December 30, 2024
I am WELL aware that this post comes almost a week after Christmas and we're literally 2 days away from 2025 BUT you have to understand that I am Puerto Rican and we don't stop celebrating Christmas until mid-January... not my fault y'all are boring!!! that being SAID... I wanna wish all of you the happiest of Holidays, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and got everything you wanted, whether that be presents, good food, spending time with family & friends, or just being able to chill. I had a pretty good Christmas myself, though I spent most of the time leading up to it working... BLEEEHHH. Do you guys like the Christmas layout I gave the website? (let me put a picture here jic ur reading this after i change it)
Thought it would be really fun to decorate the website for the Holidays! I kinda regret not posting as much on here this month, tho. I always say I will try to be more active but I either don't have time or straight up just don't want to! Then again, it's not like this is something that I have to do... it's just for fun! And there's no fun in things when you feel obligated to do it. It's not like there's that many people checking up on this site anyways.
With 2024 coming to an end VERY soon, I thought I would reflect on this past year. And of course, because multiple sections of this website are dedicated to music, it would only be appropriate to start with my SPOTIFY WRAPPED! which yes has been out for like 3 weeks and I'm pretty sure everyone is over it at this point but irdgaf ANYWAYS here it issssss :3
I have Last.fm (follow me!!!) so none of this really comes as a surprise to me, but it's still nice to have it all wrapped (heh) up in a neat little package of graphics at the end of the year. Though I will say, Spotify kinda phoned it in this year. I was not impressed with the Wrapped story this year and it seemed to be missing a lot of stats that they had previously featured in other years. I heard some rumors that it's because of Spotify (ALLEGEDLY) laying off some of its staff in favor of using more AI on its platform, but I don't know how true or false that is. All I know is that 2024 Wrapped left something to be desired... As far as the actual results go, the only "shocker" to me is how Dannii didn't end up at #1 over Kylie! "Neon Nights" was my most listened to album of the year after all. I think it has to do with the fact that I began listening to Kylie before Dannii as well as Kylie having an exponentially larger catalog than Dannii. For the top songs, it doesn't come to a surprise to anyone that "Dear J" is once again at #1 which would make it it's 3rd year topping my Wrapped if it wasn't for the fact that it wasn't available on Spotify in 2022, making "FEARLESS" by LE SSERAFIM the top song that year. I'm gonna put my Wrapped playlist below so you can check out my top songs this year, let me know which ones are also your faves!!!
2024 was a year of a lot of change for me: I started a new job, I have a car now aaaaaaand actually I think that's about all the major change lmfao. I started off the year feeling pretty optimistic about things, but I'm gonna be SO real with you guys, I haven't been feeling all that great lately. I lowkey (highkey) really can't stand my job anymore; it's not necessarily about what I have to do as much as it is about what is expected from me. One day it's one thing, the next it's another. It's kinda funny in a really fucked up way how you have to become a soul-less robot for a shitty minimum wage food service job. I mean, I'm glad that I have a source of income at all, and this isn't me trying to tell off people who are genuinely passionate about these types of jobs, but this is not even nearly the space that I want to be in, and I can tell that everyone around me at my job feels the same way about themselves. I know this is only something that I have to do until I graduate and get a job in the field I'm actually interested in but MAN does it fuckin SUCK!! I have to keep telling myself this is only temporary and I'm not gonna have to keep doing this my whole life but omfg it's hard to even believe that when I feel like my whole life revolved around this damn job. Not even uni makes me feel this way. In fact, not to toot my own horn, but i've been doing really well at school. Of course, it's still stressful and there are some hiccups here and there, but those hiccups mostly come from extracurricular activities which I wish I could put more time and effort into but alas I have like 20 other things on my plate. I hope that with the Holidays slowly winding down over the next month (just have to get thru the Día de Reyes rush...) things will calm down a bit at the mall I work at, but I truly don't expect for things to get better at work unless there's more employees. I kid you not, since I started working in like July/August, like 5 people have left! I. CAN'TTTTTT. But it's okay not all is bad, I was able to get my family and friends Christmas presents this year which was super nice, I ate good food and overall had lots of fun this Christmas, so I guess maybe my shitty job is sorta kinda worth it... maybe
