What's Working: October 2025
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Each month I share what’s been working well in my life (even during months when finding and naming these things feels hard), plus a curated list of links to what I’ve been reading, listening to, watching, and cooking.
In the comments I’d love to hear what’s been working well for you, plus your own links & recs!
What’s Working
The new season of Bake-Off. Grief naps. Taking even a brief pause each day to look at and appreciate the autumn leaves. Eating regular meals. Only wearing gender-affirming clothing. Potatoes from the garden. Therapy. Donating to Trans Lifeline. Continuing all my little preparedness projects, even when they feel futile. Dogs — mine of course, but also just in general. Onions cooked slowly in butter. A return to running. Letting go of the fantasy that I’ll ever reach the end of life’s to-do list.
Top 10: Reading, Listening, Watching
I so appreciated this interview with Alok Vaid-Menon on (among many beautiful things) redefining what it means to be optimistic.
I’m perpetually hungry for real-life stories of people turning their neighborhoods into communities, and so of course I loved these case studies. Also, from Mariame Kaba: The Magic of Showing Up
I am strongly and unapologetically anti-AI, and I felt deeply understood by this piece on it from Lilly Dancyger, and also full of respect for her sharp clarity of opinion. (And, to quote Lilly, “If you’re an AI apologist who feels the urge to explain to me why the way you use AI is totally fine, please resist that urge.“)
Kelly Hayes (who writes one of a small handful of my must-read newsletters right now) gives us these core action-oriented questions: “If you are struggling to fathom or reckon with what’s happening, begin here: who can you help protect, and how? How can you support trans people who are under threat? Is there an ICE watch training you can sign up for? How can you support criminalized people, particularly those being targeted on the basis of race, mental health, gender, or housing status?”
One of my other current must-read newsletters is by Margaret Killjoy, and this recent piece in particular really helped me. And this one too.
In this episode of The Money with Katie Show, Tressie McMillan Cottom gives us a masterclass in connecting status, power, and the economy.
Something I think about a lot is the frequent discrepancy between price and value. This 7-minute podcast really hits on that in a clear way.
Since my dad died (and especially against the backdrop of everything else going on in our world right now) I’ve been in a real state of “how am I feeling/what even is a feeling.” This edition of Erica Chidi’s newsletter helps.
Fully here for this lovely essay by Rosie Spinks, about gardening, yes, but really about interrupting capitalism’s logic.
And lastly, for a feel-good, witchy book this season: A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna
Okay one more: my beloved friend, Amelia Hruby, has an absolute banger of a book out right now that you should totally read. It’s called Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media and you can order it right here.
Cooking & Baking
This past weekend my partner and I hosted a beloved friend’s 75-person wedding in our backyard, and I baked all the desserts. (Yes, all that baking was exactly as bonkers as it sounds lol.) Here’s what was on the menu (in addition to my own recipe for vegan chocolate cupcakes, which I’ll someday get around to typing up in shareable format):
Your turn!
What’s been working well for you lately? Do you have any reading, listening, watching, or cooking recommendations of your own to share? Tell us, tell us!
<3
Nic
Love onions in butter!
Playing with acrylic paints and markers, migraine meds/management, letting my mind wander, silently not engaging with AI at work despite the company being super enthusiastic about it, slow reading, letting myself cry and then moving on to another activity, reorganizing my bookshelf and refreshing the photos I hang on the wall.
1) Learning to roller skate! In the hopes that I can some day in the future play roller derby!
2) Related to number 1, finding small wins in struggle and failure. Learning something new and consciously doing something that doesn't come naturally to you results in a lot of struggle and failure, and finding small wins (today I didn't fall backwards, only forwards! My right-side plow stops are really strong??) is both motivating and exciting.
3) Reminding myself that I live a big, beautiful life. Even when I'm tired, even when I'm sad.
4) Spending time in beloved community.
5) Kissing my pup on the snoot and putting my hands in my cat's soft belly fur.
What’s working:
Using a countdown app to tether myself to my graduation date for my MSN in nursing education (73 days!!)
Tracking expenses more tightly during a significant income reduction
Walking in my woods daily, even if it’s at dusk for 10 minutes
Picking the last vine ripened cherry tomatoes and savoring them
Reading this, and a select few other newsletters than I look forward to each week
What a fabulous collection of links. I'm keeping this open on my browser and will be going through them one by one throughout the week. What's working: After weeks of back and forth, deciding against adopting another puppy from the shelter to keep my current super high energy teenage puppy occupied. Sounded good in theory but then I decided two shepherd/malinois/husky puppies might literally be the death of me. My cats and turtle all agreed! Making a huge pot of Turkish Lentil Soup from this recipe which turned out pretty good https://www.themediterraneandish.com/turkish-lentil-soup/ Refusing to force myself to finish reading books that I'm not interested in.
