2024-01-10
2023 was my 3rd year with Hobonichi. I changed up what I did a lot and there was a lot of trial and error. This year I had five books:
This was my second year with the Weeks. I use it for planning, despite not always following my plans. I just love the form factor of the Weeks. It's compact and easy to bring with me places. I spent the most time in it.
Yearly Index
I used these two pages for tracking my mood and my weight. I steadily lost weight at around 2lb per month. I did loose a bunch of weight in the beginning of December due to being sick. I managed to gain it all back by the end of the year, though. My goal weight is 105lb and my vanity goal weight is 100lb. I am 5' (I think, I don't really know) so being a low weight is still healthy for me. There was a moment in July and August where I didn't track my weight and that was because I was in Japan and the Philippines during this time. I also stopped with mood tracking near the end of the year. I wasn't sure how helpful this was for me and I haven't done it at all this year (2024) either.
Monthly Pages
I have the hardest time utilizing monthly pages in any planner. I find it usually contains duplicate information and I hardly ever look at them. That being said, this was my favourite monthly spread. Deadlines. Tasks. Events. Very fun to make but not very useful.
Weekly Pages
The meat of the book. My layouts varied a lot. The usefulness also varied a lot. I always find that I am good at keeping up with it at the beginning of the week but as the week goes on, my resolve diminishes. Here are some of my favourite spreads from the year.
Cat sticker is from kisse.cat. Washi is a WonderPens and TheCoffeeMonsterzCo collab.
I literally don't remember where half of these stickers and washi come from lol.
Vanilla but functional.
Not every week has to be serious. This was a seriously SHINee (one of my favourite K-pop groups) week.
I enjoyed making these bar graphs but they were blank all week until I had all the numbers. Kinda bothered me.
I bought a portable printer in the latter half of the year and started printing out inspiration photos for myself. I don't know if they helped any but it certainly made things look prettier.
Notes Pages
I get a Mega because 80 pages of note pages is not enough for me. But 200 pages is too much. I end up using the extra for random things even when the year is over.
I tried to make an index of all my pages. I don't think it was too helpful. There were some pages that I did look at the index for (mostly the astrology page) but maybe I could have just added a page marker so I could have easily referenced it.
The first half of the year I really tried to keep track of my reading. But after my Japan/Philippines trip I really lost my resolve...
I also tried to keep track of exercising. It was not fruitful because I didn't exercise that much.
I kept track of reading progress. This was really fun to do and I kept up with it fairly well. It kinda sucked when I gave up on certain books but eh. Not every book is a keeper.
A sample of a "daily" page. I like to plan out my day with an hourly schedule.
I don't use a lot of stickers or washi at all so all my notebooks stay pretty slim by the end of the year. But I do like seeing the contrast between the used pages vs the untouched pages with my Weeks.
I didn't take any pictures of this because my Weeks for work was a mess. Literally. I just used the multi-pen that comes with Hobonichi orders. I scribbled notes hastily during meetings. No pretty spreads. Terrible handwriting. I don't know if it worked for me. I think I will try to be a little bit more mindful in 2024.
I have no idea why I bought the Avec Cousin this year. The Avec is split into two books, January to June in one book and July to December in the other book. I know my reasoning at the time was that I went back to school last year and I wanted to split it between "before school starts" and "after school starts." But honestly, it could have all just gone into one book. This year I stuck with the regular Cousin.
Weekly Pages
These stayed largely unused. I tried a lot of different things. Putting my tarot card pulls here. Actually scheduling things in. Using it as a memory keeper. But I just kept forgetting this section existed. I think I would use it a lot more if the weeks pages were spread throughout the journal instead of being it's own dedicated section.
Monthly Pages
Again, I am so bad at using monthly pages. I think the below picture is the only time I actually used it.
Daily Pages
The first half of the year, I used it for note keeping. Which wasn't the greatest idea because it kinda defeated the purpose of dated pages since some days went over one page. And I wasn't even starting school yet so why did I use it for notes?? I know better now.
In the second half of the year I tried to use it for more traditional journalling. That didn't really pan out either. Towards the end of the year I used it more for tarot card pulls, astrological transits, and affirmations.
Astrology notes from when I was in a astrolgy book club on Discord.
Notes about The Great Gatsby.
One of my more aesthetic pages.
