Closing 2025: Resolutions Edition

Hi darlings,

Welcome to 2026!

It's time to continue reflecting on the past year to set some intentions for the next.  First, let's recap the goals I set for 2025 and assess my success in accomplishing them:

1. Do sustainable, consistent, values-congruent things with my free time.

I think I did a pretty good job of accomplishing this goal, although that required making some adjustments and compromises I'm still having feelings about.  I continued to build local community, read (including one of the most gorgeous books I've read in a while), write, take photos and (FINALLY) print books of my photos, bake and cook, and care for plants and animals (inside and outside my home), each of which have brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction.  I would really like to get back into a routine of taking walks in my beautiful neighborhood, which would necessitate using the occasional free mornings I have for that purpose.  I also *still* miss my sweet little VR minigolf game and have not figured out how to fit that back into my life.

I got more involved with an additional recovery program and joined a small working group within that program, and I started a group chat for parents of young children who are in my original program.  I've kept doing readings, listening to recovery-focused podcasts, and going to meetings.  I also completed a healing-focused somatic and breathwork seminar that was really intense and helpful.  I'm still tentative about building more 1-on-1 relationships within those programs, but I'm also trying to respect my own process and not rush myself.

I participated in activism and mutual aid-related work throughout most of 2025, but by the last few months of the year I found that activism specifically was simply not compatible with the realities of my life as a parent with young children.  It became more and more impossible to attend regular meetings, even by Zoom, as they perfectly overlap with bedtime for my kids--a transition that is very much all-hands-on-deck and can't sustainably be done without both parents.  It's frustrating and demoralizing finding yet another aspect of life in America in which there is fundamentally not space made for parents.  It is especially anxiety-inducing that this is yet another place where it feels like I have no choice but to sit on the sidelines and hope that there's still work I can contribute in a few years when parenting isn't so full on.  

I feel extremely conflicted about my decision to scale back my participation in activist work, while also acknowledging that even characterizing it as a decision isn't totally accurate or fair to me.  Ideally these spaces would be accessible for everyone who wants to contribute, and they simply aren't for parents.  I'm hoping there are still ways for me to keep my hand in the game, so to speak, and it does look like that's possible if I can accept taking a much smaller role than I want to.  I'm hoping I can come to some degree of peace with that and also not have to totally forfeit this facet of myself for now.

2. Watch at least 30 movies, and write at least 15 posts.

I succeeded, just barely, in exceeding my 2025 movie-watching goal before the end of the year, thanks in no small part to some delightfully terrible Christmas movies I squeezed in as I was packing for my family for the holidays.  As you can see, I fell quite short of my writing goal, going so far as to skip writing in September entirely.  While I'm frustrated about that, the reality of my struggle to meet even these scaled-down goals has also helped soften my perfectionism about writing and accept that, while the totality of my life is really demanding right now, I'm doing the best I can.

Now, to propose goals for this year.  

Minor note: I don't mean to over-utilize the word "consistently" in the following resolutions, but it's important to me to prioritize endeavors I can pursue in a sustainable way rather than goals that have a specific accomplishment or outcome at the end.

1. Consistently engage in creativity.

I'm going to define "creativity" broadly while also using this resolution to hone in on some of the most rewarding leisure time I've had in the past year.  For the purposes of this resolution, creativity can mean things like writing, working on photography, decorating or redesigning a space, and coming up with fun activities to do with my family, but it can also mean the more generative aspect of creativity that is manifested in things like baking and caring for plants and animals.

2. Consistently care for myself physically and emotionally.

I'm proud of my continued engagement in a variety of emotional healing and recovery processes, and I see the cumulative benefit of those commitments year after year.  I'm also proud of breaking through whatever barrier(s) inhibited my ability to more actively care for myself physically, and that as a result I've been taking more personal responsibility not just for scheduling and transporting myself to medical, dental, and massage appointments, but also to doing physical therapy and exercising in my own time.  In 2026, I want to continue caring for myself in this holistic manner.

3. Consistently participate in anti-hunger and community-focused work and activism.

Of all of the horrific political incidents in the past year, one that was so repugnant that I struggle to comprehensively articulate how disturbed, upset, disgusted, and enraged I was as a result was the government's cutting of funding for SNAP benefits.  I want to consistently work to ensure people in my community aren't hungry.  Thankfully, I've found that there are several avenues for engaging in this kind of work that are more feasible for the stage of life I'm in.

4. Watch at least 30 movies and write at least one post per month.

I'm happy to say that I've already watched 9 movies this year, which under other circumstances might lead me to consider increasing this year's movie-watching goal.  But recent years have made it very clear that the mental, emotional, and practical space I have to watch movies tends to fluctuate a LOT over the course of the year, and I'd much rather keep my expectations of myself on this front gentle, realistic, and reasonable than set a goal I may not meet because I briefly felt cocky and overly ambitious.

