1. Poetry: Rage Letting and These Powerful Men Need Bird Lessons and The Artist at Work and Lift from Julie Barton, Trying to Understand from Julia Fehrenbacher, What we notice from Pádraig Ó Tuama, and Self-Talk from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and I Wrote A New Poem. It Opened A Door from Andrea Gibson.

2. Good advice from Jenny Lawson: Just don’t be a dick.

3. The Wisdom of Pulling Back from the News from Krista Tippett. “I can’t count the number of people I’ve encountered across the last weeks who have reported that they are deleting apps, limiting their consumption of news, boycotting or disrupting the barrage of information overwhelm. I’m beginning to see this as a spiritual discipline for being alive in this time. It is not to be confused with disengagement or passivity. It may be an essential tool for sanity, and a key to discerning and sustaining a sense of agency for the time ahead.”

4. What Would Your Simple Contented Life Look Like? from Satya Robyn on Going Gently.

5. Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die: Immortal Wisdom from the Park Ranger Who Inspired Generations.

6. This is How We Fall Out of Love with the World: The Twilight of the American Passion Job from Culture Study.

7. Good stuff on writing as practice from Lion’s Roar: Nothing Is Wasted, (“If you use your difficulties to create art, says Ruth Ozeki, it will give them meaning”), and Zen Mind, Writer’s Mind, (“Author Natalie Goldberg discusses Zen and the writer’s practice”), and 5 Tips for Mindful Journaling — which mentions my beloved friend Laurie Wagner, (“James C. Hopkins on how—through writing—you can find the flow of awareness, free of judgment”).

8. KNOW WORRIES #13 – “For All the Dogs I’ve Loved, and There Have Been Many” on Jonathan Edward Durham’s Substack. Because, this:

“I still consider dogs to be the mankind’s greatest achievement. Sure, you could make an argument for science or philosophy or coffee, I guess. But when’s the last time any of those loved you unconditionally besides coffee? And I want to be very clear that I’m not throwing any shade at cats by leaving them out of this conversation. I just don’t really consider them an ‘achievement,’ necessarily, because I’m pretty sure we had nothing to do with the whole cat ‘situation.'”

AND

“…many years ago, one of us saw a wolf and was like, ‘omg I would love a cute scruffy little version of that,’ and then we, as a species, got together and knocked that wish clean out of the fucking park.

And it’s a good thing we did too, because have you seen things? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve watched or heard or read or seen or experienced or felt or thought about anything lately, but it’s rough out there. And I love cats (most of the time), but we’re just not gonna survive this on cats alone. We need more. So lucky for us, we adopted a machine that eats stress and shits love and thinks we’re some combination of god and spouse and best friend and soulmate. And by the way, it’s adorable. Oh, and also it will protect you with its life. Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but if you rub its ears, that’s how you get the serotonin out.” YES.

9. Becoming a High Agency Person, “A means of community worldbuilding” on Group Hug. I especially love these two links Elise shared: Fake Fliers and Requiem for a Tree.

10. Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting, a Google doc with a lot of great resources.

11. If the despots can engage in magical thinking, then so can we on The White Pages. “On telling ourselves a story (about our strength, about our capacity for love, about how we’re going to win) and then making that story come true.” Also on The White Pages, Soon, there will be a spark, because this: “The thing about gathering kindling is that you can only do so before long before a spark is lit and a flame starts burning. And because the current emergent movement is rooted in love and protection for all, the flame I anticipate will not be a destructive one. Trump and his allies have already been setting plenty of those. It will be a source of light, a bonfire that sends the signal to many more of us that there is safety and warmth, that we are not alone.”

12. How Do You Handle Your Books? from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk.

13. I Have Slept in Many Places, “Writing as a side door” from Jena Schwartz.

14. I’m writing from Hugh Hollowell.

15. ‘Our community deserves beauty’: one man’s mission to green a UK tree desert. “In Grimsby, locals have created a society focused on the environmental and health benefits more trees provide, planting thousands in schools, parks and hedgerows.”

16. Lessons for the resistance 2.0 on how to fight back against Trump. “Defeatism and demoralisation are rampant in Trump’s second term. But we cannot give up.”

17. What can I do to fight this coup? from Choose Democracy. “We can’t put everything you could do in here — including ways to ground yourself in these times — but here are some starting points on how to orient and help fight the coup.”

18. The 16 Best Travel Movies for Inspiring Wanderlust. In related news, 50 Years of Travel Tips.

19. 14 Little Things We Stopped Worrying About. “Here are the little things successful authors, CEOs, astrologers, and others have stopped worrying about in 2025 and beyond” on Bustle.

20. The Hidden Cost of Your To-Do List (And How to Take Your Life Back) | Courtney Carver on The Good Life Project. (podcast)

21. Is America Great, Yet? I’ve Been Asking Around on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. Also from John, No, Christians, God is Not in Control, because this: “God works through the hands and words of the people who aspire to this love and goodness, and choose to exercise the individual power they have been entrusted with right where they’re standing. Jesus is not beamed down from Heaven, he is incarnated in the flesh and blood of those who believe that other people are worth sacrificing for, that mercy is the greatest gift, that love is revolutionary.”

22. Times 13 Women of The Year. “These extraordinary leaders are working toward a better, more equal world.”

23. Fleeing your past may be the beginning of your story… on Writing at Red Lights. “As we grow into the person we are meant to become, at one with the soul inside our body, we recognize the truth when it is spoken or written. Writing story is a way to set those truths free.”

24. America’s Last Best Thing: On Trump’s National Park Layoffs and the Erosion of America’s Public Land from Frederick Joseph. “I don’t know whether I have ever truly believed in America as a promise, but I have believed in its rivers and canyons, its mountains and forests—because the land, at least, keeps faith with those who keep faith with it.”

25. Keep Calling from Patti Digh. “I hope you are informed enough to be nauseous and cared for enough to be able to function in the face of all this.”

26. Showering with Spiders on Short Reads.

27. Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle. I was reminded of this essay this week, and it’s just too gorgeous not to share, again.

28. Finding “C” in a world of A vs. B from Patti Digh.

29. Make life possible on A Working Library, a blog about work, reading & technology by Mandy Brown. Because this: “It’s a long-held maxim in movement circles that the people who work for liberation and freedom will always be outgunned and out monied by those who fight for precarity, oppression, and exploitation. Our power is not measured in weapons or cash but in humans; our power is with and through each other. Making life possible in uncertainty is to make room for more life, your own and many others. It is, as ever, to practice solidarity and reciprocity, to show up and to be present. To recognize that what happens next is—not now, not ever—written in stone.”

30. Kate McKinnon: Embrace your ‘weirdness.’ (Facebook reel)

31. Bad wellness advice is all over social media. These creators are pushing back.

32. Tony Horwitz’s widow Geraldine Brooks writes a beautiful memoir of grief.

33. Andrew McMillan: ‘As an atheist, the poetry of Mary Oliver is the closest I come to prayer.’ “The poet on his early love of horror and the transformative power of Thom Gunn.”

34. How Introverts Can Stop Overthinking and Finally Find Closure.

35. Recipes I’d like to try: Ruffles Krispy Treats and 2 Ingredient Onion Ring Chips.

36. And finally, this collection of things I saved on my phone.