Some planning for my Japan trip. I was learning Japanese too (I didn't use a lick of it other than "thank you" and "sorry" and "excuse me").
I used this layout quite a lot. Time blocking. Astro transits. Gratitude. Tarot card pull. Random notes.
Maybe it's just the Capricorn in me but this was my favourite spread. Simple. Bold. Black and white. I meditated on affirmations a little bit more seriously.
I really regret not getting a 5 Year Techo in 2020. It would have been great in hindsight. But I got one for 2021 instead. It's very personal so I didn't take any pictures of it. I get pretty granular with it, despite it being so small. I try to write as much about my day as possible. Very little reflection is done in here. On the right pages I write down my top 5 most listened to songs. I'm not always consistent with it. Turns out, June, July, and October are the months where I do the least journalling (Cancer, Leo, and Virgo season? I wonder if there is an astrological reason).
I bought this on a whim because it was shiny and new. I have no idea how it compared to the A6 Hobonichi Original but it feels like the same? Except for the cover maybe?
Early on in the year I tried to use it for journalling. But it kinda felt like I was duplicating what I was writing in my 5 Year. I am very wary about writing down my feelings in a book due to trauma over my parents reading my journals. So I transitioned from journalling to doing what I am now doing in my cousin, AKA tracking transits and card pulls. But September onwards I used it as a book journal. I would write down what books I read, how many pages, and what I thought about the book. If there was a day I didn't read anything, I would write a review of a book I had already read. It was fun and I'm keeping it up in 2024.
Yearly Calendar
Used it to keep track of when I read. I was able to extrapolate pre-September dates by looking at my 5 year entries. Not super accurate as I may have missed a date. I also made a mistake. All the x's are wrong. The source of truth are the highlighted dates.
Yearly Index
I recorded my tarot card pulls here. But starting in October (as you will see in the next picture), I transitioned to keeping track of how many pages I read.
I read A LOT of manga/graphic novels so I separated the pages between regular books and manga/graphic novels.
Monthly Pages
Okay, I actually liked what I did here. I wrote down what book I read each day. If I didn't read, I just covered it with washi. A good excuse to use washi!
Daily Pages
An example of some journalling pages. Very boring with a splash of washi.
One of my favourite pages. It's a little thick so sometimes it would just open automatically to this page. Very little written on it but it's so pretty.
An example of two book review pages. I didn't write too much.
Example of how some of my daily reading pages. Can range from huge text block to just one sentence.
Most of this post is just me showing off pictures. Yes, they're a little hard to read but it's on purpose. I experimented a lot this year. I think I will continue to experiment again this year. I'm never really fully satisfied with one way of doing things and there is always something that could be improved. In another post I'll detail how I'll use my books in 2024.
2024-01-07
I want to meet you
But let's not meet
I don't think I could stand to be in the same space as you
Breathe the same air as you
Look at the same things as you
Hear the same things as you
I'd rather run away
Take a last minute vacation
Call in sick
Break my own leg
Turn around the moment I hear your voice down the corridor
But I think I would try sneak glances every now and then
Take a peek around the corner
Keep one earbud in so the other could pick up your voice
I want to meet you
I want to meet your gaze
and hold it
I don't want you to meet me
2024-01-04
If you're not familiar with what Last.fm is, it is basically a website that keeps track of the songs you listen to. I've been scrobbling (their term, not mine) tracks since 2011. I have a lot of data with them (a privacy nightmare) and I don't care because I love the stats!!!
Right off the bat, Last.fm is always more accurate than Spotify. I don't listen to music just on Spotify. I have a local library that I listen to as well and Spotify doesn't keep track of that. With their yearly summary, Last.fm also includes listening in November and December, which Spotify doesn't. Yes, the Spotify-Last.fm connection can be spotty so it is not 100% but I think it all cancels out.
Last.fm switched things up this year and finally implemented a year end summary that's more similar to Spotify Wrapped. Every year I eagerly await the stats but this year I was so curious about how Last.fm would implement it this time around.
Let's dive into it.
I have listened to 3,339 artists this year. I'm not sure if that's a lot? Is it? I have no idea what the typical number of artists a person listens to in a year.
Admittedly, the bar graph is a little confusing to me. Each bar represents the number of artists that I listened to each week. But is it unique artists across each week? For example, if I listen to Green Day in Week 10, are they also counted when I listen to them on Week 22? My gut feeling is no.
