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November 2025 TBR

Posted in Alive, Books, Getting It Together, Joy, Mental Health, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Seasons, tagged , , , on November 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

There’s no way the whole list would fit in one picture. This is one of several stacks. I’m not sad about it.

This November feels weird. There are a lot of changes afoot in my life – some potential, some already in motion. So that’s a big part of it. But it feels like the year should be over already. And also that it just started. I feel like I’m in a weird loop. Time is a construct.

I’m also in the unique position of actually having already completed most of my resolutions for the year. My brain is ready to move on, but there are still two months to go and other resolutions to, well, resolve.

To that end, the November TBR is mostly a continuation of the October theme – a list of books to finish out my reading challenges. I recognize that it’s a bit unhinged in length. However, I have finished a few on the list already (on account-a already having met with two book clubs and also some of these were started as part of the TBR for previous months and I’m just now finishing them up). And my car book is not on this list at all because I’ve been waiting patiently for the audio of Cackle by Rachel Harrison to become available at the library and it finally did. Plus I’m starting off the month re-reading Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust because I’m going to a book signing and getting Travis Baldree’s third book in the series – Brigands and Breadknives – this month!

I’m a bit all over the place. And I kinda love it. If my reading life isn’t bursting at the seams, am I even really alive?

Book Clubs

Bad Bitch Book Club Challenge

Overeducated Women With Cats Challenge

52 Book Club

Okay. This is the big one. Buckle up. This will definitely bleed into December.

Whew. That’s a lot.

The good news is that, if I manage to even read half of this list before the end of the year, I will still achieve my overall reading goal of 180 books (and then some). Yippee!

I hope you get to read as many books as you want this month.

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Friday Five – Happy Halloween!

Posted in Alive, Beauty, Dance, Friday Five, Joy, Wonder, Writing on October 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Happy Halloween! This year’s costumes are Winnie the Pooh (featured at book club since I was not feeling well for the actual Halloween party I typically go to), and a version of the Mad Hatter for work today. I hope you are having a fun day!

Some things I enjoyed reading this week (and a bit of last week):

Have a lovely weekend, friends!

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Friday Five – Some Rest From Labor

Posted in Alive, Books, Friday Five, Revolution, Spiderweb, TV, tagged , , on August 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Happy Friday! I’m looking forward to some fun friend hangs over the next few days, as I enjoy a long weekend. Otherwise, I’ll be hunkered down with some good books and rewatching Scandal. Good times.

  • I really love Katie Chalcraft’s piece on grief and wonder and dying and relief and loss. 
  • Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower was one of my book clubs’ selections this month. More and more, when I read dystopian fiction (and this book in particular seems less fiction than prediction, which is upsetting), I find myself thinking, “No, thanks.” I’m not sure I’d want to survive. Like, I’d like to think I’d want to. I’d like to think that I would use all these things I know to rough it and get my apocalypse on and rebuild society, but realistically? I’m so tired. I mean, I would do my best and help as much as I could before I shuffled off this mortal coil. But I don’t even particularly enjoy taking walks outside (I mean, it’s alright. Just not my first choice. Even exercising is better inside.). Why would I want to live there, or how committed am I to learning how to build a house (which I would eventually have to do if I ever wanted to not live outside)? And if I had to clean my own water, or do without indoor plumbing or A/C? It’s just so much. If others want to make this grand effort to save the species, that’s fine. I get it. Good for them, I guess. But if most of the people I love are dead and the best I have to hope for is living off the land, it just seems like a lot of work for a life I wouldn’t want. 
  • Speaking of things that are just so much trouble – Your First Date is a Reconnaissance Mission by Jennie Young.
  • I enjoy that this article on why Gen Z loves Gilmore Girls is full of not only unabashed adoration but also common critiques of the show. 
  • I like a good pairing. Cheese and wine. Boots and leggings. Coffee and…anything. I am intrigued by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s recommendations on which nonfiction and fiction books to read in tandem. I ordered Philosophy for Polar Explorers, as The Ministry of Time is on my TBR in a couple of months.

I hope you have a good day and a fun weekend!

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Friday Five – Yay We Made It

Posted in Alive, Food, Friday Five, Fun, Hope, Mental Health on August 22, 2025| 2 Comments »

Happy Friday, friends. We made it. 