All that aside, I'm excited for the movies of the future year, and I'm also excited for the time I'll spend writing about them.

I hope this new year is beautiful and so much better than any of us might be expecting.  Whatever happens, thankfully we're walking through it together.

{Heart}

Closing 2025: Accomplishment Cake Edition

Hey team,

In the interest of slipping one more post into this year, I'm going to hop on the cute little Accomplishment Cake thing I've seen here and there on the internet.  In what has otherwise been a pretty bleak and difficult year for the world and as a person living in it, it seems like a nice idea to share the things I'm proud of as a way to reflect on and recontextualize 2025.  Instead of skewering a real cake, I'll just list some highlights:

• I went on an amazing international trip with my best friend to mutually celebrate our milestone birthdays.  I also later made her a personalized birthday gift that I'm really proud of.
• I joined a new recovery program and it has already been hugely instrumental in furthering my healing and growth as a person.
• I started physical therapy for some old injuries and started regularly using our pandemic purchase elliptical.  Massages are still a critical part of my physical self-care, but I wanted to take more direct responsibility for how my body feels today and also for how it will fare well into the future.
• We survived a car accident in which we were badly rear-ended while Husband, our kids, and I were in the car.  I'm so proud of how we handled that moment and the fallout, and I'm so grateful that everyone was physically okay and our car kept us safe.
• Husband and I transitioned our oldest child into Kindergarten, and the experience has been so positive.  I'm so proud of everything our child has already accomplished and the dramatic, beautiful ways in which they've grown.
• I expanded my practice, including majorly revamping our practice's website myself and hiring a postdoctoral fellow.  It's great to be back in a supervisory and teaching professional role and to imagine what else my practice partner and I can take on together.
• After 7 years, I left my part-time hospital job to focus on my own practice.  There were a lot of great things about working there, but especially given the changes in my private practice, it was the right thing for my professional growth and I'm really glad I did it.
• For the first time, I took both of my kids on a trip to see my family while solo parenting.  It was A LOT, but it was such a good experience and I'm so grateful for the cousin time my kids got and the time with my family.

I'm so grateful to have happy things to remember from this past year, and I'm hopeful there will be more in the next.  I hope you all enjoy this New Year's Eve and that 2026 is a beautiful, healthy, happy year for you, friends.

{Heart}

A (Belated) Halloween Sampler for All Souls: 2025 Edition!

Happy almost Thanksgiving, dear friends!

Consistent with our overall energy this year, I didn't get around to writing this year's Halloween Sampler in October.  But honestly? It's fine.  Fall is an overall spooky season even after Halloween, and it's still a fun exercise to catalogue the scary movies I've seen each year.

As a reminder, each of the movies below will be rated with the usual overall 1 - 5 rating scale, as well as a scary/intense rating of 1 - 5 exclamation points, to be interpreted as follows:

! = not at all scary

!!!!! = so scary!

Let's goooooooooooo!

"Nosferatu" (2024)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!

Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 classic is extraordinarily well-executed.  It is at once an almost shot-for-shot, extremely faithful version of the original, while also enhancing the story through selective additions and embellishments, as well as Eggers' deft auteurial touches.  As a psychologist, I am genuinely curious what happened to this man to make him so preoccupied with dark, brooding, and disturbing period piece horror, but as a viewer I genuinely appreciate his particular, transporting, immersive aesthetic.

While overall this is an excellent movie, hugely benefitted by Lily-Rose Depp's deep, visceral commitment to her role as Ellen, I found the stylistic decisions made for Bill Skarsgård's Count Orlok, including his prosthetics and growling, heavily accented voice, to be heavy-handed and distracting.  I get that the iconic shot of the shadow of Orlok's unnaturally long, pointy-nailed hands reaching out over a sleepy German town essentially demand prosthetic fingers for the part, but they seemed clunky and these choices therefore bumped me out of the otherwise thoroughly engrossing movie.

"Sinners" (2025)

Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!!!

For our second period vampire movie of the year, I made the probably insensitive decision to see "Sinners" on Easter morning, from the third row of an incongruously packed theater.  And it was so much fun!  The slow build of the plot, ensemble cast, powerful music, and culmination of the tension in a vampire-y recap of "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) all successfully breathe new life into the vampire drama, not to mention the film's use of this motif to examine the legacy of racism in the deep south.  There are fewer moments more chilling than the all-white band of vampires trying to seduce its way into the Black-owned new jazz joint by singing the too-perfect and too-cutesy "Pick Poor Robin Clean" to Hailee Steinfeld's Mary.  We also know I'm a sucker for the gimmick of having the same actor play twins, and Michael B. Jordan does not disappoint.