The lowest point in this graph is around the July-August range. This makes sense to me because I was travelling overseas. I couldn't listen to as much music because I was too busy being a tourist and I didn't come across wi-fi too often. I did download a few Spotify playlists but the selection was pretty limited.
I listened to 5,831 albums this year. Again, is this a lot? I don't really know!
I listened to 9,316 tracks this year. I kinda want to try to hit 10,000 next year. Solely because 9,300 is "only" 700 tracks away from 10,000. It can kinda get dangerous how Last.fm manipulates how I listen to music.
I listened to songs 40,424 times this year. Admittedly, sometimes I play music when I'm sleeping. But I tried really hard to clean up those scrobbles in the latter half of the year. I can't speak for the beginning of the year, though.
This year I listened to 109 days and 3 hours of music. Nice. That's almost 1/3 of the year. Checks out, honestly. I am a music fiend.
I liked what Last.fm did. The graphic is a little simplistic but it was animated and everything. Very cute.
109 days and 3 hours of music translates to 1746 cassette tapes. Have kids these days even seen a cassette tape in real life? This was a cute tidbit but it's hard to visualize. Maybe CDs would land with my generation better. Or go a bit more universal and use vinyls instead, since those have made a comeback.
If I needed to commute to moon 34 times, I have a very long playlist I could listen to on my way there and back. This is a cool stat! Apparently it would take less than 80 hours to travel to the moon. I'd probably be sleeping for most of that, hah.
I am the top 55th listener of the band Protest the Hero. I'm surprised I didn't rank higher for anyone else. But I will take it. I saw Protest the Hero in concert this year and it was a lot of fun. I fell in love with their discography all over again this year.
Okay... I'm only the top 10th listener of Volition??? I swear I played this album so many times. I need to know who the other 9 top listeners are. Volition is such a good album. I think Palimpsest is a more consistent album (as in, it's a no-skip album) but Volition have a lot of tracks with great replayability. So it's the best of both worlds: a strong album start to finish (it does have its weak tracks) and has songs that I can play over and over.
I am the top listener of 沒有人想念沒離開的人 by William Wei!! He really surprised me with this track. Typically he releases a lot of ballads. This song was... Not a ballad. It was way more groovy than I expect from Mr. Wei but more than anything, it had an ethereal quality to it. It felt tender but also a little forlorn at the same time. Outstanding track from William Wei.
My top tags this year were K-pop, Japanese, indie, rock, indie rock, J-pop, and J-rock. K-pop being my top genre was a little surprising to me... I think the other genres balance it out, though. I definitely think I do listen to too much K-pop. There's just so much more music out there!! This year I'm trying to listen to less K-pop.
This is a really cool graphic. So it kinda documents when I listen to music. A flat line means no music at all. And you can see dead times (aka sleeping hours) in the graph. Kinda looks like a mountain range that is drawn by a polygraph machine.
My top artist is TAEMIN with 2196 scrobbles. I'm a little surprised by the lack of scrobbles in January and February. Apparently I listened to a lot of Protest the Hero and Coheed and Cambria during that time frame. I think with the news of Taemin coming back from the military spurred on the listening in March/April.
My top artists this year were TAEMIN, NewJeans, Coheed and Cambria, and Protest the Hero. This bubble graph isn't the greatest. The smaller circles don't have any text and you need to hover over it to see the names. Not the greatest for wanting to share it with others (aka you, dear reader).
To the surprise of no one, my top album this year is NewJeans's Get Up with 589 scrobbles. It's impressive how it came out halfway through the year and managed to rocket up the charts. This album is good. It's a shame how short it is but I will take brevity if it means quality.
I love album collages... I blame /r/lastfm. Here are my top 25 albums of 2023.
SONG. OF. THE YEAR.
My top 5 tracks of 2023:
The Playback is different from the Last.Year. It's in a different format, more web page than scrollable phone experience. A lot of the information is repeated but there are some differences.
For example, the total scrobbles gives a month by month breakdown instead and also compares it to last year. I think I prefer this view over the Playback view.
I like how this section also shows the top new artist. For me, that was boygenius this year. My library was also 49% new artists. Aiming for 50% next year!
