📚 Three gentle & insightful essays about resolutions, goals, and rhythms from Hayley Nahman:
I think the concepts really square with my experience and help temper the common excesses of productivity culture.
💬 Since I made a New Years post about Auden’s poem Under Which Lyre, I’d be remiss not to mention a different poem of his, New Year Letter, on this day as well. Here is the opening:
Under the familiar weight Of winter, conscience and the State, In loose formations of good cheer, Love, language, loneliness and fear, Towards the habits of next year, Along the streets the people flow, Singing or sighing as they go: Exalte, piano, or in doubt, All our reflections turn about A common meditative norm, Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform.
✍️ Still crafting some New Years Resolutions for 2026? How about you steal some of W.H. Auden’s timeless principles instead? Click the link to read my brief commentary on one of my favorite poems, Under Which Lyre: bradley-andrews.com
🎵 I was reminded today that the “Shazam app history forms a uniquely fascinating record of personal delight, curiosity and serendipity.” It was a fun exercise to go back and listen to some of the songs that had caught my attention in the wild this year—if you use the app, I highly recommend you take time to do the same. I found a grip of absolute 🔥 fire 🔥 songs that I want you all to enjoy too:
- Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover by Sophie B Hawkins
- Twenty Trees by The Durutti Column
- I’m a Girl You Can Hold IRL by ML Buch
- Time Will Tell by Blood Orange
- In The Morning by Ballroom Thieves
- Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield
- Knocked Down by Silhouettes Project
- Diamonds and Pearls by Prince & New Power Generation
- Don’t Fall by Nate Sib
- It Might As Well Be Spring by Caity Gyorgy
- Philakanzima by Bongeziwe Mabandla
My full Micro.blog playlist here, as usual.
📸 Day 10 Photo Challenge: Travel
Doing the “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” schtick for Christmas Eve.
Watched: Sentimental Value 🎥
Well, this movie done messed up my whole “Best Of” films list for 2025. Easily taking the #3 or #4 spot. This film is true art. The best pure drama film I have seen in a long time. Watched on a flight to West Coast and it was still amazing.
🎄 Last year, I made the wonderful decision to read Dickens' A Christmas Carol before the holiday. This year, I read Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Hoffman’s The Nutcracker. Indulging in Christmas-themed reading is a ritual I will now continue to indulge for the foreseeable future. During my readings, I have noticed that one of the defining traits of well-written Christmas literature is the ability of the author to confer a sense of abundance and narrative overflow, particularly through generous descriptions of food. Observe the following:
A Christmas Carol:
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mine-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry0cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.
A Christmas Memory:
Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we’ll need a pony to pull the buggy home.
The Nutcracker:
A few steps brought them out upon the great marketplace, which presented a splendid sight. All the houses round it were of open sugar work, story rising over story; in the middle stood a tall sugar-coated cake tree, like a monument, and on each side of this a very skillfully made fountain spouted in the air lemonade, ginger beer, and other nice drinks; while into the basins below ran pure rich cream which you might spoon up at once without further trouble.
May all of your Christmas' be as abundant as such! 🍗🥓🥧🍖
✍️ From a quick blog post of mine called Patience Is (Still) A Virtue:
I am convinced that humans are meant to live in reality, not fiction, and all spiritual health is predicated on the condition that we be faithful to the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. An ounce of delusion costs a gallon of resilience—and rejecting what we know to be true will always be experienced by our spirit as a defeat.
Would love to know your thoughts!
📃 I have finally released my “Best Media of 2025” List! Read it now // bradley-andrews.com
✏️ New Word Learned:
Philately: the study of postage stamps and postal history
🎥 Casey Neistat’s latest video about this young man with Cerebral Palsy running the NYC Marathon is so encouraging, heartwarming, and dignifying. It’s worth the 9-minute watch. Disclaimer: you may want to grab a tissue.
💬 A charming quote from RuPaul, as told to me by a friend:
“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.”
🎤 Unbelievable show by J.I.D at Brooklyn Paramount. Here is a small snippet of him performing ‘Glory’ from his two-time Grammy nominated album God Does Like Ugly | Brooklyn, NYC
📚 My quick, low-stakes review on Scott Galloway’s latest book Notes on Being A Man // bradley-andrews.com
✍️ An original poem I needed to get out of my head (I am not a poet) // Read it here: bradley-andrews.com
😱 Had a dream that Timothee Chalamet was cast to play Eminem in a biopic.
🎵 Oh man, this track from Method Man (of Wu-Tang fame) and Erick Sermon is insane. First verse is incredible. These older artists have been showing up this year. 🫣
Finished my last final of the semester, which gives me few weeks worth of free evenings until next session, not to mention a lot of head space. What will I do with all this time? 🤔
💬 “Write, for example, ‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'”
🫶 That feeling when you’ve responded to all the texts in your inbox