What’s working:
- Immersing myself in books I love
- Listening to ONE poem every morning and exploring in my journal pages an image/phrase that jumped out at me
- Showing up every Monday afternoon for a group prayer we shower upon the Capitol
- Sitting with the grieving in my monthly grief circle and 1:1 containers
- Walks
- Daily morning meditation
- Praying as often as I can
- Reminding myself again and again and again that this fascist regime is not my Source
There’s an ongoing pattern in my house of one person walking in the room saying “mmm that smells good” and the person cooking answering “it’s just onions in butter.” Snap delicious pleasures
A RETURN TO RUNNING. BUTTER AND ONIONS.
What's working -my dog and only my dog -overnight oats with tons of chia and berries -a return to caffeinated coffee -waking up at 5:30 AM naturally and maybe not sleeping enough -dharma talks -meditaton -soft pants -socks -piles everywhere
Just finished Ocean's Godori by Elaine Chu, a wonderful sci fi novel for anyone who has read Becky Chambers, and the next Dream Harbor romance The Gingerbread Bakery by Laurie Gilmore, which is my guilty pleasure read!
Definitely will pick up A Witch's Guide to Magical Inkeeping!
Thank you, Nic, for all these links. What's working: Reading more than I have in years – currently reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (historical fiction) and really enjoying it. Walking in the woods – getting back into hiking (and hopefully running) after too long an enforced break. It feels so good to get back.
Thank you for sharing and opening the space for reflection again! I was delighted to get this in my inbox. Taking the move as welcome permission to delete the substack app too.
What’s working: early (for me) bedtime, guided meditations on insight timer, cozy fiction, so much food prep, a cute paint by number, putting time limits on my usual time-sucks (scrolling and cleaning) AND digging out my random activities/craft supplies so I have accessible alternatives, measuring choices against my defaults rather than hypothetical perfection, smiling at the moon, slowly working through a lifetime’s worth of rage (this one is kind of a mixed bag), ugly journaling, giving compliments and thank you notes, and incorporating more play when working with kids or being with my own kids. I also heard Bea Victoria Albina on the Even Here, Even Now podcast and something about the way she speaks and conceptualizes things totally clicked me as a person who’s interested in IFS and somatics, personally and professionally. She has a podcast and just wrote a book too.
What’s working: checking out lots of books and dvds from the library, and mixing the hard hitters amongst cosy fantasy and queer romance; acknowledging the inconvenient truths to myself and writing about them in my journal; cutting my own hair for the first time, and feeling scared then relieved then giddy at saving myself £80 and like I Could Do Anything; signing petitions; making donations; supporting my local zero-waste business; deciding to wear comfy clothes instead of corporate clothes to a conference next week because my autistic overwhelm will already be high, and this will help; and talking to the fish that live in the fish tank and finding peace in watching them swim. Finally, like Flo said in a separate comment, I am also Team ‘Silently not engaging with AI at work despite the company being super enthusiastic about it’. It’s on my list of silent and/or anonymous work protests which also involves: supporting my colleagues in various ways against our manager including reporting the manager anonymously; putting up a sheet of union stickers in our work kitchen; submitting awkward questions about sustainability and pay transparency to meetings of senior management/leadership and supporting others when they do the same; being on the rota to take minutes at our union meetings; declining (without a response!) invites to pointless large meetings that are just about presenteeism; sending coded emails to our freelancers to encourage them to charge us a higher fee, when I know we’d otherwise be underpaying them; using my time (that I’ve gained from not attending pointless meetings) to research topics thoroughly and using my budget to pay experts and people with lived experience - both of these make our content better and more representative; using more of my time to talk to marginalised people about getting into my industry (including telling them the truth about its crap pay, so they’re fully informed) and doing everything I can to help them succeed if they decide it’s what they want. I have daily big sighs about corporate life, but finding small ways of sabotaging the greed, bureaucracy and hierarchy does help.
What's working: - taking steps to open a little crafty side hustle - walking all the dogs - telling my partner what I need and not doing it all myself - listening to pop music (re: Britney Spears)