A most perennial year

Issue 9: 2025 Year in Review—The Age of Contentment

I love the first day of a new year. I love the scent of possibility, the texture of an imagined fresh start, the swell of excitement that comes with the “temporal power” of January 1, as my friend Alice poignantly says.

In the energy of this liminal space between years, the boundless potential for change is intoxicating. Yes I’m going to eat less fried food in 2026, but on January 1, I have devoured a Waffle House All Star breakfast of eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast, grits, and waffles (duh)—because the rest of my year starts tomorrow. I’ll commit to changing all my habits around sleep and phone and stretching and meditating, luxuriating in the ideals of who I could be, never mind the fact that I have to then do the things I say I will.

It’s also a day full of questions and concepts, reflecting, contemplating, and constructing narratives for my life. I love this stuff!! Since 2018, I’ve been choosing a word to anchor my years. (That was a good year, “start,” where I began making art in earnest. 2020 was “patience,” lol, who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?)

One of my year-end questions I find very challenging but illuminating is: What would you call your year if it was a book or movie?

Thinking back on my year (and perhaps influenced by my recent re-read of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence), I’ve titled my 2025 “The Age of Contentment.”

This title was also inspired by Wendy Cope’s beautiful poem, “The Orange,” which I was introduced to by The Paris Review’s daily poem newsletter. “This is peace and contentment,” Cope writes. “It’s new.”

I was so moved by the simple profundity of Cope’s words that I’ve now copied down her poem a few times—once at the back of my novel notebook as a reminder to enjoy the process (ugh), another time for a friend, and finally, in making my little year-end personal recap.

My friend Sabrina and I were discussing this feeling of contentment, how it feels more real and accessible to us than happiness. She shared a wonderfully resonant opening sequence she wrote for one of her recent yoga classes: “Santosha invites us to find a quiet steadiness inside whatever is happening. Contentment is not pretending; it’s softening around what’s real. You can hold mixed emotions without needing to choose just one.”

I return to Sabrina’s guidance to hold mixed feelings inside, to a “quiet steadiness”—what a resilient way to live.

I ended my year in contentment, but certain things are much clearer with the lens of retrospect. Returning to where I started at the beginning of 2025, the word I chose was “perennial.”

My friend Jess (Paul Giamatti) suggested this word to me after hearing my reflections on wanting to keep my status as a girlie on the go, but also my desire to make time to actually write and draw, to nurture and deepen my friendships, while also needing more solo time and quiet evenings at home. She said she was reminded of perennial plants, because they go through literal seasons of dormancy and rest in the winter months, conserving energy for a spring comeback, showing out in buds and blossoms and flowers.

I really gravitated to this idea of seasons, nourishing myself in different ways throughout the year, as opposed to slogging through a full year of <insert habit or life change here> which often feels too overwhelming. Summer tomatoes, winter stews. Jetting off to Paris in the spring, cozying up in Brooklyn for the fall. Perennial is an impromptu neighborhood hot pot night, or a planned girly pop sleepover for my other favorite Jess’s Nic Cage birthday. Perennial is what I need it to be, and it can change moment to moment, season to season. 💚 Everything is perennial 💚

Here were the notes I wrote to myself on January 1, 2025:

All in all, I actually did a pretty good job of being perennial. I think the most satisfying thing is, as much as I could point to specific “goals” I didn’t achieve for myself this year (only eight newsletter issues instead of the proclaimed twelve…. no manuscript draft but I did decide to shelve a novel draft and start another new novel so…. I still had too many three or four-plan days and not enough pants off time at home….) I look back on this list and I am content. I ebbed and I flowed, moving with both the earthly seasons and my self-defined arbitrary ones. “And enjoyed them and had some time over,” to return to Cope’s words. “I’m glad I exist.”

Okay, now onto the fun part of year end reflections: breaking down my silly yearly stats! This is obviously all super scientific and accurate.

My 2025 consumption numbers

• I watched 111 movies, and Letterboxd informs me that Tom Cruise is my top watched actor of the year (7 movies) beating my husband Timothée (4 movies)
• I listened to 54,819 minutes of music (8,536 of those minutes were spent listening to Beyoncé, making me one of her top 0.02% global fans! Bzz bzz bitches!!)
• I read 39 books—well, actually 63 books if you count all my lil fanfics, which I sure do! Reading is reading, I’m always saying this. A few of my favorites this year include Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief by Victoria Chang, and the first one hundred pages of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy….. inshallah I will finish it in 2026 in Zohran’s NYC.
• I spent approximately 1,560 hours on my phone this year. Please don’t do any math and extrapolate what that means across my lifetime. I need another smartphone sabbatical, stat.
• I also approximated receiving 312,000 texts this year—across all my various messaging apps—based on screen time notifications. It’s safe to assume my texts sent is at least double, if not triple that.

My 2025 creation numbers

• I wrote roughly 65,000 words this year! This is counting both my fiction writing and this newsletter. Not too shabby, though my original goal was to write 50,000 words in just my manuscript but…. a win is a win.
• I published 8 issues of katie mag, and this container helped push me back into more of a regular writing practice.
• I took 23,815 photos and videos on my phone this year, but I also got much more into analog photography too. I shot 15 rolls of film this year, and I even got to display some of these photos in a BPL exhibit.
• I started 5 paintings this year, but I also started painting acrylics for the first time (shoutout to my friend Carolyn for giving me the creative courage to start!) Also, I did lock in and finished 3 paintings by year end (I’m too lazy to re-do my graphic above…. look at me embracing imperfections….)
• I walked about 1,643 miles this year (based on my daily average of 4.5 miles) Side note: I wish my phone tracked walking speed and sidewalk obstacles dodged.

Looking ahead, I don’t have a word yet (because I haven’t started my new journal for the new year yet obviously), but here are my ins/outs for 2026:

Ins

• Therapy, again
• Finishing things
• Painting
• Budgeting (yuck)
• Leeks
• Writing (my manuscript) daily-ish

Outs

• Overscheduling
• (Too much) people pleasing
• TikTok (I deleted it in November and what I’ve lost in earworms and slang, I’ve unfortunately gained in reading and presence)
• Dining out as the default
• Fried food
• Myopic complaining (or awooing, as my friend Addy has coined)

Yours in contentment,

katie “zhu year, zhu me” 🆕