BALKING at the price to develop a single roll of film: $39.84. THIRTY-NINE DOLL HAIRS AND EIGHTY-FOUR CENTS!!!! FOR ONE COPY EACH OF 27 EXPOSURES!!!! AND A TWO-WEEK TURNAROUND TIME!!! AT A PLACE THITY MINUTES AWAY!!!! EXCUSE ME WHAT HELLO???? Since fucking when!!! Remember when you could get two prints of every exposure on a single roll of film developed in an hour at any neighborhood drug store for like $8.00???? What in the hell.
BINGING Bret Easton Ellis’s new show The Shards. It’s so good, you guys. The colors, the clothes, the set design, the blocking, the casting (my eye is particularly drawn to how well groomed and manicured everyone’s hands and nails are). I love everything about it. And Kaia Gerber looks and moves and sounds so muchlike her mom it’s wild.
BRAINSTORMING ideas for several memorykeeping projects, including a possible mini album documenting Michael’s Belated Birthday Week of Whimsy, and a possible holiday-themed album.
ENJOYING the coziness of early fall. Sweats! Fuzzy socks! Blankets! Candles!
HYPERFIXATING on the Donner Party Dizazz. It all started with a historical novel (When Winter Comes by V.A. Andrews, a recommendation I heard on a recent-ish episode of My Favorite Murder and that I extend to you) and has progressed me through several books, a documentary, and a thousand different, interconnected rabbit holes. It also has me wanting to section hike as much of their route as possible.
KEEPING an eye out for fun neon window signs to photograph during my walks.
LISTENING to and loving the Eating History podcast. It’s a husband/wife team—he’s an historian, she’s a chef—and the entire first season is about the history of pizza. Big recommend.
LOOKINGforward to watching Primetime later this week. (My favorite blurb for it so far comes from a local weekly: “In Lance Oppenheim’s fiction feature debut, Robert Pattinson gets to do his most favorite thing in the world: talk in a weird voice.” Even if I didn’t know anything about the premise of the movie, this sentence alone would be enough to sell me on it.)
PREPARING to order another custom puzzle from a photo I took. The holdup: deciding which company to go with.
READING, what else, another book about the Donner Party: The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis. I’m almost done and I really enjoy how detailed it is, with each short chapter broken into a day-by-day account of the caravan’s journey. I don’t want the book to end!! Big recommend.
REWATCHING a handful of shows from the early aughts and early 2010s that I loved and that are now on Hulu: The Americans, Body of Proof, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, and The Mentalist. I miss when TV shows lasted longer than one or two seasons, and when seasons had more than six to 10 episodes, and when episodes lasted longer than 25 minutes.
WORKING on my 2026 pocket pages (Project Life) album. After starting the year off strong I fell all the way off and have been working to get back on track and caught up. I’m so close!
Dixie, my new dictionary. Nearly a month later and I’m still so in love with her. 15/10 purchase.
Tiny containers. Most days, I go back home after the gym, where I imbibe in my post-workout powders and potions. Often enough, though, I don’t. For those days, I bought these cutie little containers to bring said powders and potions with me so I can stop carrying them around in tiny ziplock bags like a drug dealer. (Pictured below: chia seeds and fiber.)
Finishing this fuckass puzzle. At the beginning of the year I had this puzzle made from a photo I took during a 2015 a trip to the fair. I knew it would be challenging. It was WAY more challenging than I expected. I began it in January. By February, I was beyond annoyed with it and shoved it under my TV stand to save for later. I began working on it again in July and finally finished it in mid-August. By comparison, I usually complete a 1,000-piece puzzle in one to three days (it’s the autism).
I used puzzleYOU and I’m mostly happy with my decision. The quality of the pieces and the box are much better than that of Portland Puzzle Company. My one complaint—and it’s a big one—is the dullness of the colors. The colors are what really make the image pop. Compared to the original photo (below), the puzzle’s colors are so muted, which I think dulls the vibe of the puzzle and the satisfaction of completing the thing.
