Books! I don't track my reading anywhere, so these favorites are likely influenced by recency bias, but the ones that first come to mind are: The Everlasting (by Alix E Harrow) and A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping (by Sangu Mandanna).

House! I'll definitely be writing more about this in the coming months, since so much of what has shifted deep within me in the past year+ has to do with home/local living, and the ethos of trying to go an inch wide and a mile deep instead of spreading myself out so much (geographically and in other ways) like I did before. The house isn't actually mine (it is owned by my partner's father) and never will be (my partner and I don't share money/asset ownership and don't plan to), but our hope and vision is for this to be our lifelong home. This year's projects have included: building a crushed rock patio with outdoor seating, repainting the barn, making some structural changes/fixes to the barn and chicken coop, winterizing the house in as many ways as possible to cut down on heat loss (and our wild gas bill), planting fruit trees (apples & peaches), expanding our gardening space (adding raised beds and fencing/protecting the in-ground garden area).

While I never would have picked to live in this town (or in the suburbs of Boston more generally) on my own, I love this house so much. I feel like it has a soul (does this sound weird??) and that I'm just so lucky to get to be one of its current stewards. Thanks for asking!

Somehow I secretly knew you'd be the one to ask me about this, and I love that. Outdoorsy folks, unite! :)

To be honest it sort of feels like the AZT attempt didn't happen? Or like, my year feels so starkly divided into before dead dad and after dead dad that anything from early spring feels lifetimes away and sort of ethereal/unreal.

When I do think about it though it feels fine, neutral, filled with lessons learned, and I'm definitely proud of myself for trying. There's a lot I'd do differently though, and no it doesn't at all feel complete for me. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I still think about FKT-style hiking literally every single day, so...

1. Of course, Sam, happy to share! I'm working with Revalue: https://www.revalueinvesting.com/

2. I am sending you just the biggest hug as you begin to navigate this, and if you have any specific questions along the way please feel free to ask. More generally, it helped that my mom wasn't at all resistant to moving. Between her own mild dementia and very advanced end-stage COPD she cannot live alone, and once my dad died she was fully ready and accepting of the need to go to assisted living. I toured a bunch of places, both in FL and near me in MA, and the place I ultimately chose is about 20 minutes from my home and has both regular assisted living (which she's in now) as well as a memory care unit (in case she needs to shift to that later on). Since she wasn't able to tour places with me, it helped to ask her what she wants from her new home and really listen, and then do my best to find the right match. It also helped that we had already done her estate planning type documents well before the move, and that I am her POA, health care proxy, a cosigner on her bank account, etc and can therefore make decisions and commitments on her behalf.

So glad you're enjoying the AMA, Rachel! Thanks for the thoughtful questions :)

On navigating growth and change within our partnership, I feel like the honest answer is rather unsexy: communication. We talk a lot about what's shifting and changing for us in real time, how we can support each other in those shifts, and what that means/looks like in the partnership. In regard to the specific things you mentioned (queerness & gender identity), I asked Gent for his take on that the other day and he said: "I always want you to be your most full self! I don't want to be in partnership with only a static, singular version of who you are, I'm here for all of it." <3

The hiking thing has definitely been hard for us — he injured his spine in September 2023 and has been in varying degrees of pain on and off ever since, which makes backpacking tough and risky (the possibility of having a bad flare up while out in a remote area is scary!) After now exhausting all the non-invasive treatment options and not really seeing results, he's probably going to talk to a surgeon soon about the possibility of a discectomy, which could potentially eliminate his pain.

Bigger picture than that, though, is the lifestyle shifts we've made in the past few years: adopting two young dogs, getting a flock of chickens, starting a vegetable garden – all things that require one or both of us being home more often than long-distance hiking requires (in addition to the way we're prioritizing reductions in spending and air travel). This past summer we had hoped to do a lot more mini adventures in the Northeast, but my dad's death and Gent's hospitalization and recovery for lyme and meningitis derailed all of that. So I'm hopeful that 2026 can be a year of balancing our growing farmstead plans with lots of fun outdoor time!

It's an ongoing conversation between us for sure! Our current setup (which we've had since we moved in together and which works very well for us) is to keep totally separate bank accounts, savings, and credit cards (and to pay for our individual spending on our own), but then to also have a joint credit card for shared expenses which I pay off each month and then Venmo request his half from him.

