After a winter storm last weekend that expanded into icy conditions pretty much all week here, I have spent a lot of time working from home. Grateful to have a reliable setup to do so. Here are five things on my mind this Friday.
This is a succinct summary of the national shutdown/general strike happening today. It can also serve as a reminder that these actions can be effective at any time, so today is not the only good day for these actions.
I usually post resolutions on New Years Day, but I decided not to rush it. Yesterday was nice. I got to hang out with Sarah and friends, eat some delicious food, and read a little bit. It’s hard to believe that I go back to work in less than 48 hours. Before I do, though, you know I want to share my resolutions for the year with you.
Technically I have seven (large) goals, but all of them are divided into many small steps that help me get there.
Start Checking Off That 10-Year Bucket List
The bucket list I put together in 2025 ended up with way more than 50 things on it, and some of them are bigger goals that are going to take the whole 10 years to accomplish. Additionally, if I know me (and I do), I won’t stop dreaming up things I want to do, so the list is likely to grow over the next decade. Clearly there are more than five things I’m going to cross off that list this year.
I’m already going to address some of them in pursuit of my financial and cozy goals (see below), but I’ve identified 11 things off the list that I want to do this year. As I’m currently looking for a new job and/or an additional income stream, the order in which they happen will depend on how fast that comes to pass, as a new job would likely have a different busy season to work around, and some of them cost a little money. But right now, this is roughly the order I’m thinking of starting them:
Join the Plot Twist Book Bar dark academia book club
Enjoy a personal reading retreat in a hotel with room service
Renew my passport
Write a score or a song
Upload an original recording to Bandcamp
Finish a fiction manuscript
Take a small town road trip
Read 200 Books
This is…lofty. But I think it’s possible. What I like about this goal is that having it in mind will remind me to give myself regular downtime, which I have a hard time remembering (shocking, I know). I am also attempting quite a few reading challenges throughout the year, and gamifying anything almost always makes it more fun for me.
Establish a Regular Journaling Practice
One thing that keeps me grounded the best is journaling. It not only helps me decompress and slow down my brain before sleep but also improves my awareness of how well I’m taking care of myself in general.
One thing that I often put off and forget to do is journaling. I am hoping to establish a regular practice.
Daily is ideal, but any regularity is an improvement that I will consider a success. I’m using the guided journal that accompanies Shonda Rhimes’s Year of Yes. I may decide later in the year I don’t need the prompts but for now the questions provide a good framework.
Have 100 Cozy Moments
I couldn’t figure out how to phrase this one, because it could encompass a lot of things. “Cozy moments” sounds a little woo for me, but it will have to do.
Basically, I want to be intentional about pursuing my theme for the year.
This may look like actually noting when moments are cozy or actively seeking them out. It may look like rearranging spaces at home, work, or elsewhere to be more welcoming. It may look like clearing out some clutter to give my brain a rest. There are many different ways this could play out, and I bet I can catalogue at least 100 of them!
Set and meet 100 small financial goals
This sounds like a lot, but it’s fewer than I met last year, so it’s doable. My focus this year (other than increasing income) is on three main things:
Mapping out a solid plan for retirement
Having a solid purpose for each savings bucket
Building a solid knowledge base
The keyword is solid. That’s how I want to feel about my finances at the end of the year (and have the evidence to back the feeling up).
Write 50,000 Words
For real, this time. Something tells me that finishing a fiction manuscript would be an excellent way to make this happen.
Go on 25 Microadventures
A lot of the items on my 10-year bucket list surprised me. Apparently, I want to go places. Did not know that about myself. I’m not sure if I actually want to go places, or if I think I should want to go places.
Welp, we’re going to test it out this year with 25 small microadventures. I’m defining a microadventure as any outing that takes from an hour up to a day. It can be almost anything. It just has to include a place I’ve never been or something I’ve never done. Bonus points if it’s free.
I may ask for suggestions later, but I have a pretty good list going already. It might be telling that this is the resolution I’m least excited about, but maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t hurt to try (I hope).
And there you have it. Those are the plans. It looks like a lot, but it’s mostly a continuation of things I’m already working on. It just gives them a little structure.
