Goodbye 2025

A look back

It’s well into January and you probably thought you were finally free from all the year-end talk. But I find myself with a few hours to spare while I wait at the vet. Just enough time for a little look back.

I set out with big dreams and intentions for 2025, including plans for this newsletter. It was going to be my year of devotion. All that was swiftly derailed a month later when we got a puppy and it became instead the Year of Marge. But that’s ok. She’s taught me a lot about devotion in her own way. And just look at her:

A few other quick hits from the year:

• Bellingham really started to feel like home. We hosted visitors, we’re finding our spots, we’re making friends. It’s feeling good.

• I got a regular yoga class at the studio.

• I started learning to play the harmonium and singing in front of people (!!!) which I never in a thousand years would have thought I’d willingly do.

• I paid off my student loans!

• I saw Oasis!

  

  

Now on to some favs from the year:

Reading

I finished the Wolf Hall trilogy with Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & The Light; loved Grief Is the Thing With Feathers and haven’t seen the adaptation yet (sounds like maybe one to miss?); I liked Little, Big but also had major issues with it; The Deptford Trilogy read alongside some Jung by coincidence which really enhanced the experience; a very Pynchon year with Vineland and Shadow Ticket; Leaves of Grass (1855 edition as recommended by Michael Bourne in his article Embracing The Other I Am; or, How Walt Whitman Saved My Life); There’s Always This Year which I loved and wrote about; Dead and Alive, it’s always nice when Zadie Smith is back in the rotation

Rereads: The Secret History I liked this a lot more than I did the first time I read it years ago, a minor detail that made me laugh out loud was all the dealers and partiers forming an anti-drug trivia team and absolutely dominating; The Buried Giant again I liked this a lot more than on my first read, this meditation on time and memory and forgiveness and love and identity and myth feels like one I’ll come back to often.

Never skip newsletters:

• SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE by Meaghan Garvey

• From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy by Alicia Kennedy

• interruptions by Cameron Steele

• Enthusiastica by Danica Boyce

• radical love letters by Raechel Anne Jolie

• The Convivial Society by L. M. Sacasas

• Eat Flowers, Drink Paint by Katy Kelleher

• MOVIEPUDDING by Elissa Suh

• My Writing by Michelle Santiago Cortés

• Entertainment, Weakly by Patrick Nathan

• Poem Butter by Loré Yessuff

Watching

We felt kind of uninspired by a lot of newer stuff this year so we ended up rewatching a lot of prestige TV high–water marks (Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, etc) and reliable favs (PTA, Scorcese, etc etc etc). But a few other favs from the year:

Docs: Buena Vista Social Club (1999); Mur Murs (1981); The Decline of Western Civilization Part II (1988)

Features: The Color of Pomegranates (1969); La Chimera (2023; maybe my favorite watch of the year); Body Heat (1981); One Battle After Another (2025); The Secret Agent (2025; technically we saw this earlier this week but time was still a little hazy then so I’m counting it); Like a lot of people, I had myself a Lynch marathon: Fire Walk With Me (1992) plus Twin Peaks + The Return, Lost Highway (1997), Blue Velvet (1986). Some favs from our local indie’s special screenings: Alien (1979), Rebecca (1940), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).

Listening

I tried and failed to move to Apple Music. My brain refuses to understand their UI and also there was a really annoying bug with my favorites that I lost hours of library cleanup to and couldn’t bring myself to start over. Maybe I’ll try again this year.

Staples from years past:

• You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene

• Comfort to Me, Amyl and The Sniffers

• I Got Heaven, Mannequin Pussy

• Hadsel, Beirut

• Definitely Maybe & (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, Oasis

• HEAVY JELLY, SOFT PLAY

• Dreams, Gábor Szabó

• Silver, Say She She

• 22, A Million, Bon Iver

New (to me and new-new):

• SABLE, fABLE, Bon Iver

• Natural Pleasure, BRONCHO

• NEVER ENOUGH, Turnstile

• Double Infinity, Big Thief

• 41 Longfield Street Late 80’s, Kieran Hebden and William Tyler

• False Lankum, Lankum

• Is It Now?, Automatic

• Heungboga, LEENALCHI

• Teeth of Time, Joshua Burnside

• The Smashing Machine soundtrack, Nala Sinephro

• LOWER, Benjamin Booker

• The Scholars, Car Seat Headrest, but specifically Gethsemane which I wish was 40 minutes long

Writing:

I did next to no writing here this year. But I’m ok with what I did manage to post:

• There’s Always This Year

• Thank You, David Lynch

• Embracing Darkness

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And with that, my time in this vet’s lobby is drawing to a close. I’ll be back next week with a look at the year ahead. I’m reviving some of those dreams I had for this newsletter, so stay tuned. Take care of yourselves and the ones you love <3