Our core shared expenses are pretty clear right now: groceries, vet care and food for the dogs, household things (toilet paper, dish soap, lightbulbs, etc) and any sort of date we go on together (a coffee shop outing for example, since we hardly ever eat meals out or do paid entertainment - we are homebodies at heart). Those are the agreed upon categories that we both always put on the joint card without any kind of conversation.

Then there are the shared-use things that I pay for 100%, which right now is our utilities. My partner currently isn't working a wage-earning job and so I pay for our water, gas, trash, internet, and Netflix (no electric bill because we have solar), whereas he does a bigger share of the household tasks (like daily dog walks, tending the chickens, and taking the lead on all the various projects involved in having such an old house). This feels equitable for us, and we check in about it every few months to make sure that's still the case.

Then there are the shared-use things that he pays for 100%, which is anything big or structural for the house itself. This is because his dad owns the house and it will always stay in his family, so while I don't pay rent to live here (a huge savings!) I also won't ever have equity in the house, so it doesn't feel correct to either of us for me to pay for things like roofing materials or any other project that he and his dad want to do on the property.

For everything else we just have a quick convo about it if necessary, and luckily we have thus far been totally aligned on what feels fair.

(Not sure how useful any of this is since every person/couple is so unique, but if you have any specific questions feel free to ask!)

I'm so glad you're enjoying both the newsletter and Buttondown, Amy!

Vacuuming haha yes, let's gooooo. So first I'll say that this is a task I enjoy, and that I never feel like I need to force myself to do it, which helps. I also much prefer to do it every day because the less often I do it the more of a "thing" it feels like, because the combo of dog hair + wood stove + outdoor lifestyle makes it dirty really quickly. (No shade to anyone on the cleanliness level of their own living space btw, I just personally have always been someone who does better, mentally, in a tidy space – especially working from home.)

So no, I don't do the whole house every day, but I do vacuum the highest-use downstairs rooms daily (kitchen, living room, bathroom, mudroom). It's super quick, maybe takes me 5 minutes total, and I usually do it right after dinner. The flow is: clean up from dinner, do the quick vacuum, and then settle in to read or watch something (my most common post-dinner activities). I vacuum the upstairs (my bedroom, office, and small bathroom) about once a week, and my partner does his own bedroom.

We have some kind of cordless vacuum (totally blanking on the brand) and that also helps me a lot, since it stays on the charger all the time and is always ready to use, and I don't have to deal with cords or anything heavy.

This is the most I have ever written about my vacuuming habits lol. Hope it's helpful!

Ha well I am someone who pretty much always wears hoodies this time of year anyway so it's actually better with the buzzed hair because they fit so well without any hair in the way! Books + baking + hoodies is a dream winter goal list to me :)

Janine omg hahaha I am truly cackling out loud at this right now. I keep re-reading it and laughing all over again, so thank you for this day-brightening question and share!

One of ours, for Mona, is that she has been reincarnated many times and is aghast that this time it is as a dog. This makes her internal monologue one that is said all through gritted teeth, and we often narrate what must be going on in her mind as she lives out this new existence after having been a Buddhist monk, a master martial arts fighter, etc. 😂

Gosh this is so relatable. One main thing, and to be honest this is the first time I feel like I am actually doing this, is to not set myself up to fight the season. For me this primarily comes down to hike related stuff, where last winter I was trying to train a ton for a spring hike and doing so made me super resentful of winter — as if the season was icy and snowy and freezing at me lol. I hated that feeling! So this year I am pivoting away from that and instead trying to stay in the flow of the season by asking myself: What is winter a good time for?

For me it's a wonderful time to do two of my favorite things: read and bake. I love to be cozy, tucked up in a blanket near the wood stove with a cup of tea, reading for hours. I'm not as inclined to do that in the summer (when I'd rather be out playing in the forest and mountains), so this is the season for that (especially since it's dark by like 4:30pm here right now). Baking is hard in the hot months too, because I live in a 175-year-old house with no central AC that gets hottttt, and turning on the oven is just out of the question. Similarly, my favorite types of things to cook are autumn and winter meals: soups, curries, baked pasta, etc. so I lean into doing more of the cooking for me and my partner than I do in the summer.