Trying on all my Before Times work clothes. I haven’t had to get dressed for real in…years. Which, on the one hand, I really love. Not having a dry cleaning bill and being super comfortable all day every day is the dream, especially as an autistic who finds most clothing extremely-to-unbearably uncomfortable for a variety of sensory reasons. For the last year or so, though, I’ve begun to miss feeling put together. So the other day I tried on literally every single piece of workwear from my pre-COVID, DC era. It was so, so fun and made me feel human and like a member of society again—and inspired me to get dressed for real for my recent visits to the Portland Art Museum and the Swan Island Dahlia Festival.
Backing this Kickstarter. I cannot wait for my phone to have this very cute and stationary home.
Street art. Flyers, posters, sidewalk stencils, stickers, murals, THIS ADORABLE-ASS TINY CERAMIC VASE HELLO??? The version of autism I have is the one that’s hyper-attuned to little things on utility poles and street signs and the ground and man does it keep paying dividends.
Washing my car. The other weekend I borrowed my friend’s parents’ driveway and hose to give my car the detailed wash she so desperately needed and deserved. She’s so shiny now!
Air-drying my laundry. Since April, I’ve been air-drying all of my laundry. Does this save me a noticeable amount of money? No. Do I have the space to do this? Also no. Does this save me time? Absolutely not. Does it bring me an immense sense of peace, calm, and contentment? Yes. It brings me so much joy to stand on my building’s little stoop and arrange everything on my drying rack, to putz around and check on its progress and rotate the rack throughout the day with the sun, and to fold it all and put it away at the end of the day once it’s dry. I love it so much.
The IPRC. I was first introduced to the Independent Publishing Resource Center a few years ago when I was invited to participate in an art build being held there. It’s such a cool place and I’m very grateful to have access to a creative workspace filled with so many useful tools (enormous scanners, InDesign and Illustrator, a laminator, book binding machines and tools, button making machines, a zine library (!!), a letterpress studio (where I took a letterpress workshop last summer), riso printers, a screen printing studio, etc.) and so much inspiration. Lately, I’ve been visiting a few times a week to work on a project that I’m both super excited about and not yet ready to share.
The Swan Island Dahlia Festival. After years of wanting and planning to, I finally went for the first time the other week. Beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, etc. I spent two and a half hours there and easily could’ve spent longer if I hadn’t needed to leave to make it to an appointment.
Gym progress. It’s been a long time since I’ve hit a lifting PR. Given my age and how long I’ve been lifting, those PRs will continue to become more and more rare. The good news is, the amount of weight on the bar isn’t the only type of PR you can hit in the gym. Some non-lifting progress I’ve made recently:
Improved (lower) resting heart rate, which has translated to higher RPMs with less effort during Zone 2 sessions on the ergs
Holding right around (and sometimes above!!) 70 RPMs on the Assault Bikeduring workouts, under fatigue, for multiple rounds. This is a huge achievement for me. I’m curious to see how it translates to the Echo Bike, which is even more of a beast than the Assault Bike
Improved pace on the ski erg. Of the ergs, this is the one I struggle with the most. It’s very exciting every time I see my new and improved pace holding steady, or even creeping down by a second or two every few weeks, on the screen
Having the gym to myself. Earlier this year I joined a different gym in part because of their hours, which align better with my schedule, and which means I often have the gym entirely to myself for a good portion of my workout. A dream.
The first signs of fall. I’m shocking myself by saying: I’m excited—and ready—for fall. Or, more precisely, I’m excited and ready for early fall, when it’s still warm enough to have the windows open and also cool enough to wear sleeves and burn a spice-scented candle (this one is my favorite); when the leaves begin to turn in vibrant shades of reds, oranges, and yellows and are still crunchy instead of brown and wet and extremely slippery; and when golden hour looks and feels extra golden.
Since she arrived, I’ve been carrying her around my apartment with me like a baby; reading and re-reading all the front matter and supplemental information throughout; asking everyone I know to guess what the last word listed in her is; and having my kids and my friends make a series of choices to arrive at their own personal Word of the Day. Everyone is so sick of me!!!
