February 2026 R.E.P.O.R.T.
rabbit rabbit
I’ve been thinking about the beauty and simplicity of the calendar pages we used to decorate in elementary school. The January motif was snow, February hearts, March clovers, April raindrops, May flowers, and so on. It could all be so simple. ❄️ ❤️ 🍀 🌧️ 🌼 . And sometimes, it is. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. February was my month of love, honey!
My life has never been more full of love. Is there a little recency bias here because I went to Cheesecake Factory with my girls* last night? Possibly! But I’m certain that I love my friends, my job, and my art. February was romance novels, cranberry mocktails in heart confetti coupe glasses, a dozen red roses, love notes signed with lipstick kisses, windy moors, mixtapes, maraschino cherry stems tied in tight knots with a deft tongue.
And now we’re moving into March! The light is coming, and I feel its rumblings in everything. The Jurassic Park water cup scene, except it’s signaling hope and rebirth instead of a dinosaur attack.
Here’s a pic of me doing the thing where I put a YouTube video on in the background to get the vibes right for writing, some bullshit video titled, ‘gentle music for journaling//rainsounds//no fireplace crackling//1920s party music plays softly in another room’. The video thumbnail is a colorful cartoon image of a vaguely asian girl nuzzling an animal that appears to be some ungodly combo of a dog/cat, the kind where you can spot the signature AI distortion after only a few seconds of inspection. That video does nothing for me, so I switch over to Charli’s Boiler Room set instead. That always does the trick.
Sidenote: If it feels like much of my online presence these days is me complaining about the state of the internet, you’d be mostly right. Am I allowing myself to be ruined by the fact that pedophile techno-facists are financially incentivized to shove AI down our throats, and it’s ushering in the singularity???? Who’s to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What I will say, doubling down on my naturally verbose writing style has felt like a form of protest for me. I’m only sorta kidding about this. I have always been a garrulous writer, but now that most folks can recognize the signature, quippy writing style of LLMs like ChatGPT, I feel a strong desire to push myself even further to make my work something an algorithm cannot replicate. With every run-on sentence, comma splice, and ounce of humor (aka godliness) in my writing, I establish myself as divinely alive.
Without further delay, here is my February REPORT. Thank you for being here. At the intersection of diary entry, listicle, wishlist, and acrostic poem lies the ~ R.E.P.O.R.T. ~
R - reading
I often leave my upcoming read up to fate. The next book that lands in my Libby Library is the next book I read. Everyone who has borrowed the book before me has decided together when it’s my turn. Such is the joy, the romance, and the surprising intimacy of a public library loyalist!
The library gods recently handed me Nat Cassidy’s newest novel, When the Wolf Comes Home, and I am so grateful. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these characters. I devoured this thrilling horror novel in one 4hour sitting. The story explores core elements of trauma, why we fear the things we do, and how managing our fears (or not) shapes our reality. Cassidy’s writing is funny and grotesque, which is a fav combo of mine! I added the rest of his titles to my library queue and will report back.
E - eating
I gave myself a lil (non)spending challenge for February as part of an ongoing financial health overhaul. Doing this first low-buy marked a big turning point in removing fear from finances for me. The first month I challenged myself to an organized low-buy happened to be the shortest month of the year, and I’m just now seeing the humor in that, but it was helpful nonetheless! I’d be happy to go into more detail about what parameters I set, how I established my goals, and what I ended up accomplishing, etc., in a dedicated post if anyone is interested. This would be exclusively for paid subscribers, because these days I’m valuing my perspective/time/effort more than ever :)
A big part of any successful lifestyle change is making sure it aligns with your morals and values. I don’t think lasting change is achievable otherwise, tbh. Ensuring my financial goals include some funds for friends was essential to this month’s success. Since I know all my important expenses are covered, I don’t have to choose between saving and hanging with the girls!!
My February eating included many ‘brought lunch from home’ days, which allowed me to have a few really special ‘gossiping over dinner with new and old besties alike’ nights.
P - playing
Stardew Valley turned 10 this week. Its sole creator, the ever wholesome and deeply passionate Eric Barone, AKA ConcernedApe, shared a lovely anniversary post. How many of you would roll your eyes if I said Stardew Valley is SUCH a pisces?!
