Issue 83: 100 things that made my year
I’m someone who always does their year-end reflections in January. By the end of the year, I just want to cozy up on the couch and catch up on my reading. Austin Kleon’s newsletter is always a source of creative inspiration (see: commonplace books), and his annual top 100 list inspired me to do the same!
- The dance class I go to going back to 90 minutes
- Playing Spelling Bee, Connections, Wordle, The Mini almost every day
- Superiority Burger reopening. The tofu scramble they serve at brunch is incredible.
- AMC A-List and (almost) memorizing the Nicole Kidman monologue
- Reading with E on the couch. Reading more books together and watching their movie adaptations so we can talk about both versions. Literary analysis is our love language.
- TikTok “homework” with my sister, where we send each other 10+ TikToks en masse and require the other to react/reply to each one
- Omsom marinated pork belly and homemade nước chấm for easy weeknight dinners
- Romance novels, browsing The Ripped Bodice bookstore, seeing a Fated Mates podcast taping, and semi-monthly book clubs with Amrisha
- Scrapbooking as a group trip activity and memento all in one
- Hiking in Washington, Tennessee, and South Africa. I’m not a big hiker, but I enjoy walking with a view.
- Ezra Klein on routine: “I’ve been forced out of the illusion of control. I'm much more interested in the question of, what can I do to make it likeliest that I can meet the situations I'm in with a better rather than worse version of myself—and a more present rather than a more distracted form of my attention?”
- A Great British Bake Off cooking class with Rosa, in addition to our tradition of watching new episodes together
- A postcard from my parents from Geneva, and photos of our old house there
- Spending almost every day on Animal Crossing. Getting really into breeding hybrid flowers and building zen gardens and vegetable patches.
- The poetry of the Margaritaville about page
- Setting myself reminders to reach out to people, instead of texting “let’s hang out soon” and never following up
- Anniversary tours of my favorite albums: alt-J’s “An Awesome Wave,” The Postal Service’s “Give Up,” and Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism”
- Attending friends’ book launches and celebrating their book deals, finished novel drafts, and other writing milestones
- Seeing Béyonce live!!! Literally crying in the presence of her perfection.
- Seeing the Renaissance movie!!!
- Making a pot of peppermint tea after dinner
- Mandy Brown’s essay on work friends: “Perhaps the challenge facing us now isn’t to avoid making work friends, but to inoculate those friendships against the capriciousness of both good job offers and investor brain worms. We don’t have to cut ourselves off from each other; we can take our work friends to-go.”
- Watching E tear up the dance floor at weddings
- Birkenstocks. I resisted them for so long but they’re so comfortable and left very amusing tan lines.
- A chia seed pudding recipe that made me go through ~2 large bags of chia seeds this year
- Hanging out most Friday nights with my sister. Sometimes getting dressed up to check out a new cocktail bar or attend a book event. Other days, eating bologna sandwiches (a childhood favorite) and watching a movie at home.
- Seeing old friends and having new experiences together. Reminiscing is great, but so is creating new memories.
- Boy Movies and boy movie nights with Sarah and Allison
- Teaching my first writing class! How fun it was to put together reading lists and do close readings of work I admire.
- Designing a ring with E
- The Bonne Maman Advent Calendar and crowdsourcing all the ways to eat jam: thumbprint cookies, stirred into plain yogurt, in a whiskey cocktail, with pão de queijo or good ol’ buttered toast
- Episode 3 of The Last of Us
- Art gallery dates with friends
- Thinking about bad gamification and continuing my Duolingo streak, but moderating my use so that I’m not relying as much on it for productive procrastination.
- Writing workshops—my generous instructors and peers, thoughtful organizers and staff, and lecturers/readers/publishing professionals
- Thät’s Dazs! Dazs the spring! You can’t just use Dazs as any catchall verb/noun/adjective but I love that Häagen-Dazs is trying so hard to innovate the English language.
- Trying new dance classes with my friend Carolyn and getting out of my comfort zone
- Finally throwing out a shrink-wrapped, peeling armchair that’s been with me since college in favor of a real accent chair
- Trivia nights
- Too Good To Go
- Celebrating friends’ weddings in Long Island, Seattle, Brooklyn, and Beacon. Heartfelt vows and speeches that made the whole room tear up.
- The amazing gift of an Avatar Lego set (thanks Jon!), which I assembled with Linda in one focused afternoon. Losing exactly one piece during the assembly but finding it later that night underneath the couch.
- The Center for Fiction’s Summer Reading Challenge, which made me feel like a kid again
- Keeping our orchid alive for the third year in a row. The air roots are crazy but it has bloomed 1-2 times every year, and always in the winter.
- YouTube karaoke, including a tentful of people singing “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson at the top of their lungs
- Rayne Fisher-Quann’s essay no good alone: “Being alone is hard, to be sure, but it’s also deceptively easy—it requires nothing of us. People, on the other hand, challenge us. They infuse our life with stakes.”
- Urban Decay makeup setting spray and other great TikTok makeup recs
- My mom’s post-Thanksgiving turkey soup, which uses every part of the turkey
- Being gentle with myself and more realistic about what I can accomplish in a day
- Playing DDR again at Dave & Busters on a Friday afternoon and working up a sweat
- My cohort at the Poynter Leadership Academy for Women and the incredibly creative ways people presented their “personal development plans”
- Short cookbooks
- Sitting at concerts
- Kathy and Yessenia taking us around Olympic National Park and planning the trip with so much care. Talking about art, nature, and community while crumbs of banh mi (a superior picnic item) fell to the forest floor.