Here are some short reads and happy news that have made things easier for me this week/month.

  • A wonderful gift in my inbox this morning in the Shondaland newsletter – Rachel Simon’s series on moments and characters in TV that make us feel less alone. She’s specifically focusing on Grey’s Anatomy, and I especially like this one, but it would be easy to make the point for so many shows. 
  • I appreciate this article on The Tyranny of Being Reachable so much. I feel this in my bones. “In today’s culture, your responsiveness equals your worth. It’s a proxy for your love, your professionalism, your care.” And a paragraph down from that – “You’re not unreliable. The human brain just wasn’t built for this.” Thank you, Miski Omar from The Guardian. Thank you. 
  • Simplified’s fall collection comes out next week. This includes 2026 planners, and I’m delighted that they brought back the bookbound ones this year!
  • And finally, another thing I’m looking forward to – Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Fall Book Preview. September 18. You know it’s on my calendar.

Tonight we have our Summerween (Summer Halloween, if you will. Halloween is forever.) cookbook club. I made Butterfinger fudge because the colors match the theme, and I made a nice cheat-y recipe. Still delicious. It really is easy to make a passable fudge as long as you have a combo of sugar, milk, fat, and cocoa. Or, in this case, sweetened condensed milk (sugar and milk) and chocolate chips (fat and cocoa). 

I hope you have a great day and restful weekend.

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Summer To-Not-Do List

Posted in Alive, Beauty, Fun, Getting It Together, Home, Joy, Mental Health, Roots, Work, tagged , , , on May 21, 2025| 2 Comments »

I’ve had the draft document for this post open with nothing but a title for three days. That seems ominous.

Do I even have plans this summer? Or is it just something I have to get through until the weather is nice enough to wear my boots again?

I know why I’m hesitant. It makes sense. Summer is the busiest time at my job, so while everyone else is making plans to go on vacation, have fun outings, embrace all the summer programs that their community has to offer, and just generally live their best lives, I’m going to be super busy most days and, subsequently, too worn out by the time evening comes around to want to do any of those things. 

I’m also checking in on my parents more, which means at least every other weekend will be spent working on things at the farm, hanging out with my new bird friends (see above), and helping Mom and Dad plan and navigate whatever the next phase will bring.

I’m not really looking for more plans. 

In fact, what would make my summer better is to find things to take off my plate. That seems unlikely, though.

I don’t want to suck at my job or abandon my family. I also don’t want to drop off the face of the earth with friends or miss out on the things that bring me the most joy.

But it’s just a lot, and I probably need to use some of that PTO I have stored up.

So my bucket list this summer is more of to-not-do list. And it’s just two things:

  1. Find 5-10 random days to take off. I’m leaning toward 5 right now, but if things start getting nuttier, it’s gonna need to be closer to 10.
  2. DON’T. TELL. ANYONE. As soon as I say, “I’m really looking forward to taking a couple of days off next week,” people like to respond with “Ooh, we could do something!”

    Which is great. Truly. I adore the place of love and excitement that comes from. I’m glad people still want to hang out with me even when I’m not my very best self, which seems to be all the time these days.

    But the moment I start making plans on my day off…I no longer have the day off. Sure, I may get to sleep in or have more leisure time, and I guess that’s better than nothing. But once I make a plan with someone else, that whole day is now centered around making sure I don’t get too involved in a project or task – or even a spontaneous outing, if that’s where the day’s whims take me – that I forget or show up late to the plans I made. And I’m very bad at turning down things that sound fun with people I love simply because I need to rest. While I strive to be better at this, I recognize that I’m not there yet, so I’m removing the temptation altogether by not letting anyone think I’m available when I’m not.

Whew.

Saying I’m not available when I have the day off is uncomfortable for me. I have struggled with being honest about what I need for most of my adult life. Peeling off the people-pleasing layers I clung to during childhood is hard, and this one is particularly thick. 

It’s work worth doing, though.

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Friday Five – What a Year This Month Has Been

Posted in Alive, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Health, Mental Health, Quiet, Wonder on January 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Whew. What a year to explore wonder!  I mean, I guess I am, in fact, frequently astonished (Am I really? Or is it all playing out exactly as expected?) and full of doubt, both of which were phenomena featured in the definition. But damn.

