This is the first of hopefully many monthly entries where I plan on talking about interesting and beautiful things I encounter within a calendar month. January for me began with the public launch of this website and my departure (though not complete abandonment) of conventional social media. I will talk about this in the Personal section. This month I saw 10 different movies, all 10 for the first time. My favorite was "All We Imagine as Light" (2024) directed by Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia. I finished one book, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. My most listened-to artists of the month were Astor Piazzolla and Natalia Lafourcade. A month full of changes and plan-making that aims to rebel and respond to an ever-changing world.

Personal

One of the things I wanted to change in 2025 with respect to 2024 was my approach towards my phone. Towards the end of the past year I became aware and quite uncomfortable with the amount of time I spent (or rather, slipped through my fingers) without being fully aware. In 2024 I had tried different methods including having to take a pause before opening a distracting app but after a while this didn't make much difference so I knew I had to make a change.

What I'm doing now and found way more effective is to, first, uninstall all the distracting apps, making them only accessible through the browser. The key word here is inconvenience. The apps make everything too convenient, too easy, thus it becomes almost a habit to open one of these apps when we have a little free time or when our brain is craving dopamine. Making accessing these apps as 'inconvenient' as opening a book or starting a movie, long form content, is the first step. These days I am also only allowed to access social media websites within a self imposed schedule.

The results are in the numbers: In January I watched the same amount of movies I watched in the last 4 months of 2024 and I found myself reading more than in December 2024. Although it is also fair to mention that in those months I was dealing with my last semester of college. If the stats feature on Goodreads is not lying, I've already read, in January alone, 19% of the number of pages I read in all of 2024. If this trend continues, by the end of 2025 I will read more than twice the amount of pages than I read in 2024 although I am not too concerned about the number of films or the amount of pages, the important thing is being present and enjoying the content.

Dream Journal

Since the beginning of this year, I've been keeping a handwritten dream journal. Previously, I would type my dreams on my phone immediately upon waking, but now I take time to recall and write them by hand. I read somewhere that this practice of manual writing, even if done later in the day, can enhance dream recall. If I notice any improvement in my dream memory, I'll share an update here.

One pattern has emerged clearly: all of my dreams are in Spanish, and they frequently revolve around places and people from my past—my childhood home, my elementary school, old friends I haven't seen in years. Hay un pedazo de mí que se quedó en mi tierra.

Music

During the first week of the year I came across this recording on Youtube of Stereolab performing Peng! 33 live at a record store in Maryland, November 1993. This is one of my favorite songs by the band and the live version is much warmer than the album version. The BBC Radio Session is also worth a listen if you don't know it.

Magical things are happening in this world

The rest of the month I couldn't take off my mind the tango scene in Happy Together (1997) with Milonga for Three by Astor Piazzolla playing in the background, hence why this was my most-listened song of the month.

I also thoroughly enjoyed this album released in December of last year, Natalia Lafourcade live at Carnegie Hall. A must listen.

Movies

Almost overlapping with the Music section, but when I saw Nosferatu (2024) in theaters, I couldn't help but think that the soundtrack could use more organ. I was thinking specifically of this piece by Bach. Maybe it was the ambiance achieved in Count Orlock's castle that reminded me of a cathedral; if you've seen the movie you'll know what I mean.

Out of all the movies I saw I want to highlight All We Imagine as Light (2024), my favorite of the month. I'm not going to spoil it or go into much detail but if I had to describe it I'd say it is like a mix of Little Women's storytelling + Wong Kar-wai's distinctive visual style. The colors were beautiful (rare to see in a movie these days) and the way it touched difficult themes like migration, gentrification, belonging, the feeling of loneliness in a big city with an almost poetic patience really resonated with me. The original soundtrack by Topshe was also beautiful. At some point it made me tear up, and although I think it loses steam towards the third act, I would still greatly recommend it if you're into slice of life films.

Book

During January I finally finished Nausea by Sartre, and I say finally because this book took me over a year to finish even though this is a short novel. I originally picked it up during the last week of 2023 because I saw it recommended in many different places when I was looking for something similar to Camus' The Stranger, and although there are similar themes, I found the pacing and main idea of the two books very different. The first half of Nausea to me was unbearably slow, so much so that I had to take a long break after getting through it to read something else. The second half picks up a little bit but it never really connected with me, maybe I just read it at the wrong time. I saw a lot of reviews mentioning that this book was able to induce an existential crisis to the readers but to me it was one of the hardest books to get through that I've ever read. Maybe that was the point.

During January I also started reading El invencible verano de Liliana (Liliana's Invincible Summer) by Cristina Rivera Garza, and I'm already half-way through it! Hopefully I will finish it this month, it's been a good lecture so far. It feels nice to read in my mother tongue, even when the subject is a sensitive one.

Closing thoughts

I am still getting the hang of this; writing long-form updates rather than a few instagram stories, so this format is still subject to change but I find monthly updates reasonable, with occasional weekly updates when the content demands it. It is now February, let's hope it's sweet but not too short. Slowness is a good thing. Most of the time (I'm looking at you, Nausea).

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

— Albert Camus