holiday letter

returning from a month-long hiatus, investing in 2024

Friends, I hope you’re spending this week like I’ve been, cherishing hot chocolates and watching 3.5 hour movies with your parents. What a blessing it is to reflect on the year while barely leaving the couch. That said, I’ve also been getting my steps in, jogging around the cul-de-sac and feeling much better than a month ago. My hematologist recently infused a few megadoses of iron into my bloodstream, so I’m no longer sitting at restaurants trying to remember what I ordered or wasting away on my fainting couch. I have ideas again. It’s a real delight to be back, physically, mentally, and of course remotely in your inbox.

I’ve really enjoyed writing this newsletter this year. I’ve gotten to write about what’s circled around in my mind, summoned a few hundred new friends, and taken part in rich conversations about economics, technology, and culture in today’s increasingly bizarre era. 

Here are some of my favorite pieces from this year, if you missed them: 

• “How to Fix Your Life”: on the dangers of self-optimization

• “How to Lose A Lot of Money”: secrets I uncovered about student loans

• “How to Make the Perfect Cup of Coffee”: reckoning with our desire for perfection

• “Five Vodka Cocktails and Thoughts on Nightlife”: drawing inspiration from my bartender dad, I improvise a few cocktails while reflecting on post-pandemic nightlife

• “How the Make the Moment Last” on my enduring (and expensive) love of analog memory-making

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to share informal but serious thinking through a platform that connects me to all of you. If you write a Substack too, let me know, so I can subscribe to it. If you don’t, you should still join me by investing in a soulful personal project in 2024.

In the last few weeks, I’ve encouraged friends to buy cameras, submit their work to literary journals, and invest in fancy bird-watching equipment for their ornithological art projects. I encourage you to find something and do the same. It’s a shame that, for some reason, buying a $40 pasta maker feels like it requires more internal justification than spending $40 to Ubereats a mediocre cacio e pepe. But one of those things will bring you a lot more enduring joy and experience than the other.

If you haven’t yet discovered what to invest in, I hope that you can allow yourself the time to search for something. No infinity of Tiktoks is as valuable as a few minutes spent learning a new skill or planning something fun with friends.

Anyways, I look forward to growing this project in the New Year and hearing about what projects you’re growing too. 

Lots of love,

Rachel