This is a beautiful, generative question, Uma. And my most honest response is that I don't know, or can't yet articulate, the thing that feels like my answer. I'll be contemplating this and taking it to my journal this season (thank you for that!) and in the meantime for anyone else intrigued by the question I would love to recommend this podcast interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/come-out-loud-featuring-adrienne-maree-brown/id1637476174?i=1000736506885

I thought about this question all week (thanks for asking!), and admit that I feel a little stumped by the scope of it. Because patriarchy impacts... everything?! Which makes it feel impossible to give you a comprehensive answer, so instead I'll share one of the things that kept coming to mind while I reflected on your question, and that's the way that patriarchy's assigned gender roles puts such a huge (and often unspoken) burden on women (I'm using the gender binary here since that's what patriarchy does) to be selfless and nurturing, and to do most/all of the unpaid domestic labor in their family and relationships. That's something I internalized so much when I was young, and have really had to be conscious and intentional about breaking out of!

We do have chickens, yes! Silkies, leghorns, ISA browns, and Jersey giants. The silkies are my favorites – they are so sweet! My partner is the main caretaker for them though, and they are more his thing than mine. But it's fun to have them, and wonderful to bake with fresh eggs.

Gardening continues to feel both exciting and totally overwhelming?? Which I think is normal :) To be honest the garden got pretty neglected this year though, since my dad was diagnosed with cancer in May and then he and my mom and my partner were all hospitalized (for totally different reasons) in June, and then in August my dad died and I had to move my mom up here and and and – not a lot of energy to tend the plants, you know? We grew delicious lettuce and arugula though, earlier in the year, and had a banger crop of potatoes.

The hope for 2026 (especially since my plan is to not travel outside of the northeastern US at all) is to really focus on the garden, and then also on learning different food preservation methods. I'd also love to build some kind of simple, outdoor, off grid summer kitchen. The list goes on and on! So yes, definitely plans to increase subsistence living efforts.

Great question! My personal process is this:

Monday - Friday I read the email roundup from WTF Just Happened Today? (https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/) and then I also read/skim the transcript of the Democracy Now podcast (which feels better and more easily accessible to me than listening to the hour-long show). For international news and a non-US perspective I also check the homepage of Al Jazeera and go deeper as desired.

On Fridays I listen to the news roundup on the podcast It Could Happen Here (they call this series Executive Disorder), because the hosts are people with whom I share values and I appreciate that they cover big stories as well as things I might not hear about anywhere else.

I take the weekend off from checking things, and trust that if anything major happens I will hear about it (either out in the world or from my partner, who does still look at Instagram and who also uses Reddit).

Otherwise, I subscribe to a few newsletters from more topic specific activist spaces (such as the monthly roundup from Interrupting Criminalization) which helps direct my own action and attention in the places I want it to go.

I shared a few in another response above, and I'll also add that I really enjoyed the duology that starts with The Courting of Bristol Keats (by Mary E. Pearson). Reflecting back on 2025, it was a low fiction year for me, for a few reasons. First, back in late winter and early spring when I was training for my AZT FKT attempt, I was particularly drawn toward running/sports books (memoirs, training guides, etc) and none of those were fiction. Then, during the months of my dad's cancer and death I barely had the focus to read longform at all, and when I did I was drawn toward other types of nonfiction. It's only been in the past few months that novels have felt good to me again, and I'm excited about that. I've missed fiction!

Cookies! My all-time favorite is probably freshly baked shortbread (I loooove the vanilla bean shortbread recipe in Sally's Baking 101 by Sally McKenney). A related offshoot of this cookie type is linzer tart cookies, which I've never actually baked myself but sure do love to eat! For purchased cookies, my forever favorite is to go to a really great Italian bakery and get rainbow cookies. Extreme childhood nostalgia for me!

Enoughness, ooh, this is a lovely question. Earlier on it was a lot of list-making in my journal, with prompts like: What am I grateful to have enough (or more than enough!) of right now? When have I felt satisfied and content in the past few months? What do I have access to that can be shared?

For those moments of felt anxiety around lack or scarcity (which of course I still experience, and I think most everyone does too!) one thing that helps me is to get very specific about what's underneath that feeling. It's never that I want more money for the sake of having more money, but because of what money can give me (or what I think it can give me). So, using that anxiety as an invitation into more specificity around my wants or needs, and then creatively brainstorming a) how to increase the inflow of money to meet those needs and/or b) how to meet those needs outside of the formal money economy is soothing to my nervous system because it returns me to a place of agency.

In 2024 I taught two sessions of a class called How Much Money is Enough? and that's what folks are referring to. As of now I have no plans to teach it again, since I am focusing exclusively on this newsletter for the next 6 months and no other work. Mid-year 2026 I'll be reevaluating how my own income and work desires feel, and making decisions from there, and if I do ever teach that class again I'll share it in the newsletter first, so you won't miss it :)

As for the overdraft fees, the most honest answer I can give you is that that is not something I have personally struggled with because a) I enjoy being to-the-dollar meticulous with tracking my spending, and b) the few times I've needed to cover expenses that I don't have cash for at the moment I've chosen to use a credit card instead of a debit card. (Credit cards are obviously their own whole beast, beyond the scope of this question, but just sharing why I haven't dealt with overdraft fees personally.)