- The Uniqlo cross body bag, puffer, cotton tees. Just all Uniqlo everything, really.
- Ted Chiang’s writing on AI: “The tendency to think of AI as a magical problem solver is indicative of a desire to avoid the hard work that building a better world requires.”
- Finally framing and hanging art. Discovering the iPhone can be used as a level.
- Cooking with my mom, particularly her 丸子汤 (Chinese meatball soup). I’m in awe of how she manages to fill the huge stock pot to the very brim, but never lets anything spill.
- Not scrambling to make year-end plans with friends when everything is chaotic with holidays and travel, but reaching out again in the new year
- Pomodoro timers, which are so simple but I find to be incredibly effective
- My mentor’s guidance, coaching, and sponsorship
- Celebrating friends’ engagements
- Libraries
- Participating in another #mini1000, which helped me draft a short story
- Remembering my own advice
- Stay True by Hua Hsu and its depiction of friendship: “Friendship rests on the presumption of reciprocity, of drifting in and out of another’s lives, with occasional moments of wild intensity.”
- Reader replies and responses to my newsletter—thank you!
- Cleaning a little bit each day
- Walking around Union Square Park with Maura on the eve of her move, reflecting on our years in New York
- The rooftop of the NYPL Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on a balmy day
- Espresso martinis and affogatos
- My Kenyon cohort’s group chat: memes, story swaps, opportunities, Zoom writing hours
- Trying to get better at interviewing. Chatting with authors who work in different mediums or genres.
- Preserving old laptop stickers in the back of a notebook
- Making big leaps!
- What Haley Nahman calls “the snag in the fabric of online identity.” She says, “You can’t merely exist, you have to exist there intentionally. To be known online is to be known for what you deem knowable about yourself filtered through the rigged engagement incentives of the platform owners. I remind myself of this every time I have the urge to post an update on Instagram: Being known by strangers on the internet feels nothing like being known by people in my offline life, or more crucially, by myself.”
- Spending time with E’s family
- Embracing physical media. E for buying Blu-rays of my favorite movies.
- The giant fuzzy blanket my sister got me because I liked hers so much 😇
- Being able to bookmark and organize TikToks
- Baking and sharing snacking cakes, which are unfussy and delicious
- Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Tin House craft class on what film and TV can teach us about stories and novels. I’m still revisiting this Scriptnotes episode and Eric Heisserer’s approach to writing Arrival.
- The perks of doing some things in person
- Being told you should aim high
- Seeing my therapist in person again!
- Getting clothes from Costco. Kirkland sweatpants IYKYK
- Embracing friction
- Finally getting a phone with the 0.5x lens
- Shout stain remover > Tide pens. Keeping a Shout wipe in my bag at all times because ~I’m messy~
- Handwritten cards for all kinds of occasions
- Tumblr, which is now the longest social media site I’ve used (over a decade now). How their new parent company is thinking about downscaling—”we’ll try a different structure with smaller, more focused teams working on the core parts of Tumblr that people say they want improved.” A refreshing alternative to just shutting things down that provide value but can’t make money!
- A week of funemployment between jobs
- Buying gifts opportunistically and saving them for the right time. Otherwise, jotting down gift ideas for later.
- Keeping a stick of butter at room temperature
- In writing, understanding what you’ve done for yourself and what you’ve done for your reader
- Staying on top of annual check-ups
- Conversations with my parents
- Hard conversations, because it means you care enough to have them
- Third places
- Telling people how they changed your life
Creative resources
- I appreciated my friend Eshani’s thoughts on what it means to build accessible writing communities that help writers cultivate a sense of care
- Apply for the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship by January 31. The fellowship is a five month virtual mentorship program for early-career writers from traditionally underrepresented communities in publishing.
- Some great practical writing advice from Esmé Weijun Wang that I’ve been loving lately: tricks for getting unstuck and embracing “everyday creativity”
- Residency applications: Ucross Residency Program and Banff Centre’s Summer Writers residency. Also check out Electric Lit’s roundup of free or low-cost American writing residencies to apply for in 2024!
- Kara Cutruzzula on staying committed to personal or professional projects: “One good idea, when actually executed, can lead to a dozen new ideas. What if there’s a thread to follow, and the more we continue, the farther we’re led by the thread?"
Recent reads & other media
I plan on sharing my annual 52 books in 52 weeks reflection in the next issue. Since the end of last year was hectic, I gave myself grace to read a little into the new year. Recent (final) reads of 2023:
- Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
- Essential Labor by Angela Garbes
- Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
- Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey
- The Gentleman’s Gambit by Evie Dunmore
- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (audiobook recommended!)
- The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
E and I watched May December (messy sex and intimacy is back in movies), The Iron Claw (I wept and Zac Efron was phenomenal), and American Fiction (a fantastic satire about the expectations of Black artists, commerce, and art). On the plane, I watched Shortcomings, an understated movie exploring the nuances of Asian American representation and interracial dating.
I got to contribute to the Boy Movies year-end extravaganza! If you’re looking for a fresh take on dinner and a movie, check out my recommendations for girl dinners to pair with boy movies.
Recently read short stories: None
Note: Book links are connected to my Bookshop affiliate page. If you purchase a book from there, you'll be supporting my work and local independent bookstores!
~ meme myself and i ~
Normal kids vs. Ghibli kids. POV: you’re experiencing jazz for the first time. Dramatic dog when she’s thirsty. Deciding to watch a movie from my watchlist. The proper response to “text me when you get home.” It’s just a little bit windy…