Here we are, in the final, feral week of 2025. A week for doing whatever I want (I mean, more so than usual). A week of no morning alarms. A week of drinking a disturbing amount of great coffee and eating an excessive amount of cheese. A week of hyper-focused cleaning (I hope) and uninterrupted hours of reading (I guarantee).
A week to reflect. To accept. To transition. And to begin.
During the first half of the week, I’m going to be posting about my 2025 resolutions and how they went. Then, in the second half of the week, you’ll hear about the unhinged volume of my ambitions for 2026.
I did pretty well this year overall. There was only one goal I made for my year that I didn’t reach – writing 50,000 words. Remember when I could write 50,000 words in just a month? Good times. That is not a reasonable expectation these days, but I thought for sure I could reach that benchmark in a whole year. I did do quite a bit of writing, though, and I submitted my work to more places than in the previous five years combined, so that’s something.
I surpassed my reading goal of 180 books. My Goodreads and StoryGraph counts don’t match, but I didn’t feel the need to skim through and see which ones got missed. There were probably a few missed on both. If a book showed up in a search on either one, it got counted in some way. By the end of today, my Goodreads count will be 186, and my StoryGraph will be 181, and I expect there will be even more by the time the new year rolls in.
I stopped keeping track of my genres at some point this fall, but the numbers were pretty well spread out, so I am satisfied with how that effort played out. I definitely read something from each category at least twice.
Finally, the reading challenges. I thought that by only counting a book toward one of the challenges I participated in, it would make them a little more difficult to finish, and…it sure did! I looked back through my unfinished prompts this afternoon, and I definitely would have finished two more if I had counted books on multiple challenges. So I’m going back to that next year. Because a prompt met is a prompt met (also because with the number of challenges I’m participating in next year, I would have to almost double my overall reading goal to finish them otherwise). But hey – I officially finished one!
For the last few days of the year, I’m reading through some cozy romance and fantasy books, as well as some books I’ve had checked out at the library for a while. Another new practice I want to put in place going forward is keeping the number of books I have checked out below 20. There’s just no reason to have more than that out at a time, even as much as I read. I get why it happens. It’s usually one of two things. Either I get excited about an author and put everything the library has that they’ve written on hold, or I put things on hold that are on my monthly TBR and then they don’t become available until after the month has passed and I have moved on. So I end up stockpiling a lot of things I wanted (and still want) to read. I’m officially entering my more liberal use of the “for later” function and less hoarding era. You’re welcome, fellow readers of Denton.
I finally met that 180 goal I’ve had for three years in a row, and even better, I’ve gotten to talk nerdy with a lot of other readers through book clubs and events. I think I’m happy with my reading choices this year.
Happy Friday, folks! June is up and running! We are three down/ten to go with orientation sessions for new students and their parents this week, so it’s been busy at work. And tonight is Pridenton’s Night Out, and my church has a booth, so that’s my Friday night. Luckily, I have a few days off next week to go hang out with my parents, so that’s something to look forward to.
Additionally, this has been a great morning:
My sister came to visit at work (she is going on a trip and wanted to take her friends some of UNT’s special coffee blend from Voltage) and we got to have coffee and bagels together.
I got some excellent news that is really going to make my financial life easier.
I was able to help two students who were struggling/anxious about housing next year get exactly what they need.
One of my staff who has been on a tour with the UNT acapella choir is back and I get to hear his stories soon.
I get to have lunch on the square with the office folk today.
Here are some things I’ve enjoyed reading in the last few weeks (months? It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these):
As a member of Tori Dunlap’s 100K Club (shameless plug) (which I originally typed “shameless plum” – I’m so hungry and also I may have just given myself an idea for a children’s book), I have been thinking a lot about value categories when it comes to my budget. These are the things that aren’t needs but that I still make room for in the budget because they bring me joy or enrich my life in some way. When I first joined the community, I had office supplies + stationery + accessories on my list because I love them so much. While I have since begrudgingly admitted that maybe I don’t need a whole budget category for writing implements, gosh, I love a good pencil.
I don’t know if “cozy” and “challenge” would be found together in any sentence I mutter (I lean more toward do-nothing cozy), but this list for summer is nice. Take your dog on a date? Come on, that’s adorable.
