Love this! Particularly the deeper reading and weekly deep listening part! Thanks for all of your wonderful work in 2024; I really look forward to your newsletter every time it comes out and many blessings for 2025!
reading this was sooooo cool!! i shared a lot of similar but still scarily specific sentiments (re: 2024 as a year of creativity, a dud year for reading lol, & devotion for 2025)! thank u for sharing this as it made me feel amazed at the human experience & how much we can have in common with one another 🩵☺️
this was so exciting to read bc I’d been journaling about 2025 as “my year of devotion” too!! I loved the specific resolutions you set (especially the deep listening one) and may try to steal some…and happy new year!!
Hear you on “read fewer, better” and the time it takes to recover joy in reading after grad school. There have been other phases of life that left me wrung out like that too, but it can always be found again when you slow down and get intentional.
Yo big congratulations on the house! Bellingham is a lovely town. Good luck building your social circle—don’t know if you’ve heard the term Seattle Freeze yet but it’s very real. Washingtonians are very weird and bad at making friends
This was such a nourishing read. Thanks for all these reflections. <3 I'm so glad to have found you in this orbit --- I am excited about the things you are excited about! (I have a funny story about watching a movie because I thought you wrote about it, but I got the movie confused with a different movie, so when I went back to look for your essay, I was like: 'oh wrong movie.' but I truly set out to watch it partly so I could read your essay about it! TLDR: I still need to watch "Perfect Days"!)
I watched Evil Does Not Exist which I think someone else maybe wrote about the same week as you wrote about perfect days and I think the Substack scroll made some wires cross! lol. (I did not love Evil Does Not Exist, though I loved Drive My Car, the only other Hamaguchi film I’ve seen.)
when I deleted my tiktok I was sad to lose your account, so I was so delighted when you showed up in my substack feed one day! thank you for helping this old head find so much great new music!
Loved reading this! Your approach toward growing up really resonates—being less concerned with the fray, doing what’s right for yourself, making choices not based on trends but on your own desires and interests, which I think is a beautiful form of devotion to the self. I’m so glad to have connected with you and your writing this year—I can’t wait to keep reading!
honored to be included in this! yeah like Cameron said, loved the part about deeper reading — in the same way that i’m trying not to care about the *number* of books that i read, i’m really trying to ignore the different stats and quantitative measures of success that come with writing on this platform. I need to get my brain away from the ‘big number means you’re good, small number means you’re a failure’ mentality!
Also agreed on all fronts about that part on aging and being ‘grown up’. Some things are not for me, and that’s ok!! life is short, no use trying to be aware and tapped into all of the trends.
Love this! Particularly the deeper reading and weekly deep listening part! Thanks for all of your wonderful work in 2024; I really look forward to your newsletter every time it comes out and many blessings for 2025!
Thank you Cameron! So grateful for you and your writing. 💕
reading this was sooooo cool!! i shared a lot of similar but still scarily specific sentiments (re: 2024 as a year of creativity, a dud year for reading lol, & devotion for 2025)! thank u for sharing this as it made me feel amazed at the human experience & how much we can have in common with one another 🩵☺️
Thank you for reading! May we both have better reading years in 2025 lol
this was so exciting to read bc I’d been journaling about 2025 as “my year of devotion” too!! I loved the specific resolutions you set (especially the deep listening one) and may try to steal some…and happy new year!!
Steal freely! Happy new year to you too!
Hear you on “read fewer, better” and the time it takes to recover joy in reading after grad school. There have been other phases of life that left me wrung out like that too, but it can always be found again when you slow down and get intentional.
For sure! Sometimes you need to step back a bit from even your most cherished hobbies, but if you’re in it for the long haul it always comes back.
Yo big congratulations on the house! Bellingham is a lovely town. Good luck building your social circle—don’t know if you’ve heard the term Seattle Freeze yet but it’s very real. Washingtonians are very weird and bad at making friends
haha luckily (for me at least) there are a lot of other transplants here so the freeze hasn't been too bad
This was such a nourishing read. Thanks for all these reflections. <3 I'm so glad to have found you in this orbit --- I am excited about the things you are excited about! (I have a funny story about watching a movie because I thought you wrote about it, but I got the movie confused with a different movie, so when I went back to look for your essay, I was like: 'oh wrong movie.' but I truly set out to watch it partly so I could read your essay about it! TLDR: I still need to watch "Perfect Days"!)
haha well now I have to know what you watched instead!
I watched Evil Does Not Exist which I think someone else maybe wrote about the same week as you wrote about perfect days and I think the Substack scroll made some wires cross! lol. (I did not love Evil Does Not Exist, though I loved Drive My Car, the only other Hamaguchi film I’ve seen.)
Oooh interesting, I also loved Drive My Car. I fear I have to watch it now, I'll report back.
thank you! <3 this was wonderful to read this morning
Thank YOU! I came to your newsletter late in the year but it’s quickly become a fav.
thank you so much for including me 💗
when I deleted my tiktok I was sad to lose your account, so I was so delighted when you showed up in my substack feed one day! thank you for helping this old head find so much great new music!
Loved reading this! Your approach toward growing up really resonates—being less concerned with the fray, doing what’s right for yourself, making choices not based on trends but on your own desires and interests, which I think is a beautiful form of devotion to the self. I’m so glad to have connected with you and your writing this year—I can’t wait to keep reading!
Right back at you Clare. Every time I see you in my inbox I can’t wait to sit down and read!
honored to be included in this! yeah like Cameron said, loved the part about deeper reading — in the same way that i’m trying not to care about the *number* of books that i read, i’m really trying to ignore the different stats and quantitative measures of success that come with writing on this platform. I need to get my brain away from the ‘big number means you’re good, small number means you’re a failure’ mentality!
Also agreed on all fronts about that part on aging and being ‘grown up’. Some things are not for me, and that’s ok!! life is short, no use trying to be aware and tapped into all of the trends.
Metrics!! Who needs em?! Thank you for all your writing this year Michael, I so look forward to your newsletters.