I can’t believe January is over! I mean wasn’t it yesterday we made promises to each other and to ourselves. To live better lives this year. To do more. To be more. To be present. Now January is here and gone. The newness of 2016 is slightly faded; there is a luster but it is not so bright.
Despite the departure of January, I am still excited for the year ahead. In January, I enjoyed myself a lot. Sure there were moments of anxiety and deep thoughts. But there were also moments of levity.
As usual, I had my stretch of obsessively reading. Since last summer, I have been obsessed with the NPR list of 100 Swoon Worthy Romances. I have been into romance novels since I was younger. I don’t care what anyone says about some of the more explicit content, these still make for a good read.This month I have loved reading Lisa Kleypas’ The Wallflowers series. A good romance series is so hard to find these days. But this one by Kleypas is somehow expected and unexpected. There were many sleepless nights reading these books. I highly encourage you to read the books if you are into romance at all. I especially loved The Secrets of a Summer Night Book 1 that tells the story of Miss Annabelle Peyton and Mr. Simon Hunt. It is so good!
This month’s music has been all about discovering songs to run to that I enjoy and that would motivate me at the same time. Hands down, no discussion needed, my current move my ass song is Britney’s Work B*tch. I have to confess that today in the gym, I had one of those horrible tempo runs that are absolutely crucial to building speed and Miss Britney Spears totally made an appearance. With her voice on, I am unstoppable. By the way, I am so glad I signed up for Amazon Prime. I initially signed up for the 2 day free shipping but I can’t give up my membership because of all the good music and playlists. In music, I have also had a re-awakened love of Jojo’s Save My Soul. For the end of January, I found myself playing Keke Palmer’s I Don’t Belong To You.
Beyond books and music, of course I signed up for the AirBnB Brooklyn Half Marathon. I am still in awe that I managed to get a spot since it sold out in 52 minutes. I am excited and terrified. I am also looking forward to doing the hard work of getting myself through the 13.1 miles. I have already started training. I am currently comfortable at 4MPH but 5MPH is still doable for minutes at a time. My high for my tempo run is 6MPH. My longest run so far is 5 miles in about 90 minutes. I am looking forward to getting faster and going longer. Although I must say the best feeling so far has been doing a good spot of yoga to help my body recover. I highly enjoyed Yoga with Adriene’s Cool Down Sequence for Runners.
Of course, I have continued volunteering on Mondays at the Bernie Sanders campaign office. I go there on Mondays for about 4 hours. I am a shift captain which means I spend my time welcoming people and training them on how to use the system. I am learning some things about myself from this commitment to this campaign. The first thing is that if it is truly important I make it happen. Mondays are impossible days for me but I make it happen. The other thing I have learned is that I truly love training and mentoring people. Training people on the phone bank system makes me miss my old job as an educator. I love my current job but there is nothing like connecting with people as you empower them to do something new.
After a 3 days off work for the last weekend in January, I am looking forward to February. Of course Valentine’s day is coming. That should be interesting at work. I finally got my hand on D.O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Demons as translated by Wole Soyinka. I think I might make it a priority to read that this month. I also want to read Opening Belle by Maureen Sherry. I saw a blurb about it on Reese Witherspoon’s instagram page. I am also hoping to write a bit more this month, both on my blogs and fiction.I am excited for February. I feel like it has potential to be a really good month if I open myself up to the possibilities.