Joy the Baker’s guide to a joyful summer is more my speed when it comes to summer to-do lists. Gentle suggestions. Things that make life easier/more pleasant. And if you think I’m not looking for that banana malt icebox cake recipe in my inbox every single day, have we even met?
Everything about this is powerful and I love it and also I despise that we are living in times where two international students at Harvard singing “There’s a Place for Us” to honor Rita Moreno is especially poignant. I have a lot of feelings.
Speaking of things that give me a lot of feelings, OMG YAY.
I hope you have a lovely weekend full of whatever gives you the most peace.
I am anxious about my health, my job, my friends (especially those of us whom the prevailing culture seems to want to annihilate), my country, and the world in general. I am not ok.
This week has been a lot, and it’s Friday.
It’s Friday, and I love you, and here are some things I want you to remember to do.
Connect with your people. It’s ok to be overwhelmed with grief. For many of us, this year has already been super shitty. For many people, it got extra shitty this week. For many others, it was always going to be shitty no matter what happened. It’s ok to say that. Reach out and say that to someone who is a soft place to land. If you don’t have someone in your face-to-face life to say that to, you can say it to me.
Take care of yourself. Drink water. Eat something (multiple times a day, even if it’s just a cracker or one piece of fruit. Cheese. Cheese is delicious.). Take your meds. Take a walk. Take a nap. Cuddle with your pets (or a friend’s pets).
Take care of your community. Volunteer, donate, raise awareness, protest – whatever you can do. Even if you have to do it from your bed.
Make art. You are a creative force. Art fosters innovation, solution, communion, restoration, revolution. Artists are instigators of change. Artists remind us of the things worth staying alive for.
Write it down. Blog. Post on social media. If that doesn’t feel safe, take five minutes at some point every day to word vomit on the page of a journal. No one ever has to see it but you. Even if you need to check out for a minute, don’t stay that way. Don’t stop paying attention. Don’t stop speaking up. Don’t stop.
I hope your weekend is restful, and I hope you get to spend it with people who have your best interests at heart.
“My bucket list of little things aims to live every moment as if it’s my first. To find the glory in what a seasoned eye might falsely consider mundane.” Andrea Gibson, Things That Don’t Suck (Substack)
It has been a long week. Nothing particularly bad has happened. I’ve just felt puny and tired. The weather, however, is gorgeous. It was 52 when I left home. I am wearing a light sweater!
Today, I need a list of things to look forward to this season that aren’t super ambitious but still give me ways to ground myself and remind myself that I’m alive and meant to be living and not just muddling through.
Buy a delicious cup of coffee and drink it while browsing a bookstore. Take all the time I want.
Take shorter, more frequent walks. Not everything has to be hard all at once. A little bit multiple times a day is better than pushing myself and getting too exhausted to do anything else for hours.
Keep my hands warm and nimble with piano and knitting.
Make soup without rushing. Pan roast the veggies slowly. Add one ingredient at a time. Fill my home with cozy smells.
Take drives. Drive down winding country roads just outside of town and find the few trees in Texas that know what time of year it is. Drive down my favorite streets and let the memories of every time I’ve been there before flow over me.
The past few years, I’ve made a summer bucket list. Mostly, I’ve done it because I have to talk myself into liking summer as a season because it is so, so hot in Texas and that’s the worst. It also keeps me more grounded in the present instead of always focusing on future plans. And of course, making these lists is also a good way to check in with goals to either make sure I’m on track or get myself back on track.
So why not do that with every season?
Here are some things I want to do this spring.
Buy fresh flowers. I have received so many flowers this year, and it’s been lovely. I mean, some of them have made me sneeze and thus had to live elsewhere for a little while. But I really love seeing fresh flowers when I come home. Bonus to picking out/buying them myself? I know I’ll get what I love and still be able to breathe normally.
Plant citrus trees. My friend Jessica gave me a bunch of citrus seeds, and soon (this weekend, maybe?) I’m going to plant them in buckets to see if they come up. I’ve already got the pots and the soil, so all that’s left to do is plant!
Drink tea and read when it rains. It rains so much this time of year, and I don’t take advantage of that nearly as often as I could. A cup of tea and a good book are excellent accompaniments to a chorus of rain. It’s my ideal quiet morning/afternoon/any time.
