form. Basically the first few months of 2019 were almost exactly the same as 2018... and then I got my very first full-time job, and within two months was moving to an entirely new city and back in with Boyfriend after seven years (!!!) of long-distance. TALK ABOUT YOUR MOOD WHIPLASH, FOLKS. It's been a wild ride, and I still kind of can't believe, some days, that this is my life now?? But it IS, and I'd like to take a look back at the year that helped bring me here, to relive all of the highs and lows and exciting new parts of it!!

( 2019 in review )