I’m also using the occasion to once again evangelize about a few of my favorite books about books and words. Ywfms 🫡
Kory is a lexicographer who worked at Merriam-Webster for more than a decade, helping to write the dictionary. This book, which came out in 2017, and which I of course preordered months before its publication, is such a fun read. I truly wish I’d known when I was younger that working with words in this particular way is a job I could have pursued.
Studying Early Printed Books, 1450-1800: A Practical Guide by librarian, book historian, and bibliographer Sarah Werner. My autism is on full display with this recommendation, which is more academic than the other titles on this list. I don’t think it’s dry or overly technical, and I also know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
COMPLETING, ever so slowly, a puzzle I had made from a photo I took a decade ago at the county fair. It’s harder than I thought it was going to be!!
CONSIDERING buying a DVD player and a membership to my local video rental store, and replacing streaming with DVDs.
COUNTING down the days (60!) till the Michael Jackson biopic premiere, the return of gym flowers, and warmer weather and spending hours each day outside under the sun.
ENJOYING an episode (or half of one) of The West Wing each evening after dinner and charmed by how funny it is (I’m actually laughing out loud), and surprised by how much of Hollywood was on this show, either as regulars or guest stars.
FEELING vindicated as hell, along with all my fellow lifelong conspiracy theorists.
LISTENING to nervous system regulating music while either reading or doing word searches for an hour before dinner each evening instead of scrolling, watching TV, or listening to a podcast. Big recommend.
LOOKING, still—endlessly!—for a new therapist.
LOVING the first signs of spring in the Trader Joe’s flower department.
KEEPING a spreadsheet of words I encounter in books I read that I don’t know, that I’ve forgotten the definition to, or that I can use properly in a sentence but can’t articulate a clear definition to. (I’ve been doing this since I was teenager, writing each word’s definition in the margins. Since I now read only library books (finances, the economy, cost of living, etc.), I’ve started keeping a spreadsheet of these words, a change in approach inspired by this tweet.)
MAPPING out potential summer 2026 hikes.
PREPARING to launch a monthly puzzle exchange at my gym. I’m so excited!
READING through the Epstein Files via jmail dot world, a brilliant project that began as a way for people to read every released Epstein email as if you’re logged into his gmail account, and that has since expanded into a suite of cloned apps.
SHOPPING for new bikini bottoms and finding it impossible to find cuts and patterns that I like.
USING the shit out of my library card (I’ve read 10 (!) books so far this month!).
WONDERING if other languages that use the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals routinely refer to a number (0) as a letter (O), for example when speaking a phone number (five-oh-three v. five-zero-three) or time (six-oh-seven v. six-zero-seven). Is this just an English thing? Do languages that use different alphabets and/or numerals have a similar practice?
One of the benefits of being terminally online in this godforsaken era is that, every so often, I stumble upon corners of the internet untouched by AI slop or Epstein et al., and that remind me of how cool and fun the internet once was and still can be. What “cool and fun” means will differ depending on who you are. As someone who has been oversharing online since before social media, I’m partial to the personal blog. The less niche and more all-encompassing, the better. Today, I’m sharing three personal blogs I’ve recently learned about—all via Twitter—and that I’m enjoying reading.
I spent the entirety of 2024 and much of 2025 recovering from my 2023 suicidal era. As such, I’ve not been hitting traditional milestones or collecting traditional achievements these last couple of years; everything I have, both tangible and in-, has gone into surviving my own brain.
At the end of 2024, I made a list of things I did for myself over the course of the year that helped me begin climbing out of the abyss. It was a very short list of very simple things. It was also the start of a new practice. Today, I’m sharing the things I did for myself in 2025 that most improved my life. They’re still mostly small things, and many are just accommodations for my and my son’s neurodivergence.
In roughly the order in which I adopted each habit/routine:
Weekly check-ins. In early 2025, I implemented “weekly check-ins.” They’re basically rebranded family meetings for my household of two. Every Sunday morning, my 15-year-old and I sit down and review the upcoming week together using a very rudimentary agenda that we fill in throughout the preceding week. This weekly practice has helped me run our household more efficiently, and it’s helped us both better budget our time, executive functioning, spoons, and expectations for the upcoming week.
