January Review

A bar-hopping expedition in the Valley helped get me to 28 new things for the month, which is obviously way off pace for 500 New Things but since my other goal this year is to check out all of my old haunts and revisit some of my favorite bars and restaurants, 28 New Things isn’t bad and is probably more realistic, especially since I’m about to start a new gig that’s going to eat up more of my time than my previous job.

My Map of 2026 is pretty populated after just one month and the obvious thing that jumps out is that I need to cool it with the strip clubs. Maybe it’s a sign that I need to get back on the dating apps. To be fair, if I wasn’t doing this map, I probably wouldn’t have pulled the trigger and gone to as many but it’s still probably not great that they were on my radar so much to begin with.

The one thing my forays into the strippies did expose was that my small talk skills have absolutely deteriorated. I’m not sure they really ever bounced back from COVID but working remotely has also helped them atrophy. I’ve never been as good at chatting people up as I should be - I get into my head too much or simply don’t invest enough attention into the conversation - but there have been a couple of painful convos where the girl was trying to chat, my brain was thinking “Why don’t you say something?” and I just kind of flounder and throw out the lamest retorts and zero follow through. So maybe I shouldn’t get back on the dating apps quite yet.

Too much of my focus this month as been on The Map and I haven’t worked out or written at all. Those are going to be top priority for February.