Wisdom from the Trenches of 2025

"The biggest mistake I made was believing that if I cast a beautiful net I'd catch only beautiful things." The OA

January: Kaleidoscope. There is a fine line between between untangling and unraveling, letting go and falling apart, releasing and losing grip. Life untangled in India as all the worry and stress accumulated in 2024 melted away, but then back in Chiang Mai, life began to unravel. A free fall of unfathomable freedom and loss. A kaleidoscope of grief and beauty. 

February: Recalibrate. What would happen if I slowed down or simply stopped everything, and reevaluated every aspect of life? By the end of the month, I was regaining confidence in my writing, swimming 1 kilometer everyday, and allowing all else to either fall in place or fall away. 

March: Miracle. I returned to Bali for the first time in five years and surrendered completely at the base of Mount Agung, allowing the island's fierce, raw energy to wash over me in wave after wave. And in its wake, ripples of lightness. I signed with a new literary agent and took off to the far eastern islands of northern Raja Ampat to celebrate and clear the way for more miracles. 

April: Routine. Write, swim, read, repeat. 

May: Betrayal. The job I once loved and a coworker I once trusted became my worst nightmare. In the throes of shock, confusion, and saddness, I came to understand that these projections have nothing to do with me. Allow sleepless nights to fuel creative power. 

June: Recover. Write, breath, and swim through the pain. Strengthen. Heal. Learn to shine through the dark clouds. 

July: Patience. Between maddening anxiety and holding it together through another term, I packed up my apartment, sent the final draft of my novel to my agent, and waited. When the building pressure of wanting everything to be different creates a rip in the space-time continuum, a portal opens.

August: Endings. I lose my job, the novel I've spent over a decade writing goes on submission, and I take a whirlwind trip to the US because I know I will not return for a long time. I move out of the city and into a spacious apartment pressed against the mountains and collapse in gratitude that nothing will be the same. 

September: Beginnings. When ten thousand doors of possibility swing wide open, I walk through the ones that lead to inspiration and starlight, the ones that lead to brighter directions from here.

October: Freedom. I fling myself back into the world of perpetual travel and wander across Sulawesi chasing alien stories, island dreams, and snorkeling adventures. And in this liminal space of freedom, my new five year Thai visa is approved and my first creative nonfiction essay is accepted for publication. 

November: Transformation. After hopping across the remote Indonesian islands of Misool, I head back to Thailand to focus on my health and well-being, take in the cool mountain autumn air, and allow all the peace and creativity and beauty to flow.  

December: Process. What would happen if I once again allowed myself to sink into the depths of messy creation? I've no distractions, nothing to do but channel stories and write. And so, with the gifts of this past year, I will carry them over into the next year and the next and the next. I will live fully. I will process. I will create. 

What a wild year. A spectrum of experiences and emotion. A lot of unexpected drama, but a lot more peace & fulfillment on the other side. 

What gifts did 2025 provide for you (in all its mysterious ways)? What pivotal moments or emotional imprints stood out to you, that changed you in profound or suble ways?

Deep Autumn

We are still inching toward darkness, the time of year of woodsmoke, decaying pine, and shadows. Bonfires, traces of first frost, and hints of magic. Long hours reading in cozy cafes, studying in libraries, creating sigils by candlelight. Long walks through darkening wood, cold, sandy beach, or stone paths through quaint streets of cities and villages where the sky opens and pours starlight and love from the deepest of distances. 

A part of me wishes I still had the steady beat of experiential seasons, seasons of youth--the deep autumns of Ohio, Montana, northern California, the mountains of New Mexico. But I can recreate them, reexperience them through my imagination and words. Lived and relived, again and again. Like dogeared pages, faded scars, and thick, worn fabrics. 

I deep dive into dark academia, portal fiction, and the softest speculative. As lost in these worlds as I am my own, sometimes it's hard to distinguish them. Immersed in traveling, reading, and working on several writing projects, I follow my own seasonal trajectory these days which completely breaks down in the face of reality, like reaching a singularity, like drinking moonlight through the skin.

Wrap yourself in the warmest of comforts, fireside shadows, and soft lighting. And dig in to deep autumn reading to spark creativity and otherworldly magic lurking in the depths of your being. 

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad 🐰 If you thought Bunny was a wild, unhinged ride, just wait. If you thought the boundaries of metaphor and allegory couldn't be pushed anymore, you're in for quite the tumble down a rabbit hole where you might not find your way out. 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow 🚪 People like to talk about how writers have a command of language as though they've somehow domesticated it, tamed it, taken the reigns of control, as though it's a good thing. This novel does the opposite. Harrow flings words on the page like paint on canvas, wild and uncontrollable, creating art more awe-inspiring than any author with so called command. A celebration of language and stories, escapism and belonging. Wander, get lost, find magic through every door. Taste it, feel it, experience it. 

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino 👽 There is never an easy answer to why some of us are wired so differently, why our thought processes and feelings and perceptions seem so disparate from the rest of humanity. This novel explores these questions in one of the most, beautiful, resonant, and refreshing ways. In a world of disconnect and othering, it reconnects us to something beyond, to something within us no one else can touch. 

Where do you spend your deep autumns--immersed in fantastical worlds, meandering in crisp, cool nature, or invoking incantations in the light of bonfires or candlelight or fireplaces? Or like me, drinking from all of them until they seep from your very being.