What A Year This Month Has Been

Stephanie Hayes
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 21:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

What do you mean it's still January? From Minneapolis to Venezuela to Greenland, a year's worth of current events have unfolded in a matter of weeks. Here are a few things that feel as long as the first few weeks of January have felt:

The first workout after vacation at the all-inclusive where you consumed nothing but strawberry daiquiris, pool beer, chunks of fried chicken in sauce, melted cheese on top of melted cheese and copious cans of Celsius in lieu of any discernible water.

Every episode of "Stranger Things" in Season 4 and Season 5.
Updated: Sat Jan 24, 2026

What do you mean it's still January? From Minneapolis to Venezuela to Greenland, a year's worth of current events have unfolded in a matter of weeks. Here are a few things that feel as long as the first few weeks of January have felt:

The first workout after vacation at the all-inclusive where you consumed nothing but strawberry daiquiris, pool beer, chunks of fried chicken in sauce, melted cheese on top of melted cheese and copious cans of Celsius in lieu of any discernible water.

Every episode of "Stranger Things" in Season 4 and Season 5.

"In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust, the modernist French novel published in 1913 exploring themes of the human condition over the span of 486 chapters, more than 4,000 pages and 1.2 million words.

The hour of 4 a.m. when you wake with a start for no reason whatsoever and begin ruminating on how all the people you love will surely meet an untimely and stunningly specific demise that's somehow your fault.

"The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World," a 1968 British underground film that runs 48 hours and is full of stock footage and news clips on a loop with the intent to wear out the viewer.

A mandatory 90-minute work meeting on Microsoft Teams that could have been an email, or honestly, no email at all.

When you drop a certifiably hysterical text in the group chat, and three people start to type and then stop, leaving the text on read for two days until someone changes the subject.

The last five minutes of Catholic Mass after Communion when you are 8 years old, and the priest wants to tell a funny anecdote about the visiting deacon from a nearby diocese, and your mom snaps you in the leg with her fingernail when you start to groan.

When you're at a concert from your favorite artist who has dozens of singalong radio hits but pauses in the middle of the set to play some "tracks we're messing around with for the next album."

A two-hour road trip to a professional event with a coworker you barely know who asked if they could "catch a ride with you."

"Oppenheimer."

Waiting for compound interest to grow.