A 2023 List of Lists
Some things that worked for me, favorite books, and a chaotic playlist to say goodbye to the old year.
In an effort to unstick myself / get the writing ideas flowing / procrastinate, I went back and re-read my first proper entry in this Substack, shared a little over a year ago on New Year’s Eve. Apparently I spent the last evening of 2022 quietly at home with the Christmas tree and candlelight glow, wearing soft pants, and sipping on a spiced hard cider.
You’ll never guess how I closed out 2023. Repeat all of that, plus watching the first half of The Return of the King.1
Maybe I have traditions after all.
I’ve grown to love the final week of the year. I realize this isn’t the reality for everyone, but I am personally grateful for some time to drift from day to day, to throw out all notions of “productivity” and just be a person. It’s about walks with pup, household chores (it’s amazing the random cleaning you can do when you don’t have to be on the computer), squeezing in one more book (another re-read of an all time favorite novel), and learning to crochet. It’s also been a time for looking back.
My old blog had an annual Awesome of the Year series for all the books and music I’d loved. I thought it could be fun to resurrect a mini version of that for Substack, and share some habits and practices that worked for me this year. This is a bit of a longish post, but I hope it helps inspire you try something in 2024, or at least add to your TBR or Spotify playlist.
What Worked for Me:
1) Quiet mornings. Most days (but not every and this is key), I make a cup of coffee and carry it to the living room, where I drop a folded blanket on the floor and spend a little time journaling, reading, and preparing for the day.
Daily practices never seem to stick, so I really enjoyed The Next Right Thing Guided Journal and its weekly/quarterly format. It’s so satisfying to end the year with a record of the shape of my seasons — both the mundane daily rhythms and the big events — and for once I closed an old year without feeling like it was all a blur. Instead of buying a new one for this year, I’m trying to replicate the process in one of my many untouched blank journals.
2) Slowly working through Joyce Rupp’s Open the Door. By slowly I mean a six week book of guided prayers and meditations took me 10 months. It was exactly the right speed for me.
3) Meal planning (when I did it). Cooking feels uninspiring sometimes, so mid year I took a stab at quickly writing dinner ideas out on Sunday afternoon. The plans change all the time, and “frozen pizza” and “FYOF”2 are a weekly staple, but a vague plan is better than gazing blankly into an empty refrigerator.
4) Finally deleting Twitter. Sure it was ages since I was an active participant, but I kept holding on for nostalgia’s sake. And then, one day the name was changed to X? And I started reading rumors that paid subscriptions were going to be a thing?
A corollary to this is 2023 felt like a year of shifting my relationship with social media. I’m still trying to figure out how to use the few platforms I still have in a meaningful way — to take in beauty, to connect with friends, and to create more than consume.
5) Desk candles. I always light one for spiritual direction sessions, and we are avid candle burners in the darker half of the year. But what if I just… lit a candle for sending invoices and answering slack messages? I suppose there’s a spiritual metaphor in there, but also I just like it.
6) Publishing a new poetry book with help from my friends. Self-publishing my first book was fun and all, but there was something so lovely about working with Bandersnatch on Beneath the Flood. For one thing, deadlines kept me motivated, and it was so good to have editors in my corner, cheering me on and helping it be the best little pocket-sized poetry book it could be. And Kyra Hinton’s cover art? Still giddy about that.
7) Dungeons & Dragons??? Pre-teen me might be shocked, confused, and/or horrified3 if she could see full adult me playing D&D with her full adult friends, but here we are, and I think she would have liked it. It scratches the itch for play, storytelling, and geeky joy in my life. Here’s hoping for more shenanigans with my ghost-obsessed Tabaxi rogue in the new year.
Speaking of Books…
Favorite Fiction: My reading year peaked early with The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, a doorstopper of an epic fantasy with intricate world building and rad female leads, and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, a multiple timeline sci-fi tale that raises big existential questions while affirming the miraculous beauty of being alive. (I wanted to flip it over and read it again.)
I didn’t set lofty reading goals. Just read what I liked, which meant a ton of contemporary fantasy and sci-fi. Other highlights were Mistborn (my first foray into Brando Sando fandom), The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (so lovely), and Babel (even though early on the author basically announces that the story’s gonna break your heart and then she thoroughly succeeds at it).
Favorite Nonfiction: I read… very little nonfiction this year. I slowly made my way through Orphaned Believers by Sara Billups, which is wonderful for fellow Gen X/Millennial Christians wondering what the hell happened. She’s journalistic and thorough, but holds so much tenderness and empathy for her family and history. These days, I’m grateful for any author who can walk a third way. I hope for more like her in the years ahead.
Other notable reads were Church of the Wild by Victoria Loorz and Living Resistance by Kaitlin Curtice, which I hope will begin a deep dive into the intersections of ecology and spirituality. And The First Advent in Palestine by Kelley Nikondeha was essential reading this Advent season.
Favorite Poetry: I love it when my friends write, and I was so excited to beta read JJ Brinski’s upcoming book of space poetry and sci-fi microfiction! Also finally completed Prayers of a Young Poet, a collection of early drafts of Rilke’s Book of Hours, and I’m currently making my way through Ada Limón’s wonderful collection The Hurting Kind.
The 2023 Soundtrack
At one point in my past music writer life, I was making 3 different lists for 3 different outlets, plus my own “anything goes” list. Ranking things got exhausting. Reviewing felt performative, like you had to learn to love the right things for the right audience. Even tracking and rating books on Goodreads felt like an exercise in self-defense.
So I stopped all that and started keeping analog lists in a notebook, and my experience of art has been all the better for it. Music is tricky though. I never wanted to be the person who freezes their taste in their 30s. But it’s so hard to keep up sometimes, I don’t have much of a commute anymore, and when I log in to Spotify I just get kinda overwhelmed.
This year was about just enjoying things, making a note of what I was listening to each month, and collecting a playlist at the end of the year. As an exercise in sharing what I listen to when I’m not trying to keep up, I’ve shared it below. You can give it a spin, if you’d like. The songs are loosely arranged by when I listened to/discovered them in the calendar year, and I’ve thrown in some older tracks from artists I saw live.4 As a tribute to the era of CDs with goofy hidden bonus tracks, have a little extra Kenergy at the end.
Cheers to you if you if you made it to the end of this email! I’d love to hear about your favorite reads, your 2023 playlists, or the little things you enjoyed in the old year. I don’t dare call it a resolution, but I hope to write here more, at least a couple times a month. But that’s a story for another post…
The entire LOTR trilogy is now 20 years old btw. How. What.
Find Your Own Food, an important institution at Hotel Yokel.
This is what happens when you grow up Satanic Panic adjacent. I didn't even know what Dungeons & Dragons was! Just that it was somehow problematic. lol
Hence the random DMB appearance. This show was an absolute blast, by the way.
Jen, thanks for reading Orphaned Believers and for your very kind words!
Saving this post.
Also, please note, I too am getting into candles during work hours. ☺️