Top new album is Get Up. Of course. Also have 61% new albums this year. 2020s just has a lot of good music, okay.
Top new track is Cool With You. Another non-surprise. With 58% new tracks. As I said earlier, I'm going to try to aim for 10k unique tracks this year.
What a fitting song to start off the year. The first song I scrobbled in 2023 was White Feathers by L'Arc~en~Ciel. A really pretty song and off of my favourite L'Arc~en~Ciel album, too.
A heat map of all my scrobbles every day. December and April were pretty consistent. April was consistent I think because of Taemin's military discharge. December because I was feeling particularly down and music comforts me.
I didn't take a screenshot of all my ratios but here they are in list form:
My ratios are about what I expect. I listen to a lot of playlists in order to discover new artists. Some artists/albums/tracks I listen to once and never again. Which balances out how obsessive I can get with certain artists/albums/tracks.
A less aesthetic but still aesthetic version of the mountain range. This is a circular bar graph that shows my peak listening times. Apparently that's 11am, hah.
I once ran Pudding's roast-my-Spotify tool and they said I don't listen to enough music released before 2019. It's true. My music taste is solidly in the 2020's, apparently. I should branch out and listen to more classics. But so many people are releasing super cool music nowadays.
My mainstream score is 58%. My most obscure artist is Ueda Tatsuya, apparently?? I think that makes sense because most of the songs I have from him in my library are bootlegs, lol.
Well, at least I'm consistent. Last year I was 58% as well. I want to be obscure, though. We'll give it a shot but my taste is honestly so basic, even though I talk like I have sophisticated taste.
One of my favourite pro features is the leaderboard. I don't bother competing with some of my friends on Last.fm. Some of them are truly power users.
This year I ranked 7th in terms of number of tracks scrobbled. I think my summer months contributed to my fall in rank.
I rank 14th. I have no idea how the top person on my leaderboard managed to listen to 99% new artists. That's awesome. It would be nice to hit 50% this year.
I love stats!! Last.fm is weird because the stats do kinda influence how I listen to music. It makes me want to discover more and go out of my comfort zone. I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm both hard and easy to please. I love finding new music and discovering new tracks. I feel weird when I get into listening ruts. So trying out different music is something I do naturally anyway.
Here's to another year of listening. Can't wait for NewJeans to come out with the next song of the year.
2024-01-01
I love music stats. I love stats in general. But I especially love music stats. I rely on Last.fm for most of my music stats needs. Most people know of Spotify Wrapped but it notoriously fudges some of the data and excludes any listening from November and December. Last.fm is more accurate for me, especially since I don't just listen to music on Spotify. Last.fm can aggregate your listening from Bandcamp and other music software or apps.
That being said, let's see what Spotify said about my music in 2023.
This is no surprise. Taemin finally came back from the military. He turned 30. He came out with a mini album. Why wouldn't I blast his discography to celebrate all these milestones?? I'm also in the top 0.05% of listeners. That kinda surprised me. He has around 3.3 million listeners per month. That would put me in the top 1700 listeners. Did I do the math right? That can't be right, haha. But I do admit, I listen to a lot of Taemin in April, when he was discharged. I'm just happy that he's back.
To be honest, they are my group of the year. I know there has been a lot of controversy around this group but almost every thing they have released has been amazing (ignoring the League of Legends song they did for Worlds). Get Up was a solid mini album and I liked it front to back. When it came out late July, I played it quite a lot in August.
Coheed and Cambria almost always makes it into my Spotify Wrapped. They're definitely in my top 5 of all time musicians, not just for this year. But for 2023 in particular, I've been slowly growing into their latest release, Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind. I also went to one of their Neverender shows in September for No World for Tomorrow. After seeing them live, I put that album on repeat quite a bit after the concert (hence the October peak).
I'm a recent-ish Protest the Hero fan. When they released Palimpsest in 2020, I didn't think about ever seeing them live again. But when I saw that they were coming to my city, I just had to. I decided to dive deep into their discography a little more because I was only really familiar with two of their albums. I saw them in October so that coincides with the October peak.
Okay, this was a surprise to me. Did I really listen to so much SHINee? I checked Last.fm and yes, I really did listen to that much SHINee. When they released HARD in June, I pretty much played it on repeat for a bit. I still can't say I love the album but it was an okay release. I also dove a little more into their discography since I'm really only familiar with their singles.