I’m feeling inspired to dive back in and start fresh after nearly a year away from this game. Surely this is not a heavy-handed metaphor, revisiting the game my ex introduced me to, about to begin again, starting anew on the one-year anniversary of our breakup. That would be overwrought, mildly embarrassing, and maybe a little sad…
O - obsessing
Everyone’s still being annoying about Wuthering Heights, but who’s surprised? I figured we all knew what we were getting into when we saw that one promo image, all 6 feet and 5 inches of Jacob Elordi on the horse, silhouetted by a glowing sunset that this Vulture article describes as “Settlers-red.” I would never dare compare the artistry of Beyonce’s Lemonade to Emerald Fennell’s work but I have been thinking… “You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation”…
I saw Fennel’s Wuthering Heights twice opening week and thoroughly enjoyed it both times. The first viewing was part of my annual Malentine’s Day party. For the uninitiated, Malentine’s Day is a holiday dedicated to celebrating love but free of the pressure and baggage that often defines your classic Valentine’s Day. While Malentine’s takes a different shape each year, this holiday always includes freshly-discounted vday candy.
By the time I saw the movie again, just a few days later, everyone and their aunt had shared their “take” on it. I no longer care for “takes”. Sorry, but I am yawwwwwning at the holier-than-thou hating ass film-twitter takedowns of this movie, criticising its accuracy and morality as if it isn’t candy. You don’t debate the nutrition facts of candy, you just enjoy it because it’s candy…
Looking over the notes I took during my second watch in my little reporter notebook**, I came to the conclusion that this film is best viewed as a gorgeous 2hour+ music video for a Charli XCX Wuthering Heights concept album. Accepting that will set you free. I cried HARD at the end of my second watch. I was able to enjoy the story for what it is, rather than fret about how loyal the adaptation was to its source material.
The time I felt most connected to my teenage self this month was the 6 hours I spent hand-painting decor for my Malentine’s party using lyrics from Charli’s album– an album chock-full of sweeping, horny string arrangements. My experience of this movie is inextricable from this feeling of adolescent knowing, and only underscored by the fact that Fennell said she “wanted to make something that was the book as I experienced it when I was 14.” I don’t know why that sentiment specifically ruffled so many feathers. I’d actually love to see more stuff like this– recreations of your beloved stories through the lens of your teenage self. I don’t believe this sentiment alone makes her precocious or dumb.
No one’s fun anymore! Whatever happened to fun!!!
Of her three major film releases, I think this was the best showcase of Fennell’s visceral, textural approach to filmmaking. She plays to all your senses in a way that makes you squirm in your seat. The crackling squish of raw eggs cracking under bedsheets, sweaty skin squeezed into grotesque flesh ripples by a tight-laced corset. From the opening scene, Fennell plays with sound to subvert your expectations of a romantic love story. What sounds like moans in the throes of sexual passion is actually the desperate gasps of a man’s public execution. He ejaculates upon his death as a nun looks on in disgust. And that’s it! There’s your overture! That’s the tone-set for the whole film! Death, power, sex, passion, taboo, all inextricably linked.
She tells you right from the jump that you’re expecting a steamy romance, but you’re getting a story of death by suffocation. If that isn’t for you, then that’s fine, but I reject the idea that her interpretation is “smooth-brained.” If you think this adaptation dulled all the edges of Cathy and Heathcliff’s story, scrubbing it clean of any toxicity and abuse, then I cannot help you. And your obsession with spoon-fed literalism is ruining art.
There’s so much more I could expand on here, but if you expected anything less from the filmmaker who brought you Barry Keogan fucking the fresh dirt of Jacob Elordi’s grave in Saltburn, that’s on you, baby. And you’re probably not going to enjoy the sadomasochistic sex scene in the horse stable, or the dogleash BDSM later in the movie, so you might as well just tap out! But as someone who came into the movie knowing, hoping, Fennell would pull some wild shit like this, I was delightfully satisfied.
R - recommending
Social media is ruining the word “whimsy” for me, much like it did with “aesthetic.” I resent this deeply. Improper grammar aside, I’m more concerned by the fact that this phrase will trend on TikTok for a few months and quickly be co-opted by fast fashion brands and Depop sellers alike, just for everything to be tossed into a landfill for-literally-ever in a month from now. “Whimsy clothes” is currently a top trending search on Shein.
Worst of all, I fear that the large majority of people beating this dead, dead horse to a bloody pulp were born too late to remember that we already have a name for this. It was “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Wide-eyed quirkiness, the vintage dresses, the curated DIY chaos. This trope, often referenced in a derogatory manner, reduced women to whimsical accessories in someone else’s coming-of-age story.
