Turning the Page on 2024
After one week in the new year, here's some favorite moments, things that worked, favorite books, and the annual chaos playlist.
Back on July 4th, which somehow feels like last week and 50 years ago, we were sitting around a picnic table with family and friends discussing favorite holidays. It’s a fun little icebreaker if you think about it, because you can learn a lot about someone from their favorite holidays. For the first time in my life though, I answered with “that week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.” I love this weird little week. It’s slow, liminal, low expectations, but also there’s room to reflect and dream a little for the year to come if you want to. (Plus, leftovers!)
December was for scrambling around to finish work, picking out Yankee swap gifts, and dodging germs. Finally, the blessed liminal week arrived and… whatever virus I’d dodged for a month found me. I spent the last week of 2024 rotting on the couch googling the differences between a cold and the flu and watching Sailor Moon.1 So… happy new year, I guess.
There is no deep metaphor or wise lesson in this. Sometimes your body just gives up and you have to save all the writing and reflecting you wanted to do for later!
I unapologetically love an end of year reflection and wrap up. Here’s one more longish post with highlights of the year, some things that worked for me, a few favorite things I wrote, books I loved, and the annual chaos playlist. Buckle up, this is a long one.
Some 2024 Highlights + Reflections
One super special milestone in our little family was celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary! How is this a thing? Time is a flat circle! True to the life we’ve been making together, our celebration plans moved from the grandiose (can we go to Europe??? wait, money is real.) to the slightly more attainable (NEW YORK CITY??? nope, money’s still real.) to the realization that actually noise and crowds sound annoying and we just wanted to be in nature. Our quiet celebration in New Hampshire was just what we needed — a lovely little resort room, lots of hiking and pool time, coffee shop hopping, and a tour to the top of Mt. Washington. Here’s to many more years of adventuring together.
A Few Things That Worked for Me This Year
Went on a weekend retreat with a bunch of fellow spiritual directors in March, and it was so so good for my soul.
After multiple false starts over the years, I worked through Julia Cameron’s classic The Artist Way this summer. I can’t believe I actually finished it and (mostly) stuck with morning pages! I’m not sure it changed my life, but it opened up some good reflection and sparked some playfulness. And I found my poetry spark again in the fall, so hey who knows!
Making costumes! Do I know how to dress for a formal or business casual event? lol no. Will I find a way to meet a WWII murder mystery or solarpunk dress code? Absolutely, sign me up.
Budgeting for a half hour deep tissue massage every month. That’s it, no notes.
A DIY logbook/journaling method that combines elements of Emily Freeman’s Next Right Thing Journal, Sacred Ordinary Days’ examen, and an exercise from The Artist Way. This is the second year I’ve stuck with this method, which feels like no small thing. I’m planning to write a post about my process soon.
Writing Here and Elsewhere
I didn’t really write as much on Substack as I’d hoped last year, but I did have a few things here and there:
Morning Walks + Poetry Podding: Sharing my episode on the Bandersnatch Book Podcast, talking about poetry and hospitality with my friend and fellow poet Rachel Donahue.
Reorientations: An attempt to give this space a little more direction.
A few fresh poems, because November had me writing again!
Interview with Library Binding: I can’t believe I completely forget to share this here! A fun little visual interview with
at .How I Use Scrivener as a Poet (paywalled): An article for
in which I proclaim my devotion to my favorite writing software and detail how I use it to catalog my poems and create poetry book manuscripts.Heavy and Hopeful - Zane Vickery’s Interloper: Stretching the old music review muscles to write about one of my favorite records of the year at The Rabbit Room.
My Reading Year
Favorite Fiction: Once again, read a lot of books, but mostly of the sci-fi and fantasy bedtime story variety. I was so honored to beta read Kyra Hinton’s first published book A Mist Sprite’s Study of Being Human (available now at her online store!) This is a story that asks the question “what if the land misses her people?” as it explores the history of the Scottish Highlands through the eyes of the mist. This made me feel a little more connected to one of the branches of my family tree, and I’m so grateful for the love and care she put into this story.
Other fiction I loved: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones, Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Ponorak, The Elements of Cadence duology by Rebecca Ross, The Great Cities duology by N.K. Jemisin, and Starter Villain by John Scalzi for the lolz.
Favorite Nonfiction: Once again, didn’t finish a ton of nonfiction books, but there were still some good ones: Lore Wilbert’s fantastic new book The Understory, Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s translation of Practice of the Presence of God, Christine Valters Paintner’s new Lent book A Different Kind of Fast, and the aforementioned classic The Artist’s Way.
On Loving Music Again
After a few years of feeling stuck and sad about my frozen musical tastes, I think 2024 cracked something open and I genuinely learned to love music again. I upgraded Spotify and figured out a system to track all the interesting new music coming out — and there was a lot of it!2
A few albums I found myself returning to often: Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend, What Happened to the Heart? by AURORA, Interloper by Zane Vickery, Polaroid Lovers by Sarah Jarosz, In Bloom by Jon Foreman, Deeper Well by Kacey Musgraves, and What Could We Become? by United Pursuit.
Honorable Mentions (ie: I didn’t listen to them a ton but I want to spend more time with them): Cowboy Carter schooling us all in the history of country, Brat summer not finding me until winter and catching me by surprise, getting in my vibey 80s gothy feels with new music from The Cure, driving around with my sister and hearing “Femininomenon” for the first time, and my personal Tortured Poets Department edit playlist because you know we all made one. (Mine includes songs from Midnights!)
That’s… a lot. And I’m already starting the new year’s playlist with a bunch of 2024 albums I missed! Here’s a musical journal of 2024 in long playlist form. I recommend listening on shuffle. May you find something you like in the chaos.
Shoutout to my pal Ashley who responded to this information with “Well that’s appropriate, because Sailor Moon kind of feels like a fever dream sometimes.”
But also, I made a 6 hour, mostly 2000s emo/alt rock playlist because I AM old and nostalgic like that. It was Artist’s Way homework.
"DIY logbook/journaling method that combines elements of Emily Freeman’s Next Right Thing Journal, Sacred Ordinary Days’ examen, and an exercise from The Artist Way." If anything, this right here makes me feel like we are neighbors in a parallel universe. I'm going to need to hear more on this process, as I keep circling the DIY drain and have yet to design anything that holds water for long.
I've used the NRT journal for 3 years (well, more like 2.25 if you note the number of blank pages in last year's...) and I have used the SOD planner for 7? 8? years? I didn't get in on the kickstarter for that one, but have used it every year since and, of course, am not this year. I went through The Artist Way last year and have tried to incorporate Morning Pages, but trying to habit stack all of those and then cobble together something else when SOD wasn't available... it's been a haphazard mess. LOL. I'm looking forward to seeing your method!