Song. Of. The. Year. I love Ditto so much. I hope I never get tired of it. The beat will live forever in my heart.
INVU by TAEYEON I'm surprised at the lasting power of this song. This was my #1 song in 2022. Just goes to show how good this song is. I feel like every time I listen to it, I can uncover another layer of the song.
One Last Kiss by 宇多田 ヒカル I love Utada so much!!! This song is perfect. The longing in this song and the fondness... Makes my heart melt.
もしもし by EMI MARIA Another song from last year. This song is just too good... Maybe this says more about my listening habits, than anything else. I love to put things on repeat. And I think I discovered this song near the end of 2022, too.
Cool With You by NewJeans I knew from the very first beat that this was going to be my song. It feels so high fashion. I love hearing that from NewJeans. Seriously addictive.
K-pop I'm kinda ashamed at just how much K-pop I listen to, hah. But I think the other genres kinda balance it out.
Rock This is so generic. Rock??? Maybe I just listen to plain generic rock. Depressing, if true.
J-rock Okay, I do listen to a lot of J-rock. I was going to say that unlike K-pop, J-rock has a lot of variety within the genre, but these days I'm having trouble finding J-rock bands that don't sound like something I've heard before. Additionally, there is variety in K-pop. You just gotta look harder for it.
Indie Pop Another vague genre... I do like my indie, though. Although sometimes I wonder just how "indie" they are when I know so many people who know "indie" pop artists.
Visual Kei This one surprised me. I didn't think I listened to that much visual kei... I do listen to DIR EN GREY on the regular. Versailles did come out with a new song mid-way through the year and I went on a mini-Versailles kick. This one has me puzzled, haha.
Apparently I listen to the same music as people from Berkely, California, USA? Funny how the examples listed in the image (Japanese Breakfast, boygenius, and Sleater-Kinner) are very considered to be "for the sapphics." Glad to know I would fit in with the WLW crowd in California.
According to Spotify, I'm a Time Traveler. Which means I go back to old songs I liked and then put them on repeat. Basically, I don't get tired of songs. I mean, I do get tired of songs but maybe over the course of several years.
I've listened to 113,661 minutes of music on Spotify. That's average 311 minutes a day, or around 5 hours. Which checks out. I tend to listen to a lot of music at work and throughout the day. I'm listening to music right now (playing I'm Your Man by Mitski). Truthfully, my focus on the music itself can vary throughout the day. Like right now, I am in love with I'm Your Man so I'm singing along to it as i type this out. Other times it does fade out into the background a bit.
As of writing this post, the 2023 stats have not yet been released on Last.fm. I will definitely be putting up a post when it's released. The last two months of listening can really change things up, especially if I discover something new or if there is a new release towards the end of the year.
But I'm looking forward to seeing if Last.fm can top Spotify Wrapped. It seems like they're taking the year end stats in a new direction and I hope they can deliver...
2023-12-30
As of today I have traveled around the sun 29 times. It's kinda wild to think about. I don't feel 29 but does anyone ever really feel their age? A big part of it (and I've mentioned a few times across the Internet) is that the last three (and soon to be four) years seemed to have slipped away from me. I often say that I still feel the same as I how I did when I entered 2020 but when I think about it more, I have changed.
In 2020 I was stuck. I was still madly in love with someone who had clearly moved on. For a long time I saw them as the villain in my love story. But when I look back on it now, I feel sad for them. Maybe it was my empathy that landed me with that person in the first place, but I had so badly wanted to (cliche alert) be the one to defy the odds and fix them. I wanted them to love me back so badly. But they were wrapped up in their own hurt which ended up hurting me.
I'm just tired of chasing. Throwing myself at the feet of someone to beg for their attention. I don't want to find love, I want it to find me. So many of my relationships I was the initiator. I just want to be chosen for once.
I'm trying to choose myself more these days. Being by myself is something I am pretty content with. It's when I get a taste of what it would be like to have a connection with someone that I get a little wistful. Lately I am craving for love and most of all, companionship. I miss physical, spiritual, and mental closeness. I want to share myself with someone. I want someone to share themselves with me.
This year I'm going to try to go a little more "low stakes" and aim for friendship. As much as I desire for it, I don't think I'm ready for love. I need friends, more than anything.