1. Poetry: the graveyard of my best intentions by Maya Stein, The Oldest App by Jena Schwartz, Thank You Letter to My Heart by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Everything is Speaking by Julia Fehrenbacher, and Directional Prayer Change and Loosening the Ligatures and Retro from Julie Barton, and I take my daughter swimming at the YMCA from HannahRoWrites.. Also, here’s a Facebook reel of Andrea Gibson reading Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey.

2. The 25 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024. “Every year, the Next Big Idea Club editorial staff reviews hundreds of upcoming books to identify the best nonfiction titles. If you’re ready to boost your happiness, productivity, and general well-being in 2025, start by checking out the 25 groundbreaking books below.”

3. I Learned Not All Rare Things Are Valuable, and Not All Plentiful Things Are Worthless. “If you could save just one thing from a fire, what would it be? I wish I had been offered the choice.”

4. 366 grateful days – 2024 on A Grace Full Life. In related news, 100 things that made my year (2024) from Austin Kleon.

5. Issue #308 of The Red Hand Files from Nick Cave. “I wrote in Faith, Hope and Carnage, ‘Hope is optimism with a broken heart’. This means that hope has an earned understanding of the sorrowful or corrupted nature of things, yet it rises to attend to the world even still. We understand that our demoralisation becomes the most serious impediment to bettering the world. In its active form, hope is a supreme gesture of love, a radical and audacious duty, whereas despair is a stagnant rejection of life itself. Hope becomes the energy of change.”

6. The One Place You Can Find Hope Right Now on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. “Now, it may sound like an exercise in semantics, but hope isn’t something anyone can give you; it doesn’t come from a post you read or a speech you stream or a seminar you attend. It’s not downloaded from social media or handed down like an inheritance from a wise, older relative. It isn’t a generous gift you receive from a stranger or even absorbed from someone close to you. Truthfully, there is literally nothing outside of you that can alter you internally. Ultimately, hope is an inside job. It can’t arrive or be given, it must be chosen. It is a decision we come to, sometimes because of and sometimes completely despite the objective data or experiential evidence around us.”

7. Good stuff from The Marginalian: The Promethean Power of Burnout and Elevating Resolutions for the New Year Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds and Some Blessings to Begin With.

8. The Best Trail Camera Photos of 2024.

9. please give yourself permission from Elissa Altman. “On Making a New Year’s Commitment to Tell Your Story.” I’m excited about her new book, Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create.

10. How to have a perfectly imperfect 2025. (podcast)

11. Jimmy Carter, the longest-lived US president, dies aged 100. (video obituary)

12. Starting a New Year: Revisiting The Four Agreements from Patti Digh.

13. Gentle January: 10 Ways to Rest More and Stress Less from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less. I’m excited for her new book, Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want.

14. The Key To Making A Resolution Stick from Andrea Gibson. “True healing requires integration, not rejection.”

15. Writer’s Resolution 2025: Change Your Story from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

16. 101 ways to get healthier and happier – in just five minutes. “Open all your windows! Sing a song! Have a hot chocolate! Guardian writers and readers reveal simple ways to lift your mood in 300 seconds or fewer.”

17. Eight ways to stay happier this year, according to science.

18. 10 Questions to Ask Yourself at the Start of a New Year.

19. 25 Unexpected, Little Ways To Improve Your Mental Health In 2025.

20. All 10 Movies Based On Haruki Murakami Stories, Ranked Worst-Best.

21. Quit it! From vaping to doomscrolling, 10 bad habits and how to break them. “Procrastinating? Online shopping too much? Always cancelling? These top tips from experts will help you change bad behaviour for the better.”

22. 2 ton bull behaves like a tiny puppy. (Facebook reel)

23. Are you starting your yoga journey this year? A Facebook reel from one of my favorite yoga teachers, Scottee on @scotteeisfat. In related news, New Year Same You and Keep relighting my fire, babes. (Instagram reels)

24. And finally, a collection of random things I saved to my phone this week.

1. 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won. “The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.” I’m pretty sure I shared this when it was first published, but if you are like me and feeling anxiety and dread about the coming new year, it might help to take another look. In related news, and another one I probably already shared, ‘Don’t burn out’: nine activists and therapists on coping with post-election overwhelm. “We spoke to activists and therapists across the US about how they were dealing with the news of Trump’s win and how they plan to take action.”

