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The year of 2025 is over, & I am incredibly grateful & appreciative for such an eventful year. The biggest milestone of that year was my child turning 5. I cannot believe she is already half a decade old already. Five years in, & I still cannot believe that I am a mother, a caretaker of another human being that I helped to create. I mean, I still feel like a child myself most days. How could I possibly be responsible for a child of my own? It’s hard for me to wrap my head around it, but it’s happening, & I am figuring it out minute-by-minute.
Here are a few other things that I am grateful for that happened in 2025:
- I’ve made some small, yet positive steps towards changing a few stubborn habits & behavioral patterns
- I’ve learned to be slightly less of a ‘helicopter parent’
- I went on TWO major & meaningful overseas vacations
- I strengthened relationships with family members I have struggled to communicate with in the past
- I was able to take my mom on a significant & core-memory-making overseas trip with her youngest granddaughter (for context, she has never been on any significant trip with any of her grandchildren, ever.)
- I only (unwillingly) listened to &/or heard the song All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey THREE TIMES throughout the entire Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season.
- Plenty of western Christmas music was played all throughout the Asian countries I visited during my 3-week autumn/winter vacation, but I only heard Mariah’s voice blaring once the entire time. Hallelujah!
Seriously, you don’t understand how grateful I am for that last item on my list. Well, I mean, I don’t necessarily hate that particular song, but hearing it more than a few of times (& I used to work in retail at my local shopping mall for a few years) can be incredibly annoying & boring.
As for this new year, 2026…I am not sure if I am looking forward to what lies ahead. I have mixed feelings as of right now. My child is about to leave preschool & move on to elementary/primary school. If you’ve been following my blog since the beginning, you’ll understand that I am extremely afraid of any type of change…like, life-altering/milestone types of change, not change in weather or fashion, or tv shows…so, I am feeling mixed bouts of anxiety at the moment. Maybe that’s what triggered me being ill at the very start of the new year. Who knows? I probably just need to build up my immune system. (I’ve been under the weather more times in the past year than any other year within the last decade.) We’ll see. Until the next one, hope for the best.
Song of the Day:
I was listening to the song “Your Side of Town” by The Killers on the radio today, and it very much reminded me of a close friend of mine who has the same tastes in western music as I do. The style of this song got me reminiscing about the kind of music each of us used to listen to when we were in high school…or maybe even younger.
I was listening to this song, bopping along in my car, and my mind started imagining and making up a story/scenario. I was imagining my friend being back in high school, but the whole tone had a John Hughes (a classic 1980s movie director, if you didn’t know) vibe. I was picturing my friend standing against the wall on the side of the school, wearing skinny-ish jeans & a slouchy blazer with a collared shirt & skinny tie, trying to flirt with girls while feeling super angst and moody.
That got my mind drifting and wandering even more, & as I parked my car in my driveway, I stopped my imaginary stories. I suddenly realized, while also talking to myself aloud in the car, that I love my imagination. I love the way my mind drifts & I can invent wild & fanciful stories that I can picture to myself so vividly.
I have always been a kid who can make up stories with my own imagination, on the spot. I rarely write them down, but I often remember stories I’ve thought of years ago. Sometimes I will go back to one of my old imaginings & reimagine the whole scenario with added embellishments, or to fit the current time. Other times, I will think back on an old story I made up just to reminisce about that scenario I once thought of.
No matter how old I get, I will never stop imagining stories or daydream in my mind. I love every one of my made up stories. They are little scenes just for me, and they make me so happy. Cheers.
Well, I didn’t get to write that epic Japan travel recap blog that I promised to post here. 2023 has already come & gone, & we are officially two & a half weeks into 2024. On the same day that we flew home from Japan, Jian had to fly right back out for a crucial work trip in Los Angeles. He barely had time to shower & eat lunch before he was rushing back to the airport. I, on the other hand, got pretty sick from the jet lag when we got back. I mean, the jet lag knocked me on my ass for nearly a week. At least we weren’t planning on going anywhere special for the Thanksgiving holiday, so that was a bonus…but my brother was going to be staying with us for a week, which means I barely had time after recovering from jet lag to get the house guest-ready.
The first half of November will go down as one of my all-time core memories. Our little trio had the best time in Japan, & hopefully I can recap everything for this blog site in a different post. All I can say for now is that I cannot wait to take our little bean back to the land of the rising sun again. It was an absolute blast getting to reconnect with my fraternal cousins & hang out with old friends again. I was definitely surprised how well our little bean was able to adapt to such a head-turning new environment. Stay tuned for a slightly more in-depth post in the near future.
The latter half of November flew by in a blur. Then our little trio embarked on a new journey. We were sending our little bean off to preschool for the first time! We were both excited & nervous at the same time, but no one was more nervous than me. I was feeling major separation anxiety, & if you have been following my blog for quite some time, you’ll already know I have a moderate fear of things changing, especially with major life milestones, hence my love of routines & steady habits. Sending the little bean off to preschool wasn’t nearly as scary as I had thought it would be, but you know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do a little freak out session in my head first.
Pretty much the whole month of December was spent being on-again-off-again sick. It was either myself or the little bean being sick, & by sick I mean a small variety of illnesses such as: allergies, cold, flu, etcetera. Our best friends, who already send their little one to daycare, already warned us countless times about how our little bean will be bringing home some sort of virus or germs from school every other week, but surprisingly, she hasn’t gotten sick from anyone at school yet. *KNOCK ON WOOD* We’ve just been passing around the everyday seasonal virus or germs between our little household. Every other week at least one person in our household has a runny nose or a scratch throat, but nothing too serious like the big C-word. *KNOCK ON WOOD, AGAIN*
Our Christmas holiday this year was better than previous years. For the first time in a long time my sister & our brother (her fully-related brother, also my half-brother) weren’t at each other’s throats or fighting like cats & dogs. It was kind of a relaxing & peaceful time. The only mishaps that happened were when a couple of sentimental tree ornaments got broken & my niece passed her cold virus to me & my little bean. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful month, & nothing significant happened. Uh, well, maybe I should mention that this past week I check into the Urgent Care ward at the hospital to treat a severe case nausea & vomiting. After getting checked out by the doctor, I was cleared to recover at home. It is safe to say that I am now back to good health other than a slight case of the sniffles, but we’ve been having a cold weather front recently, so that might be what’s prolonging my runny nose.
This year, in 2024, I have absolutely no resolutions whatsoever. Zero. I do not need to make any resolutions. I am just going to keep on doing what I need to do & what I want to do from here on out. I don’t need to make any special promises or goals. My goals are just ordinary life milestones that should & will be happening naturally on their own anyway. I don’t need to declare a resolution to make those life goals happen. So that is all I am going to say about that. Until the next post, cheers to everyone in 2024!
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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