My focus last year was technically learning how to embrace quiet but realistically, it was also a lot of trying not to die. My community was instrumental in helping me achieve that goal. Of course, people are only able to help others insofar as they have the spoons/energy/resources to do so. Therefore, in addition to capturing some wonder along the way, a big part of my mindset this year leans more toward getting my shit together so that I can be in a position to be there for those who are having their try-not-to-die year(s) now. I mean, I have been a moderately-functioning adult for a long time, and I have most of the adulting basics down, but there are areas I could be stronger. I find myself veering toward pieces that talk about cultivating sanity and joy and community and love and stability amidst *gestures broadly* so here are some of my favorites this week.

  • Reckoning with This Vicious World from Ask Polly, aka Heather Havrilesky – “Every opportunity to dance, to seek pleasure, to love with an open heart, to create freely, to show yourself without shame, and to celebrate what you are makes you stronger and more helpful to this struggling world.”
  • Power: What It *Truly* Is – Tori Dunlap with Kasia Urbaniak – “If you’re focused on how you’re being perceived, your attention is inward and you lose the power to lead the conversation.” 
  • This is Happening by Nadia Bolz-Weber – “…this is not the time to concede the faith to nationalists, and I do not want those of us who believe Jesus’ message was one of mercy, humility, hospitality and forgiveness to give into despair.” 
  • How Do You Know: The Consequences of a Lack of Media Literacy and Where We Go From Here by Ashlie Swicker via Book Riot – “We all know that the internet twists thinking and that this leads to large swaths of people buying into misinformation…Still, I think we imagine that this is happening somewhere else, to other people…We don’t hold ourselves accountable for the same kind of open mind and fact-checking that we demand from people who think differently than us.”
  • On HillmanTok University, Black Educators Are Sharing Invaluable Info by Kaitlynne Rainne via Her Campus – Professors dropping lots of knowledge on TikTok. They’ve posted syllabi, resources, etc., on everything from basic adult skills like budgeting and personal wellness to courses on literature and entrepreneurship. Teachers are going to teach, regardless of the hurdles they face. Love to see it. I also love that it’s called Hillman. 

I’ll leave you with this quote from Bernice King: “There’s a difference between being informed and being consumed.” I invite you to take that into your weekend and beyond.

Have a good one, friends!

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2024 in Review

Posted in Alive, Books, Getting It Together, Health, Mental Health, Quiet, Reading Challenges, Resolutions, Writing, tagged , , on December 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[Prime reviewing/contemplating/reflecting space – a blanket and a cup of tea in front of twinkly lights]

How many times can I say this year has been a doozy without it becoming redundant? Welp, here’s one more time.

This year was a doozy.

I’ve tried reflecting and looking back for the past week, as is my custom. Most years – but particularly this year – I resonate with Kate Bowler’s feelings on reflection. I get stuck on certain things and forget so many others, even with the aid of my journal and planner (which in many ways is even more telling than my journal). The older I get, the more I realize that maybe the end of a year is too soon to reflect on it. I am usually still too close to it to ponder it with any real clarity.

But what I can do is look at the goals I set and see how I fared in measurable ways. So let’s dive in.

2024 Theme – Quiet

In many ways this year was very loud. But that especially drove home my need for carving out quiet time, and I had a small amount of success with that.

The intentional pursuit of quiet helped me to find space to heal both mentally and physically.

It also revealed how much work I still have to do in those areas. I didn’t always succeed at finding space, and my medical challenges this year made sure that it was really obvious when I didn’t. Getting quiet time is a lot of work, but it’s necessary and worth it.

Even when I’m “quiet,” I’m still anxious. It takes a lot of time I don’t always have to calm my brain enough to get the needed benefit from quiet moments.

Another challenge is that I don’t really have physical places to find quiet. My upstairs neighbors are loud and active, so even when I’m quiet, my environment still isn’t. And to go anywhere else is to inevitably have to socialize or be perceived or get distracted. Going forward, I need to find a way to really be at rest. I would prefer it to be an actual physical space, but earplugs have been a little helpful in the meantime.

I’m not quite done with quiet, nor do I think I’ll ever be. I have goals for the upcoming year that will help me continue to explore it.

