I am not great at strict New Year's resolutions. In our well-intentioned desire for change, it's easy to be overly ambitious and set ourselves up for failure. But I have found more success sticking to New Year's themes: identifying areas where I want to focus additional energy, and areas that I am happy to let sit on the back burner.

Creativity is a muscle. It must be stretched and exercised to grow and stay healthy. This is true not only for personal projects but also professionally.

I recently read a blog post entitled It's Okay to Code on Nights and Weekends. In it, the author describes their personal journey with self-acceptance as someone who codes as both a career and a hobby.

We all want better habits. We want the benefits of fitness, work, and creative practice that come from consistency. But habits are hard to build because they involve changing something about your life.

I've always had a tortured relationship with social media. Instagram can be a real source of laughter, and sharing funny videos can be an easy way to bond with family and friends. But there's just a lot of junk on it.

What is money for? It can be for fun, it can provide a sense of control or safety, or it can be a metric people use to tell if they are winning in life. For the wealthy, it's certainly the latter.

There is a well-known trend in happiness research called the U-shaped curve. This curve tracks a person's relative happiness in early and late adulthood, with a measurable drop in middle age. This is significant for me, as I recently turned 41 and have been trying to come to terms with the next phase of life.

Scott Alexander Howard has published a brilliant time travel novel that feels deeply human and is rooted in a small French community which comes vividly to life.

That which is most personal is most creative. Nowhere is that more true than in "Nightbitch," a werewolf tale delving into our most primal urges. In this novel, the author pours all her fears, resentments, depression, and rage into a bloody power fantasy about motherhood and self-expression.

Embarrassingly, I stumbled on Ling Ma's "Severance" by accident. I'm sure it's a common confusion, but I bought it thinking it was related to the incredible Apple TV+ show of the same name.