So none of what I'll share next is from my own lived experience, but from a more general personal finance "best practices" lens, here are some ideas: 1) Talk to your bank and see if they offer any kind of no-fee overdraft protection (for example, do they offer an account notification you can set up for when your balance drops below a certain amount?) 2) My understanding is that all banks are required by law to allow you to opt-out of overdraft protection, which would mean your card would decline if there aren't sufficient funds to cover a transaction but this would also eliminate overdraft fees. 3) Consider changing banks to one that has lower overdraft fees and/or meets your needs better overall, if your current bank folks are unhelpful (or shame-y) about any of this. 4) Experiment with expense/income tracking to find something that feels good for you. I personally use YNAB (happy to share my little referral link if you think it's a good fit for you!) but honestly I just used a simple spreadsheet for years, and there are also free apps/software. 5) Surround yourself with stories and info from folks in similar situations to help you feel less alone (assuming you do feel that way; I often did in the early days of trying to learn about personal and systemic finance stuff, since I was never taught any of it) by reading books and listening to podcasts that are aligned with your values and curiosities in this arena.

Yesterday! Hell yes, congrats! My advice is:

1) Make yourself a very specific list of why you are quitting and re-read it all the time, adding to it whenever new reasons pop up. Similarly: it helped me to identify what I call the "price of admission" for making a change — aka the things I am knowingly giving up in order to have the thing I want more. With Instagram the price of admission to a more peaceful life, greater privacy, and a reclamation of my own attention (the three things I wanted most) was losing touch with some folks and not being the first to see a news update or pop culture thing. To me that was a worthwhile price to pay, and reminding myself that there is indeed a cost (and that I had decided to pay it) was much easier than telling myself it "should" be "easy" to quit because Instagram is "bad". 2) Be super tender & kind to yourself. Changing an ingrained habit or behavior can be really hard! The addictive nature of these apps is fucking real, and engineered on purpose by very smart, very rich, very powerful people. There's nothing "wrong" with you if quitting feels difficult.
3) Intentionally learn about the most evil aspects of these companies to help strengthen your resolve (Cory Doctorow's Enshittification is my A+ rec here). 4) Surround yourself with stories of other people who are making this same choice, especially if you don't have anyone in your offline line that can relate (Amelia Hruby's podcast, Off The Grid, is my rec here, as well as her new book, Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media). 5) Create a menu of easy things to do instead of scroll social media (which you insightfully touched on already in the second part of your question!) I often turn to podcast listening for this, or honestly even just scrolling through my podcast player app to see if there's anything new I want to download. Same for browsing the book app that my local library uses and putting books on hold. It satisfies that momentary urge to scroll and see new things, but in a way that doesn't hook me.

This is a lovely reflection, thank you 🖤

I don't know that I have any advice, since I'm still (always?) living into this same question in various ways. I've been working on an essay about relinquishing the dreams of capitalism, which has brought this inquiry up for me in a big way. One thing that has helped me (and this is probably a boring answer since it's my main answer for everything lol) is list-making. For some reason that's the most accessible and generative format of reflection for me, and in this particular realm it has helped me to better name what specifically I used to want, and why, and which aspects of that dream/desire still fit and which don't. Is there another way to give myself the feeling I wanted when X thing was my dream, but in a way that's more right-fit with my current life and values? That's a question that's been feeling supportive for me lately.

And then more on the letting go side of your question, it helps me to get myself to a place of agency about it at least in some small way, where I can hopefully see that surrendering a past dream is a choice I'm making, and that making that choice doesn't mean that letting go of the dream is easy, effortless, or without grief. I've even thought (and this might be too woo-woo for some) of having a small "funeral" of sorts for dreams it's time to let go of. Not sure what that would look like, but it's been on my mind this year.

Thanks so much, Lauren!

My 6-month commitment to focusing exclusively on the newsletter is only in regard to my public-facing writing; I don't put any restrictions on myself when it comes to working on other projects/ideas if they call to me! I'm not writing anything else at the moment though, but there are two book ideas that have been simmering in the back of my mind for a while: one on the exploration of the "how much money is enough" question, and one more hike memoir. We'll seeeeee :)