I want to hold space in this post to talk about Wicked cuz I freakin LOVED that movie and I genuinely think it might be my favorite one this year. To be quite honest, I didn't really expect to like it this much, I wasn't really familiar with the original Wicked musical other than the fact that it's related to the Wizard of Oz, so this movie was quite literally my introduction to the Wicked lore. One of the reasons I wanted to see it is because I'm 99% sure this is Ariana Grande's first main role in like a big film production, and y'all know I love me some Ari! I didn't think I was gonna hate this movie or anything, I knew at the very least I was gonna have an enjoyable time... What I didn't expect was the EMOTIONAL reaction I was going to have from it. I was literally SOBBING at the end of the film from how powerful the last scene was. I won't go too into detail because I don't want to be a spoiler, but I need you to literally go and watch the film if you haven't already. I don't know if it's still in theaters at this point, but I know it's going to be available to buy and rent digitally tomorrow so yeah DO THAT! I personally am waiting until it comes out on Blu-ray, but I've been itching to watch it again ever since I saw it at the theater, I'm almost tempted to rent it digitally... Part 2 is coming out next year if all goes well, and you best believe I will be buying tickets for it as soon as it premieres!! Spectacular cast, I don't think they could've picked better people to play the characters; the music was good and I LOVED all the colors and the fashion. My only true gripe with it is how slow it felt at parts, but every other aspect of it was so great, that it wasn't too much of an issue. And I loved "Defying Gravity" so much, I'm including it here for you to listen:
Since starting this website back in June, I've put a lot of time and effort into it (though it may not look like it LMAO) to make it feel really personal to me. That's why I was against the idea of using a template. It's not that there's anything wrong with using a template for your website, I know a lot of my moots on Neocities do that and they turn out looking fab and you can always customize them. It's just that I wanted to give myself the challenge of learning how to code in HTML so I could make this website all the more of my own. It's nowhere near perfect, and there's some things I wish to improve at some point, but for now I am SO proud of how this website has turned out so far. I also wanted to thank everyone who was visited this website this year, signed the guestbook, left comments on my profile, etc. I never thought so many people would ever see my page (20,000!!!) because this was honestly just something that I wanted to do as a silly little hobby. So, I'm very grateful to hear of other people finding enjoyment in this page, some even linking it on their own pages! So, to everyone who has interacted, viewed, followed, or shared my website in any form or capacity, THANK YOU!
This has been one hell of a year with some great moments and some not-so-great ones, but overall I'm just happy to be alive to see another year. I know that's maybe a silly thing for a 20-year-old to say; some may say I have my whole life ahead of me, which could be true, but anything can happen! Life is so unpredictable that honestly, I could even die before January 1st and that whole statement of me seeing another year would be rendered false (KNOCK ON WOOD I WILL NOT DIE BEFORE 2025 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼) which is why I'm always glad to have even made it to just this point in my life. Some of my biggest goals are to grow old, have a house, a family, have fabulous dinner parties; but I can't do any of that if I don't make it through this stage of life first... As shit as things might be right now, I just gotta keep reminding myself it'll be all worth it in the end... at least I hope so. BUT let me not be a Debby Downer henniii cuz this is most likely going to be my last post of 2024!! I'm hoping that 2025 will bring positive change to not just life but also YOURS! May all your hopes and dreams come true in the New Year, and if they don't there's always 2026! As I am writing this I am just know realizing that we are almost halfway thru the decade MY GAWD time literally flies cuz the pandemic feels like it was yesterday... ANYWAYS! That is all from me this year my darlings! Have a safe and Happy New Year!!
