2025 Reflections
And looking toward 2026 š„
For the last several years, Iāve kept a number of trackers in my planner, both as a form of daily mindfulness and as a record of the days as they pass. I track where I spend each night of the year and turn it into a graph of my travels. I track my writing habits. And, perhaps the most fun, I track the media I consume each year: the books I read, the movies and tv shows I watch, and the podcasts I listen to.
At the end of each year, I take some time to look back on these trackers, and to reflect on what I enjoyed most, where my media tastes skewed, and what I learned as an artist and person from those works.
This New Year, Iām taking particular note of the fact that Iāve used my reading choices as research in a lot of ways: Iāve skewed toward books that I thought might have something to teach me about my current and upcoming work, and Iāve had the pleasure of re-reading some books that were pivotal to my younger self discovering the real power of literature and wanting to learn to create the same effects. In case you were wondering, my reading this year included a lot of moody, weird literary fiction, as well as a lot of dark, spooky YAā¦
Iāve decided to start a newsletter this year partly in an attempt to give myself space to engage with such reflection more regularly throughout the year, as well as to offer insight into my personal writing processāfor readers and writers who are curious about another authorās work, as well as for the friends and family who are constantly wondering when my next book is coming out and why on earth the publishing process takes so long. :)
My hope is to start each regular post with a brief overview of where I am in the writing process on any of my several projects that may or may not be in the works, and then to move into a discussion of craft and practice: whatever question I might currently be working through, or that I might have received lately.
Thank you for following along on this journey, and Iām looking forward to chatting more with you all this year!
P.S. In looking over the trackers, I also discovered that I spent the most time last year in Seattle (126 days), followed closely by San Francisco (111 days), and that I slept in 24 different cities/areas (counting āon a planeā and Olympic National Park). Make of that what you will.