Aligned my days with my natural circadian rhythm. For better or worse, my brain is an early bird. Most days, I’m wide awake before my alarm, which is set for an hour that many people consider “the middle of the night.” At the very end of 2024, I stopped fighting against my natural circadian rhythm and began experimenting with living my life by it. By early 2025, I’d settled into a daily schedule that works incredibly well for me and my overactive autistic brain.
Without question, of everything I did for myself last year, this is the most consequential. It has been profoundly helpful in every domain of my life, and I’m eternally grateful to (finally, and at least for now) have the privilege to accommodate my needs in such a significant way.
Changed my volunteer commitment to accommodate my autism. In 2025, I left two volunteer positions that I loved but that were both too late in the day for my overactive autistic brain and required more sensory and social battery than I have. After much searching, I found a different volunteer position that’s a much better fit: it’s closer to my apartment, it’s earlier in the day, it’s quiet and still and repetitive, and there are never more than four people (me included) in the office at one time (and often there’s just two of us). Plus, the employee I’m paired with and I get along really well, I enjoy and am good at the work, and I feel valued and appreciated there.
Created a landing zone for my AuDHD teenager. My son and I live in a very small apartment. My autism cannot handle visual busyness, or things being out of place. His ADHD means that he tends to place things down wherever he is in the moment, creating small piles of stuff all over the goddamn place. To diffuse the resulting frustration and tension, I bought a large laundry basket for him to dump his stuff in (it was, thank god, on sale when I bought it). My only rules: as soon as its contents begin overflowing onto the floor, he has to move stuff into his room, and it needs to be gone through and cleaned out each week during or after our weekly check-in, regardless of whether it’s overflowing.
Amazon Sundays. To add some friction to my spending habits and to reduce my personal carbon footprint (which is negligible and a scam of a concept invented by the advertising and PR industry, I know), I decided early in the year to order from Amazon only on Sundays (excepting time-sensitive issues and extenuating circumstances).
This practice has worked remarkably well. I’m making fewer impulse purchases, which has reoriented my relationship to instant gratification in general, and, sometimes, between the time I add something to my cart and end up purchasing it, I find it locally and give my money to a small business instead of to Amazon. 10/10. Big recommend.
Bought a large carabiner for grocery bags. To corral my reusable grocery bags, I bought a carabiner large enough to clip to a grocery cart handle. No more frustration over bringing too many or too few bags into the store with me. Or over having to dig my bags out from beneath my groceries when I get to the checkout. Or over the bags being strewn all over my car. Now, they live clipped to the carabiner around the passenger seat headrest. When it’s time to grocery shop, the entire collection comes in with me, clipped to the shopping cart handle. At the end of the trip, the unused bags clip back to the headrest. After I unload my groceries, I put the empty bags on my front door’s doorknob and the next time I go out to my car they go back on the carabiner. A very small thing that’s made a very big difference.
Invested in a primo portable outdoor/sunning setup. When it’s nice out, I spend a lot of time outside. Last spring, I bought myself a fancy tanning lounge chair, a large and durable outdoor-friendly bag, and new beach towels. A huge boon to my mental health. I love that the whole setup is portable: I used it basically daily in my apartment’s “front yard,” and brought it all with me to the river whenever I went.
Learned how to cook meat on the stove. It’s amazing how much less frustrating the very frustrating (for me) experience of eating is when the meat that you cook is not either completely burned on the outside and still totally raw on the inside, or perfectly cooked on the outside and super fucking dry on the inside. My current stove-top-cooked meat go-to: perfectly golden-brown, perfectly juicy breaded chicken breast.
Invested a digital meat thermometer. A life-changing, essential tool for cooking meat that is neither under- nor overcooked. It’s kind of unbelievable I lived my whole life till this last summer without one.
Started using food-safe latex gloves. A godsend for someone who both cooks meat daily and hates (HATES!) the sensory experience of touching raw meat. Cannot believe I didn’t think to invest in these gloves earlier.
Beefed up my makeshift home (apartment) gym. Once upon a time I had an actual garage gym (RIP). Once upon a time I will again. Until then, I have the walkway outside of my apartment building, and my living room.