Read 180 Books

I’m so close. I have read 175 so far. It’s possible to reach 180 by midnight tomorrow, but I don’t see myself forcing it just to meet my goal. I am enjoying looking at my Storygraph charts, and I may share one or two tomorrow when I talk about reading goals for 2025.

Even if I don’t finish any more books this year, aiming for this lofty goal still helped me read 20 more books than last year. I consider that a success!

Creative Education

All things creative pretty much tanked for me this year. I did have a few performances with beloved friends, and I have been able to be more active in choir this fall. But with the exception of a few brief inspired frenzies, my writing has been at a standstill.

I am not any further on The Artist’s Way than I was last year at this time, and I haven’t really cared about creative education at all. Looking back, I can admit this goal was a little unreasonable.

What has changed is that I would have felt really dejected about this pause in the past. But I don’t feel that way today. I am satisfied with how I’ve spent my time this year, even if that meant I didn’t heavily pursue a lot of the things I love. My attention was simply needed elsewhere, and I honored that. I am proud of myself for doing so.

Health Goals

I’m alive! I did it!

I survived cancer and cancer treatments, both of which tried to take me out.

As part of that survival, I also built some stronger, healthier skills that I hope to take into the new year. Also, I’ve learned to call them skills instead of habits, because apparently habit isn’t a thing my brain does. This was one of the helpful revelations that came out of therapy this year. For me, there’s no doing things without thinking about it. Even if I do something every day for a year, the moment I don’t remind myself (that is, actually set reminders or leave lists in a place I know I’ll see them), I drop it like I’ve never even heard about it. Everything has to be a conscious choice every time.

Which sounds exhausting (and it can be). But it’s also liberating. It frees me from trying to make progress the way other people do. Instead, I can focus on my goals in a way that actually works for me.

And it’s working beautifully so far.

So that’s the year. That’s 2024. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with it.

I hope you are satisfied with your year, too. Feel free to brag on yourself a little in the comments.

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One Year Ago

Posted in Alive, Church, Health, Mental Health, Quiet on December 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

December 22 last year was a Friday. I was talking about books (of course). I had just wrapped up work and parties and performances for the month and was looking forward to traveling to see my family. This day last year was one of my favorite moments of the holiday season – that little transition between work and rest where I get to take a breath.

It was also a little over a week before I got my diagnosis.

So on December 22 last year, the appointment for the follow-up scan that eventually revealed the cancer had been made, and I was anxious. The first reference I see to news about health issues in the blog is on December 30 in my year-end review. This quote is…something. 

“I was ahead of schedule for most of the year, until work and health issues exploded. I don’t know how much those things will actually settle down, but I’ll keep the same goal for next year and see how it goes.”

Yeah, it did not settle down. At all, in any way. If November/December 2023 was an explosion, 2024 was a supernova.

What I enjoy about re-reading this post, though, is how well my 2023 goals had prepared me for what was to come. As challenging as this year has been, it would have been so much harder if I hadn’t already learned some practical ways to take care of myself – not just physically but also mentally and financially. I’m not sure I would have made it without those skills. Good job, past me!

Out of necessity, I’ve sharpened those skills this year. I know I’ve made some progress, because otherwise, today would not have gone the way that it did, and I would be in worse shape for it.

Yesterday was a good day, but it was also a loud day. A very social day. I woke up this morning still feeling the sensory overload. I got up and started getting ready to leave home. I noticed it was not easy.

I paused to check in with what I was feeling:

  • Irritation, almost to the point of panic
  • Itchy skin, particularly anywhere it touched fabric or whenever the breeze from the fan blew over it
  • Dull, throbbing headache
  • Strong aversion to the smell of my lotion (which is “unscented”)
  • Nausea due to all of the above

Yep. That’s still overload. Probably not a great time to go sit in a room with an organ. Or people.

A year ago today, I might have forged ahead and gone to church. After all, the choir was singing and I love being part of that. I’ve missed out on it so much this year.

But nowadays I am more likely to choose getting well over doing almost any other thing. I choose slowing down. I don’t like it. I still want to do all the fun things and dislike that I can’t. But I know that taking a break when I need it is the better choice.

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Friday Five – Biggest Lesson

Posted in Alive, Friday Five, Getting It Together, Health on December 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Today is officially the end of the semester. All the students are moving out (well, all who are not staying for winter housing, which is a whole thing). I’m working tomorrow just to supplement the office/make sure my people are sane and fed. 

