Doing Just Fine

November 2025

Dear Reader,

I’ve been thinking about the next year as I flip through my 2026 planner to decide on page formats and add quotes to boost me through the weeks. I've been feeling burnt out and while there is plenty of reason for that, I thought I had built up more reserves. Where did my ‘reserves’ go? I wondered if I have been playing at being an extrovert (haha) for the last few years while all along everything about me screams introvert. So I’m planning to see how I might recover if I stop pretending to be something I’m not. It feels silly to still be figuring out the shape of me. But it’s also freeing to be able to figure the shape I want to be right now.

From etymonline.com, instances of introversion in the 1650s were the “action of turning inward” and 1912 as the “tendency to withdraw from the world.” And so I’m leaving. As the light recedes for the winter, I’m reaching for books and not much else. I’m not working on a novel manuscript. I’m not evening writing about art on the blog I started. This is the first thing I’ve written in weeks outside of text messages. It’s strange. It feels…good? It feels like a break, finally, from the racing speed at which I’ve been forcing myself to move even though I thought I had learned to slow down. Another silliness.

I’m imagining the next year as a sort of sabbatical or withdrawal. A year of reading histories and following the paths that interest me. Reading the books not on the 'best of' lists, reading obscure names, and random novels. Checking out books from the library on a weekly basis. I’ve mentioned my haphazard book reading lists before. None of the books on my TBR shelf are on the two page long list in my planner. It’s really a problem/not problem.

And so, I’m turning away so that I may turn more and more pages. I want my brain to slow down. I want to spend as little time as possible looking at screens big or small. I have felt my brain change from being on social media less, and I want more of whatever this new feeling is. Meet me on the park grounds where I'm warming myself in the sun because the temperature has finally dropped below the nineties, and I’m cold. I am gloriously cold and traveling to other countries, worlds, and interiors.

See you in the new year,

Thao

Recent reads:

• River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit
• City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersao translated by Jethro Soutar and Annie McDermott
• Land of Seagull and Fox; Folk Tales of Vietnam compiled by Ruth Q. Sun​

I have finally put most of the books I mention in my newsletters into my affiliate Bookshop! Purchasing through this link means I get a small percentage of sales. Be sure to change the shop if you prefer or buy from your local independent book store!

Read & share this newsletter in your browser.