When I relocated to Portland at the very start of the pandemic, I brought only the equipment I could fit in my car. In March 2025, I invested in additional equipment that enables me to do much more at home (so many more options for activities!), where I don’t have to wear a mask. Bonus: outdoor workouts on nice days. A dream.
Began hiking again. I’m eternally grateful to my unreliable and mentally ill brain for cooperating enough to allow me to get in six entire hikes last summer after nearly three years off the trail.
Reframed “lazy days.” I stopped calling them “lazy days” and started calling them “cozy days,” “slow days,” “restful days,” or “restorative days.” A very helpful mindset shift.
Started using a visual timer. It’s hard to overstate how helpful this small change has been for my neurodivergent household.
Added a signature that includes my “inbox hours” to my personal email. Around mid-year, I added a signature to my personal email that clearly communicates my inbox hours and boundaries around access to me/my time. A game-changer.
Swedish death cleaning. In early November, I began the unplanned project of Swedish death cleaning. I’m almost done (so close!) and will have more to share once I’ve wrapped it all up.
Adjusted a plan that wasn’t working instead of catastrophizing, spiraling, and giving up. The plan that wasn’t working? My plan to centralize and organize my digital photos and videos. This plan fell apart very quickly, and I spent most of the year stressed out about it and not working on it at all. A couple weeks into Swedish death cleaning I had a realization, and then an idea for a new plan.
The realization: I don’t need all of my digital media to be in a single place, or for it to be perfectly organized. I need it to be easily findable. What’s important to me is (1) knowing where my digital media lives, (2) what lives where, (3) how to access it, and (4) important dates. The whole point of this project is to make it easier for my kids to find the memories they’re looking for when I’m gone.
The new plan: Spending a few minutes twice a week swiping through the “on this day” photos on each of the services I store my digital media, deleting and tagging photos as needed, and capturing special events/dates in a spreadsheet as I go. It’ll take an entire year to complete, sure. It’s worth the reduced stress.
Tracked my rest between sets. In the final few weeks of the year I began carrying around a mini whiteboard at the gym to track my rest between sets, to ensure I’m not taking too much/that I stay on track with my sets. It’s also helped me learn optimal rest ranges for my body. Another game-changer.
A few bonus bits:
First, seeing this image last year was life-changing. I do realize that will sound dramatic to some (many?). Consider: autism, and its accompanying literalism. All this time, I’ve struggled to keep pace with my peers, wondering how everyone seemed to have much more energy for and much less difficulty with basically everything than I did (do). Until I saw that image, I didn’t realize that “being consistent” and “doing your best” are relative, contextual, and dynamic. I very much thought “being consistent” and “doing your best” meant showing up at your best-ever 100% every single day for every single thing, not showing up at your 100% for that day. Which…explains a lot.
Lastly, two very important things I learned about myself last year:
I don’t enjoy watching movies in the theater because the sensory and social aspects of the environment are too overwhelming and I have no brainpower or -space left to actually concentrate on and take in the movie. I wrote more about this in this post.
The same reason explains why I don’t enjoy shopping for clothing in person: the sensory and social aspects of the environment are too overwhelming, leaving me with no brainpower or -space to actually focus on how the clothing I’m trying on fits or feels. When I get home and put the clothing back on, I almost always end up hating how it fits or feels (or both!) and have to return it, which means venturing back into an extremely overwhelming and unpleasant environment. And so it goes, forever and ever. This is why when I find clothing that I like, I buy as many multiples of it that my bank account allows and hope that said clothing is never changed or discontinued so that when I eventually wear through everything I bought I can simply reorder them online (sadly, this is rarely the case).
Completely rethinking my beliefs about and approach to creativity and the creative process after listening to the latest episode of The Telepathy Tapes.
Never been more thankful for my natural autistic intolerance of protein powders and shakes (it’s a taste and texture thing).
AI will never be your friend: “The only world where loneliness is lessened is a world where humans are given a chance to be closer to other humans, not one in which they become a host for a digital parasite hanging around their neck, draining their life in service of profit for a tech company.”