The prompt for Susannah Conway’s December Reflections challenge today is “Biggest lesson in 2024.” Always the overachiever, I’m listing five things I’ve learned this year. Some even have links. Enjoy!

  • Taking care of myself is not selfish. Or, even when it is, it’s the good kind of selfish – the kind that helps me be a whole person who isn’t constantly stressed out and mad at everything I’m doing for everyone else instead of taking care of my own needs and/or sanity. This lesson can be for you, too. Take care of yourself. Decadently, even. If you don’t know where to start, here are some ideas on romanticizing your life, some of which may seem extravagant (gentle pushback on that – is it actually extravagant, or are you a people pleaser?) but some of which are also just “remember to drink water.”
  • An important subset of taking care of myself – keep up with your health screenings. It literally saved my life this year. Here are some basics but you may need others depending on your personal health risks. That’s a good question to ask during your annual physical.
  • I can’t care enough for everyone. Still working on this lesson, particularly at work. My toxic trait is that if I feel like someone is not invested or caring enough about something, I try to care on their behalf. Turns out, caring does not work like that. It just makes me tired and stressed, and I do not need that in my life. “Find out whose business you’re in,” and get out of it.
  • Ask for help when I need it, and expect that it will come. My people showed up this year in multiple big ways, and I’m so grateful. I was afraid to ask for help, particularly financial assistance. I could have saved myself so much worry just by having more realistic expectations of my friends and family. This has turned out to be my greatest joy of the year.
  • It’s OK to feel multiple things at a time. I can be grateful and angry and resentful and hopeful and grieving and curious and awestruck at the exact same moment. This has pretty much been my mood since October, and I don’t see it going anywhere any time soon. Side note: people do not know how to handle this. Side-of-the-side-note: people can learn how to handle this, or they can go away.

What has been your biggest lesson(s) this year?

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Friday Five – ‘Tis the Season

Posted in Alive, Books, Church, Friday Five, Health, Mental Health, Seasons, tagged , , on December 6, 2024| 2 Comments »

The season of Advent, that is. It’s (probably) my favorite season of the church year and one of the reasons I tend to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” during most of December (you know, other than the usual reason of wanting my well wishes to others to be as unconditional, as free of strings and assumptions, as possible). I am especially glad today that the weather seems to understand it’s December and is behaving accordingly.

Here are five things I’ve read in the last few weeks that I thought you might enjoy, too.

  • How To Have Cancer by Cory Doctorow – I resonate with so much here. The hoops you have to jump through. The inevitable “I wish I’d done it this way to make it a little less stressful/more effective.” I’m glad Doctorow is OK. I’m glad we’re both (generally) OK.
  • A Brief What, Why, & How of Advent by Tsh Oxenreider – I was recently asked what Advent was about and I rambled a lot. Enthusiastically, but still so much rambling. Here is a much more succinct version. I don’t do everything on this list (and my tradition uses blue candles – for hope/peace/healing – rather than purple – for royalty/penance – during Advent), but this is a lovely explanation.
  • But How Do You Read So Much? by Pandora Sykes – “I will find ways, as I always do, to not do the other stuff, so that I can find time to read.” Yes, that’s it. That’s the big secret. I read so much because I really, really want to read so much. I thoroughly enjoy it. When I’m not reading, I’m usually thinking about what I have read recently and counting the minutes until I can get back to it. But if you only want to read as much as I want to do Pilates every day (i.e., only a little – usually more of an “I should” than an “I want” situation, unless I’m feeling particularly tight or sore in an area I know it will help), then maybe give yourself a break about how infrequently you read and focus on all the wonderful and life-giving things you do instead.
  • Why Walking Helps Us Think by Ferris Jabr – This piece was a fantastic motivation to take more walks. If you only get one free New Yorker article a month, this would be a good one to use it for!
  • “Comfort in, dump out.” This is a clear, easy lesson in How Not To Say the Wrong Thing by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman.

And a bonus bullet point this week – I joined Bluesky  – Roxane Gay said it best – “Some people don’t get exposed to other points of view in their day-to-day lives so they need social media for that. Some of us have friends and colleagues and family. And it shows.”

I hope you have a good weekend, friends!

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