Play springy playlist when cooking. Cooking is relaxing to me, but lately it’s been mostly a utilitarian, get-in-get-out, cutting-corners process. I want to reintroduce my former habit of playing music to set the mood and make cooking more fun. I have all sorts of playlists for this already (brunch, spring, etc.); it’s just a matter of remembering to put one on when I start.
Get my feet ready for sandal season. I often neglect my feet during winter. I’ve been doing better this year out of necessity (the neuropathy side effects of chemo are no joke), but I still want to give them a little extra TLC before I expose them to the elements with summer footwear.
Re-establish my strength routine and take some long walks. My back seized up for the first time ever last week. Clearly a sign that I’ve been slacking on my core strength. Or that I’m just getting older. But a solid strength routine and regular walks can only help with both physical and mental health, so I want to make both a priority again.
Visit the Denton Community Market. This is the best place to get local, seasonal produce. Also, it’s just one of my favorite things Denton does. Bonus to going in spring rather than summer – the weather outside may actually be bearable.
This week has been a mix of ups and downs, but it has felt like the most normal week I’ve had so far this year. I got to see some friends and had enough energy to put in almost a full week of work. I’m about to hunker down with a book and a cup of tea for the evening, but I thought I’d share a few things with you first.
One of the main things on my mind this week is the wildfires in the Texas Panhandle. My parents live a few hours south of where most of the blazes happened. So much loss, and here is how you can help.
The title “Warm House on a Quiet Day” stuck out as a cozy invitation in my inbox, but when I clicked to read it, it was so much more. Laura Grace Weldon’s words read like my constant internal monologue.
I’ve been trying to find a small, portable snack and ran across this little gem – savory oatmeal cookies. I made the rosemary/parmesan ones. This weekend, I may experiment with subbing thyme, adding dried cherries, and leaving out all the dairy for the next batch. I feel like the possibilities are endless, and I am committed to exploring them with reckless abandon.
This piece by Lisa Bartelt is beautiful. My church is coming through for me in lovely, astounding ways these days, and it’s been a good reminder of why I picked them and why I choose to keep coming back. But even during more normal seasons, the rituals and the community I have there work wonders in my soul.
And finally, I got to go to a vigil for Nex Benedict last night, and it was lovely. Following up a bit from last week, here is a list of resources from OUTreach Denton that can help you learn about how to get more involved in advocating for LGBTQ+ folk, particularly youth. Most of these are based in the DFW area, but I encourage you to look for resources around where you live if you’re not local to me.
I hope you’ve had a good week, and I hope you have an even better weekend!
It’s been a nutty couple of weeks. I feel more settled at work than I did in early-to-mid-January, probably because the semester is getting underway and everyone is falling back to their routines. Either that, or I have successfully adopted a more relaxed, whatever-gets-done-is-enough attitude (less likely, but still remotely possible). Also, I’m getting more done, so it may just be that that feels good. Regardless of the reason, I’ll take it.
Meanwhile, I am super focused on a few key things. At home, I am nesting like I’m expecting a new baby. I am constructing an elaborate meal plan that I may actually use occasionally when I feel up to it in the next few months. And the information-sponge part (erm, majority?) of my personality is in overdrive. About everything. Mostly health stuff, but it’s hard to turn it off when it’s time to talk about something else. Yesterday at an appointment the nurse said, “This may be too much information.” No such thing, friend. No. Such. Thing.
However, I am enjoying super easy weekends and shall continue to do so while I’m going through treatment so as not to tax my system any more than necessary or cause any delays. In the perfect world, I would take this opportunity to learn how absolutely essential easy weekends are to my life and general well-being and keep them indefinitely. One can hope.
Here are some things I’m enjoying lately:
One of the wonderful things about reading challenges is that I get prompts that remind me of things I love. Nowhere Bookshop’s challenge encourages us to read our “Roman Empire” book – a book about any topic that lives a solid rent-free existence in our heads. One of my proverbial Roman Empires is architecture, specifically house plans. I think about how building homes could not only be useful as a career but also make opportunities to provide shelter and safety for others as well as build communities. I think about it a lot. I have several rough sketches for houses – everything from small bungalows to large spaces with full libraries and indoor pools. Also, I LOVE BLUEPRINTS. This prompt has me deep-diving into this topic that gives me so much joy. Look at these tiny house plans! How cute are they? And I adore the whimsy of this one. I mean, I would need a whole second tiny house just for my books, but I love the creative, economical use of space. Anyway, I put a lot of books on hold at the library about this, so I think I will have this prompt more than covered.