2. Why do we revert to our childhood selves when we visit family?

3. Poetry: Magdalene—The Seven Devils by Marie Howe, and Sleeping Dog by Julie Barton, and To The Lonely, This Holiday by Frederick Joseph. In related news, 50 Contemporary Poets on the Best Poems they Read in 2024: All Available to Read for Free Online.

4. A Confession: The Five Lists & a New Year’s Journaling Challenge on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “I have an allergy to the whole ‘new year, new you’ way of thinking—of making pie-in-the-sky resolutions that are nearly impossible to see through. But I have always loved this time of year as an opportunity for a reset, as the holiday craze starts to wind down, before we jump back into the flow of things. To me, it feels like a sacred pause, where I have a chance to reflect, to take stock, to regroup, to course correct. This year, perhaps more than any before, it feels so necessary.”

5. Homelessness rates jumped by double digits in 2024 as Americans battled to afford housing.

6. 50 years of The Oregon Trail: The hidden controversies of a video game that defined the US.

7. What Life Has Taught Me About Uncertainty. “In these uncertain times, there is so much we don’t know about the future. This can be terrifying and disorienting when so many terrible things are happening or threatening to happen in the world, but it can also be exciting. We don’t know what’s going to happen this year or next, and that means that so much is still possible. The path ahead is uncertain, and we don’t always have as much agency in the outcome as we’d like. Yet the future is not yet written. There are plenty of possible hereafters still left to create.”

8. What Four Words Will Change You in 2025? “Choose your gentle vows” by Satya Robyn on Going Gently.

9. When kindness becomes a habit, it improves our health.

10. It feels weird to be okay from Ijeoma Oluo: Behind the Book, “the world is horrible and I’m okay.”

11. A Therapist’s Top 7 Strategies to Stop Negative Self-Talk.

12. 90 Little Pleasures to Celebrate This Winter.

13. How to Be Happy: Simple Steps to Rediscover Joy in Everyday Life.

14. 25 New Year’s Eve Rituals That Will Help You Start 2025 As Your Best Self.

15. 22 Great Reads You Might Not Be Familiar With.

16. A Changing Community and Lived Experiences Converge in Leroy Johnson’s Mixed-Media Houses. “From collaged and painted found materials merged with elements of photography and ceramics, Leroy Johnson (1937-2022) created an eclectic vision of life in his hometown of Philadelphia. Through layered, multi-dimensional portraits of houses, the artist represents loci of family life and community in conceptual assemblages that also confront racism, poverty, and gentrification.”

17. Queer Liberation Library (QLL) “is fighting to build a vibrant, flourishing queer future by connecting LGBTQ+ people with literature, information, and resources that celebrate the unique and empowering diversity of our community.”

18. Pictures of Cats · Jonathan Coulton. (video) This song is from 2017, but it seems right for this particular moment in time.

19. Giant Straw Animals Invade Japanese Fields: Inside the Wara Art Festival.

20. Marieanne Cavaciuti on Instagram. “Handmade nature inspired Ceramic tiles and Airbnb at Coaxdon Farm in beautiful Devon countryside near Jurassic Coast, South West England.”

21. We may see it differently after they’re gone from Janelle Hanchett. “If you read anything about grief, trauma, and psychology, you’ll learn that the most complicated relationships with parents involve the most painful and complex and enduring grief. Because hope of the relationship ever changing is gone. We should probably read that again. The hope of the relationship ever becoming what you, as a yearning, innocent child needed, worked for, begged for, will never arrive. The curtain has closed. What we had is what we had. There is no tomorrow to hope for. It is, with all the fucking finality we can ever expect, exactly what it is.” So much this… 

22. Jimmy Carter to be honored with a state funeral before being buried next to Rosalynn. In related news, From peanut farmer to president: Jimmy Carter’s life in photos, and Jimmy Carter, nation’s longest-living former president, dies at 100. To honor him, flags on federal buildings and grounds in the U.S. and its territories (including the White House), as well as all naval vessels, will fly at half-staff for the next 30 days — which includes the upcoming presidential inauguration.

23. Some of the best Reuters photos of 2024, and the stories behind them.

24. New Year’s Liberation Lists from The Wonder + The Haunting. “Ditch the goals to liberate your desires.” If you don’t read anything else off this list this week, read this one. It’s SO good.

25. And finally, this collection of things I saved to my phone this week.