Humans live for an upward trajectory. We want to know that next year will be at least as good as this year. We need to feel that our kids are better off than we were.

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.

Something about me: I have no trouble putting down a book that loses my interest. Speaker For The Dead may be one of the few exceptions to that. I deeply lost interest in the story and characters for most of the book, but occasionally books are worth finishing even if the journey is a slog.

All Systems Red is a fun and easy sci-fi read. Focusing on an anonymous SecUnit, which calls itself Murderbot, the story lets you inhabit the inner workings of this robot as it learns what to do with its newfound autonomy.

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.