Rebranding it as “whimsy” feels more like cultural amnesia than it does reclaimation. The core fantasy remains: be eccentric, but consumably so. Be different, but in a way that photographs well and links out to product pages.
I bring this up not to whine about the youth, but to empathize with them. In the desperate adolescent scramble for identity, aligning yourself with a subculture can feel like a liferaft. Scene and emo were that for me, and I imagine TikTok’s identity of the week serves a similar function now. But with the omnipresence of self-surveillance in the social media age, this feels like a losing battle.
When your selfhood is mediated, archived, and algorithmically ranked, it’s nearly impossible to inhabit an identity without also performing it. These fleeting trends are less about actual community and more about #engagement. I definitely lusted after Urban Outfitters and American Apparel fits on Tumblr in my day, but trends didn’t cycle at the speed of a page refresh. Even I can feel the pressure! And I’m a smart woman with a fully-formed frontal lobe. I cannot imagine how hard it is to grow up with TikTok.
Coincidentally, my suggestion for February is inspired by a current trend towards embracing more analog living. This shift came from my wish to step back from social media and the wider world, even if just in the mornings.
I’ve finally replaced my iPhone's morning alarm with a good ol’ secondhand alarm clock from eBay!!!! And I can’t recommend it enough!!!
I knew I wanted something that would allow me to listen to music but wouldn’t listen to me in return. I miss when technology was one-sided. I liked it when only one of us was sentient! You know what never made me feel that my every spoken or typed word would be combed for any signs of descent using AI in a technofacist hellscape?? My first phone, my beloved pink Sony Ericsson Walkman W580i.
I desperately needed a morning alarm I couldn’t repeatedly snooze without even waking up (a bad habit I have with my phone alarms, to the chagrin of all my exes.) So Barnarka hooked me up with this literal Dream Machine. After a quick Google search for the Sony ICF-C1iPMK2 Dream Machine user manual, I changed the year from the default 2007 (when Sony designed this product) to 2026, popped my iPod video into the dock, and I was good to go.
Now I turn my phone off at night and leave it in another room. I no longer wake up to emails about changes to my credit score, dating app messages I’ll never respond to, or notifications from the Dunkin’ app with discount codes for lattes that I should just make at home anyway. Lately, I’ve been waking up to my high school graduation party playlist, which, quite frankly, rules. Appreciating my younger self has been a common thread through this past month, and I feel the more I do it, the happier I am. I’m not looking to whimsy-maxx for fulfillment. I don’t feel pressure to adopt the perfect #PilatesPrincess Clean-girl morning routine. I’m just doing what feels good, and it’s working.
T - treating
Two treats this month, bc I’m in a double-treat kind of mood.
Yes, the Stateside Remix by PinkPantheress feat. Zara Laarson is that good. This song off Pink’s 2025 remix album has gone viral after being featured in Alysa Liu’s awe-some Exhibition Gala skate routine at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics (where she brought home two gold medals!) She even incorporated choreo from the music video in her routine :’)
love this photo of Alysa Liu by Matthew Johnson
Okay… so things actually DON’T make you happy? Apparently, money CAN’T buy me love or something? I’m just now hearing this for the first time…
I currently work a job that my high school self could’ve only dreamed of, a part-time creative role with a company mentioned elsewhere in this REPORT. This job gives me access to some fairly generous discounts on a number of things I love the idea of buying. Employee Appreciation in the coming weeks bumps our discounts up even more, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an inbox full of “you left this in your cart” promo emails. But I’ve grown weary of pretending that any one purchase will fix me, no matter how good the discount. The dopamine spike from a package delivery notification only lasts so long before you need another hit. And then what? You live in a museum of things that were supposed to make you happy, but now their very presence in your space does the opposite. No thanks!
It all ties back to my main resolution for 2026: Consume mindfully. This applies to my media diet and literal food diet, as well as the people and things I surround myself with. After two months of mindful consumption as my guiding mantra, I’m healthy and active, booked and busy with my photography services, and I don’t suffer ragebaiting fools! Being increasingly selective about what I own, what I scroll through, and who gets access to my sweet self has made a huge difference in my life. With this foundation of self-compassion, I’ve never been more excited for the warmth and newness of spring. And shout out to trauma-informed EMDR therapy! It really works when you work it.
thanks for reading. talk soon 🫶
xo mal