In the last nine months, ICE has spent $71 million on weapons, a staggering 600 percent increase over the same period last year. Unconscionable.
ADDING chia seeds to one of the servings of yogurt I eat each day on the recommendation of the sports dietician I worked with earlier this year and hating every moment of it. All y’all who say they have no taste or texture are LIARS!!!!!
CHEERING on the Caps’ decision to issue paper tickets next season. As a big supporter of ephemera in general and a DC sports fan in particular, this decision makes me very happy. (Sadly, paper tickets will be available only to Caps season ticket holders.) I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: my outrage over the harbinger that is the disappearance of well-designed and quality-crafted ephemera is deep and wide and intense. Bring back paper tickets!!!
CONSIDERING subscribing to Lifetime Movie Club through the colder months. The idea of binging incredibly cheesy movies on cold and rainy weekends in comfy clothes on the couch is very, very appealing. Irresistible, perhaps.
CELEBRATING one year of conjugate being my primary training modality. Powerlifting is nowhere near as fun as weightlifting and CrossFit. What it is, is much better for my hypermobile and unstable joints. My biggest achievements over the last year: dialing in my bench press and sumo deadlift form and technique; finally learning to properly engage my deep core and my lats; finally getting my strict pull-ups back (!!!); scaling (or altogether skipping) exercises as needed when necessary instead of attempting to ego lift my way through them; and gaining confidence in myself and my lifts.
FEELING overwhelmed by how little progress I’ve made on my plan to organize my ridiculously large amount of digital photos and videos before year’s end, and completely rethinking my approach.
LOVING this YouTuber’s enthusiasm and tips for documenting your daily life in photos.
READING Rachel Caron’s Silent Spring for the first time and alarmed—and, sadly, unsurprised—by the parallels between how government and industry downplayed, dismissed, and ignored experts’ recommendations and warnings regarding the wide-ranging and far-reaching detriments of the use of fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, and pesticides in earlier decades, and how government and industry have shit the bed regarding COVID since the moment they became aware of the virus. Truly, a tale as old as time.
RESEARCHING whether it’d make more sense to have my vehicle’s engine or transmission (or whatever) rebuilt v. buying a new-to-me vehicle when the time comes. Have you seen how much cars cost now?? Even used ones?? Unreal!!! I really like my old car and I don’t need or want the features (“features”) newer vehicles have. The most advanced thing I want my vehicle to do is charge my phone—and it’s not a dealbreaker if it can’t.
SAVORING the last of this year’s gym flowers. If you’re local to the Portland/Vancouver area, I cannot recommend Hidden Meadows Flowers enough. The woman behind the business (and the bouquet I brought the Howells) works out at the same gym I do and each time she brings in a fresh batch of bouquets, it’s the best day of my life. She is so talented (much more than my iPhone photos suggest), and her flowers bring our gym community so much joy.
SEARCHING high and low for a library book I checked out the other day that has since mysteriously disappeared. My apartment is very small, I keep it very tidy and organized, and everything has an assigned spot (it’s the autism). I’m at a loss; I have no idea where it could be if not in its assigned spot. One minute it was there and the next it wasn’t. I’ve checked everywhere, including inside the fridge and freezer, in my dresser drawers, in the bathtub, under the couch, between the cushions, behind the toilet, in the trash, etc. I even looked in my car and the dumpsters in the parking lot, just in case, and have repeatedly checked my library account dashboard to confirm I actually checked out this book. I genuinely feel like I’m losing my mind.
TEARING up at this video. What a creative, thoughtful, and special way to mark such a big and exciting and nerve-racking milestone.
WATCHING the Becoming Olivia Reeves series and loving the reveal in the first few minutes of episode two that she keeps scrapbooks documenting her career, complete with ephemera like plane tickets, athlete badges, and drug testing forms.
WORKING on my 2025 Project Life album. This is by far my favorite memorykeeping practice. You wouldn’t know it from the last few years: I’ve been very inconsistent with Project Life since mid-2019. Like last year, I didn’t start keeping an album this year until July. Which: not ideal. And: better late than never.