"28 Years Later" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!!!

I still feel the residual stress from watching this movie all these months later, and I'm still glad for it.  I am already bracing myself for the next installment in 2026.  For anyone fond of zombie movies or the original "28 Days Later" (2002), this is such an excellent next chapter, true to the gritty realism and heart-pounding, animal terror of its predecessor.

"Presence" (2024)

Rating: 4.5 Scary Rating: !!!

"Presence" is not a perfect movie in its execution, but its conceit is fascinating enough to overcome its shortcomings.  The movie tells a ghost story exclusively from the ghost's point of view within the house in which it's trapped.  We are thereby introduced to the Payne family through vignettes from the moment they first tour the home to subsequent both pivotal and seemingly benign moments after they move in.  While the acting is a bit stiff and stagey at times, Callina Liang as the traumatized and withdrawn daughter Chloe and Chris Sullivan as the protective yet at-wits'-end father Chris nevertheless deliver convincing and compelling performances.  This film is perfect for anyone wanting a perfectly spooky/haunting, not an outright terrifying, watch.

"Weapons" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!!

I wanted to see "Weapons" from the first time I saw that trailer.  The premise--that all but one child from one elementary classroom disappear overnight--immediately grabbed me.  That said, I also so anticipated that this movie could ruin my day by being too graphic, too scary, or both, that this is one of those times I performed a thorough Does the Dog Die? review ahead of time and watched it midday on my laptop as mitigation procedures.  (Please note that these measures may have artificially decreased the Scary Rating or this movie.)  And I'm so glad I did, because this is a great movie!  Despite my research, I managed to avoid any true plot spoilers, and that was very much to my benefit.  This is a really interesting, cool, novel kind of horror movie, and I loved it.

"KPop Demon Hunters" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!

This year's kid-friendly entry!  I literally just finished watching this movie, somewhat belatedly after all of the buzz around it upon its release in June, and I loved it so much!  The animation style is super engaging, the characters are so appealing, the music is excellent, and the story is interesting and compelling. I'm a bit sad that the violence and portrayal of the titular demons might be a bit too scary for my oldest child to see this movie just yet, especially since they're already familiar and enamored with some of the music.  But I'm confident we'll watch it in a year or two, and I'll be glad for the chance to rewatch this amazing gem of a film.

And with that, I hope you had a wonderful Halloween, that you will have a wonderful Thanksgiving free of any familial nonsense, and that you'll enjoy some spooky movies if you wish!

{Heart}

Back in the Saddle

Hi friends,

I took an unintentional hiatus from writing last month, along with a longer unintentional hiatus from movie-watching.  I'm not happy about this slow-down and of course the perfectionist still lurking within me is very annoyed about breaking my post-per-month writing streak, especially relatively late in the year.  

As always, there are multiple contributing factors.  The first and most obvious is that the weekend coverage I've become so reliant on for quality solo time became less consistent, with our first beloved babysitter graduating from grad school and our second successfully landing a full-time job sooner than expected, followed by a few possibilities for coverage that fell through.  

Another is that my oldest child also started Kindergarten this year, which has been a huge and thankfully very positive transition, yet still huge.  

Then, on the first day I finally regained weekend coverage, it had been long enough since I had time to myself that it took me a little bit to mentally reorganize around how I'd like to use that time then commit to what to do with it.  I considered writing, but didn't have much to say given the unintentional movie break. Ultimately I settled into a really pleasant low-effort creative activity instead.

But today, I'm taking the bull squarely by the horns.  I will shortly disembark to watch:

It's almost three hours long.  It has some not-my-favorite and outright problematic men in it.  I am therefore somewhat ambivalent about this choice, and I recognize I may deeply regret this decision.  But here we go.

Wish me luck, I guess?

{Heart}

Snap Judgment: "Jurassic World Rebirth"

Hey everyone,

This year, I've been feeling particularly nostalgic for the summer blockbusters that helped stoke my love of movies when I was younger, especially "Twister" (1996), "Independence Day" (1996), and of course, "Jurassic Park" (1993).  So theoretically at least, it's terribly convenient that a new entry into the aforementioned dinosaur movie franchise came out this year.

Let's revisit our old Snap Judgment format for another round of dinos, this time with "Jurassic World Rebirth" (2025)!

Snap judgment: my alternate title for this post was: "Jurassic World Rebirth": Equal Parts Dumb and Fun.  And I genuinely stand by that assessment.  

Does this newest chapter in the franchise get anywhere near the majesty of the first movie?  Absolutely tf not.  But after burning my hand multiple times on the hot stoves/steaming piles of the previous few Jurassic Worlds (each of which inspired their own Snap Judgments), I've finally learned to slip on an oven mitt.  And by "slip on an over mitt", I mean lower my expectations and prepare to schadenfreude-ly enjoy the stupidity.  With that mindset, "Jurassic World Rebirth" is honestly not that bad!

