An annual letter to nobody in particular.
What I learned in 2025 about reading slowly, writing earlier in the day, and the difference between intention and ritual.
I write one of these every January. Nobody reads them except me, a year later, which is exactly who they are for.
What changed in 2025
I read slower. Not by choice initially — I started keeping a reading notebook, and slowing down was a side effect. The notebooks are more useful than I expected. When a book is good enough to annotate, the annotation survives the forgetting.
What I tried to change and didn’t
I wanted to write every day. I wrote most days. The gap between those two things is where my perfectionism lives. The days I skipped were the days I had something difficult to say and didn’t want to say it badly. I am still working on this.
Intention is the thing you announce. Ritual is the thing you do when you’re tired.
What I’m carrying into this year
Write earlier. The first hour of the day produces better sentences than the last hour. This is not a preference — it is a consistent observation across two years of data.