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I wanted to wish you a very happy holiday season and share the final 10 things of interest.
I think we all know this time of year has the potential to be hectic or challenging or fraught, lonely and sad, so let me remind you now: prioritise the stuff that makes you feel good. A bit of joy, a bit of rest, plus anything else.
I’m grateful that you chose to spend time with me this year, and allowed me the honour of sharing my words with you. I’ll be back in January with more essays and moments on life’s small things. In the meantime, you can always pop into the chat to say Hi.
I’ll see you all in the new year and now for one last list.
If I had an unlimited budget for furniture, I would shop exclusively at Sharland England. Elegant wicker, hand-painted ceramics and embroidered linens, every item is thoughtfully handcrafted.
In “It’s okay to suck when you try something new,” Allie Volpe from Vox explores our need to excel at every task, why sucking feelings uncomfortable and considering our motivations for picking up a new hobby can help guidance us on sticking through with it, even when we do suck at it.
Rosie Spinks from
writes an incredibly powerful piece on “The Friendship Problem” and how we’ve developed a form of ‘social atrophy,’ that capitalism has essentially reinforced through our ability to buy, order, or summon anything we might need within 24 hours. She writes, “We are so burned out by our data-heavy, screen-based, supposedly friction-free lives that we no longer have the time or energy to engage in the kind of small, unfabulous, mundane, place-based friendships or acquaintance-ships that have nourished and sustained humans for literal centuries.”If you’ve got time over the holidays to make a jam, I highly recommend this one. With doing a food haul for Christmas dinner, I’ve overbought bacon so this “Bacon, Maple and Coffee Jam” recipe comes in handy.
Miso has popped up more and more in recipes and I’m finding that its earthy flavors cuts through sweetness with its distinct savory presence, especially when compared to a sprinkle of salt. If you’re looking for a way to incorporate it into your baking, try out this crumble (which is perfect for family dinners) by
from Kitchen Gems “Miso Apple Crumble.”- from Everything is an Emergency had me in full, salty tears. In “Remembering things that haven't happened yet,” Bess’s husband’s cancer has returned and since then, she’s become obsessed with making videos of him to watch when he’s gone. She writes, “I was anxious to achieve the impossible task of capturing the essence of our life together. The videos would be an insurance policy against future loneliness and grief, and an insurance policy against forgetting.”
I share the below paragraph that truly broke my heart.
“I try to be gentle when I think about that past me who left all those years unrecorded, but it’s hard not to get upset with the losses, like the hundreds of hours Jake spent reading to me from Lord of the Rings and Elmore Leonard before bed, the way his hands look when he chops vegetables, the excited way he’d point out electric bicycles, the gentle lift to his old voice when he’s teasing me, that smirk. Rationally, I know it’s unreasonable to have expected that I’d document our entire lives in preparation for later review, in the event of Jake’s premature death.”
With the internet, the quality and diversity of fresh voices in filmmaking is exploding, yet it’s harder than ever for emerging filmmakers to reach a wider audience and break into the industry. Short of the Week has created an online film curation built on scouring the web to discover to promote the new wave of emerging filmmakers creating innovative stories.
David Pogue wrote about his experience to a big old house full of belongings and find a new life for every item. In, “My Quest to Downsize Without Throwing Anything Away,” David wanted to create a landfill-free move, a project that would take six-months to complete and reveal just how massive and efficient the secondhand economy has become.
- from Necessary Salt discusses how women have forgotten to hold their rage, often mistaken for having depression or sadness, “we’ve [been] told to use our inside voices and our nice manners.” A stand out quote, “We’re taught that “angry women” are scary, wrong, or unattractive, and so, as we age, we learn to suppress, repress, and disassociate our rage. And without anger, we can’t recognize or react when we’ve suffered an injustice. When we lose our necessary rage, we lose our protection and our power.”
In “Rosana goes speed dating, part 1,”
takes us on her hilarious speed dating journey as she attempts to unravel the mysteries of men sat across from her, most of whom “seem like comatose ragdolls, platonic shadows of men, bad actors who are projecting a soul that is long dead and has to be summoned through a summary of a few lines of a profession.”One of my favourite writers on Substack,
from Culture Study, writes about the death of an adult in her life, her friend’s dad. In “One Significant Adult,” she describes him with a “big bushy salt and pepper beard, a Santa Claus build, a contagious laugh, and that ineffable thing that makes everyone around him feel welcome.”“When I read Marilynne Robinson, I often wish for a church that was a manifestation of her vision of what Christianity could be. A church truly defined by love and grace, by deep self-interrogation, by an absence of guile or fear of difference. John was the closest I think I’ve ever come to that experience.”
thanks for the kind mention Natalie! Hope you're having a lovely Christmas day.
Hope you enjoy the bacon jam. Happy Christmas Natalie.