So let's get to it!

• This movie has completely miscalibrated the survivability of its world.

We continue the franchise-honored tradition of dinosaurs chompin on kids in vehicles--this time an inflatable raft.  And not only does the kid survive, but so does the inflatable raft.

This is the same franchise that demonstrated a T. rex's power by showing what it could do to a Jeep thusly:

But an inflatable raft... is fine.  I cannot stress this enough: An inflatable raft.  You know, basically a glorified balloon?  Miraculously/improbably withstands T-rex bites.  And also the kid is fine.

Also Mahershala Ali survives the mutant T. rex by ........... ????????

Genuinely, the sequence is as follows:

Mahershala Ali: (heroically luring mutant T. rex away to save his friends)

Mutant T. rex: (is lured)

Mahershala Ali: (having successfully lured mutant T. rex, faces his foe, laughing maniacally in the face of death)

Mahershala Ali's friends, seeing Mahershala Ali's flare go out: (escaping but sad, because obviously)

(.....Unclear events transpire.....)

Mahershala Ali: Jk I'm fine lol.  Also I have extra flares.  Come get me this island sucks.

Look, I'm genuinely glad this movie at least didn't lapse into the trope of killing off all its Black characters, as the first movie did with Samuel L. Jackson.

RIP Mr. Arnold :'(

But also, all it takes to blow up what is surely a billion-dollar scientific endeavor is... a Snickers wrapper?

• This science is.... hilarious.

So the premise of this movie is that our ragtag group of pals must journey to the island where only the most janky of the dinosaurs exist because samples from those dinosaurs could be the missing link in revolutionary medication for heart disease.  

The logic is as follows: You need samples from the three biggest dinosaurs because (gestures randomly) their hearts are the biggest (jazz hands!!).  And also they have to be alive when you get the samples (chef's kiss).

• The heroic plot twist is.... nonsensical.

For unclear reasons, responsibility for deciding whether to dramatically enrich one evil pharmaceutical company or ensuring the samples lives have been lost collecting are used to benefit all humankind is left not to the paleontologist who might at least have a sense of the science behind how these samples might be helpful, but instead to the mercenary-for-hire.  

Her response? "Give it to everyone."

And that's great, and unsurprising given the general moral compass of this franchise.  But also, literally what does that mean??  Like... what?  Like give what, exactly?  Like, everyone gets a lil drop of dinosaur blood/egg sac contents?  You know this isn't code you can make open source, right??

• The same tired- and lazy-ass character development.

In "Jurassic World Rebirth", we get to witness a repeat of the Bryce Dallas Howard cold-blooded (lol) money-hungry business lady turned totally unconvincing environmentalist character arc, but this time instead she's Scarlett Johansson's cold-blooded mercenary lady who does illegal stuff for bad corporations turned totally unconvincing humanitarian.

Again:

At least Scarlett Johansson is dressed semi-appropriately for the task.

And then we have the Delgado family, which includes a father who has taken his two daughters on a trans-oceanic voyage on a sailboat he built.  And also his daughter's boyfriend.  

I have a message for Mr. Delgado: 

I'm so sorry.  You're in the middle of the *ocean*, presently in the middle of the most isolated part of the planet for a human being, and you're only just now hammering out the shifts for steering your boat and your youngest child is just now learning how to tie knots?  And you've done this kind of trip before?  Sir.  Sir.  What in God's name are you doing.

• Stop trying to tell me people don't know dinosaurs are cool.

I will never get past the compulsive premise in these past few Jurassic Worlds (Jurassics World?) that dinosaurs have become boring.  Anyone who has ever been to the Museum of Natural History can attest that the dinosaur section isn't exactly under-attended--and that's just to see their *bones*.  

The idea that people don't care about dinosaurs is both so unacceptably stupid and unbelievable on its face, and it also undermines the magic and awe that made the first film so unforgettable.  "Jurassic Park" gave us all a chance to imagine the overwhelming thrill of actually getting to see real, live dinosaurs--animals that have fascinated human beings for centuries.  It is simply inconceivable that people could get to a point where they tire of seeing the real, breathing thing.

Relatedly: I don't need a mutant T. rex (and I refuse to call it a D. rex).  No one needs that.  I will die on the hill that regular degular Tyrannosaurus Rexes and intelligent raptors are more than scary enough.

All this said, I am honestly happy I saw this movie in theaters.  It was so ridiculous and poorly conceived, but it was still a fun little adventure with ultimately kind of low stakes because you know these movies kind of pull their punches and in any event the characters barely exist as embodied, believable people.  If you're having some of that dinostalgia that I do, I think this one is worth seeing.  I gave it a 3.

{Heart}