Also…I like this article. Not making any plans (for now or in the near future). I just like it.
I love cottagecore. Not so much the clothing or decorating style (although I do love roses and carnations and tend to decorate with both, even after they’re dead), but the lifestyle elements. Container gardens, reusing scraps, knitting my own blankets, slow food. Focusing on less waste and more creativity. Great quote – “We can choose to create a world for ourselves filled with gentle moments, while also considering how we can make our homes a place of cultivation instead of a place to store ‘things.’” This also slides right in line with my current nesting habits.
I’ve been looking for recipes recently that are high in protein and fiber. I’ve been in a bit of a food rut, but most of these and these look good to me. Perhaps I’ll try one or two of them this weekend (lookin’ at you, sweet potato).
I know they’ve reached their goal already, but these are some of the most talented baristas in Denton, and I want them to have all they need and more while they look for their next gig. So if you have a little love (and by love, I do mean cash) to throw their way, please do. Also, there’s going to be a fundraiser at Rubber Gloves, so swing by if you’re in Denton on February 10.
Take care this weekend (and all the time, really), friends. I hope it’s relaxing and fun and everything you want it to be!
I’m so happy it’s Friday. I’ll be even happier when tomorrow is over, because it’s UNT Fall Preview Day, and we are in for a long, busy day. I’m going to have to move comfort food night to tomorrow and sleep in on Sunday.
But right now, it’s 8:00 on Friday night. I’m on my second glass of wine, after having watched a couple of Gilmore Girls eps and eaten a mountain of popcorn, air-popped and then lightly buttered and salted. Today was hectic, and tomorrow will be…whatever it will be…and I am without a working vehicle at the moment…but tonight I don’t have anywhere to be or anything pressing to do, and the wine is good. I’m having the perfect evening.
Here are some foodie things I enjoyed this week:
How To Read a Recipe (Joy the Baker) – I appreciate it any time someone breaks a process down that, on the surface, seems like a no-brainer. Turns out, very few things are no-brainers. I need my brain for most things, including reading a recipe. As always, Joy’s advice is spot on and useful and touches on things that are not immediately obvious to me, even as someone who has been successfully reading and using recipes for decades. And there are other things that are so immediately obvious to me that I do them without consciously thinking of it, and thus forget that other people haven’t learned that yet, which is good to keep in mind when writing my own recipes.
My friend Shadan, leader and host of our cookbook club, has a cookbook coming out soon. If you want a sneak peak of the kind of delicious things you can expect when you buy it, check out her new blog!
The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish To Mend a Broken Heart by Emily Nunn – I am listening to the audio, but I think I would have enjoyed the print version more. In fact, I feel like that’s a theme with foodie books, especially if they have recipes. It’s also possible that this is a busy month full of many expected and also unexpected stressors, and thus the ability to focus that usually helps with reading via audio is just not there. Anyway, I am enjoying the book so far. She’s telling a lot of stories about how her friends and family rallied around her during a rough time and what she ate, so it’s right up my alley.
Equal Exchange chocolates are among my favorites. Support small farmers and get great treats for Halloween. [This is not a paid advertisement; I just really, really love them.] Speaking of great things to support this weekend, our annual Empty Bowls fundraiser is tomorrow. For the price of a ticket, you get all the soup you can eat and get to pick out a handmade bowl crafted by a local artisan. And you can even buy tickets at the door. If you’re local (Denton), go to Harvest House tomorrow any time from 12p-2p, and tell them I wish I was there.
And finally – I’m staying home all day Sunday to recuperate from this week. I’m going to make a big mess of pasta, maybe some soup. Maybe I’ll take a long walk to the library (the branch I go to is almost exactly two miles from me) to pick up the books I have on reserve. Or maybe I’ll just read what I have here and watch more episodes of The Bear. Or more Gilmore Girls, with their diner and their chef and their Friday night dinners. Even the fictional characters I love are obsessed with food.
I hope your weekend is restful and good, and I hope you eat something wonderful.
M. Suzanne Terry 