The hubby and I spent a good chunk of the year in different corners of the world, which felt both hard and spacious. We got to know our new baby grand-niece, growing so fast it makes time feel like sand between your fingers. It was also a year of aerial bruises, machines acting eerily human, and the kind of family time that refilled something I didn’t know was running low.
Favorite Trips
While Mark was in the Mexican jungle having his soul reorganized by ayahuasca, I sampled hotel saunas in Vienna, realized that Prague is even better with my sister, and that nothing, nothing compares to the tiny perfect smile of my baby grand-niece.
Watching a little human discover her hands, her voice, her power to summon adults on demand, is wildly entertaining. I adore her. She’s the best reason I have had to stay put for a while.
Favorite AI Shenanigans
Claude on Mushrooms
I asked Claude to write lyrics about a psychedelic experience. No clever prompt engineering, no examples. Just Write lyrics about what it feels like to be on mushrooms.
It came back sounding like it had dissolved its ego under a bodhi tree.
I fed those lyrics into Suno and out came a fully AI-generated song that, for the first time, resonated. Not in an “impressive technology” way. In a “I want to sit with this” way.
Empathic AI
My first brush with empathic AI voices was eye-opening as well, I can see how AI could start to replace human interaction.
Machines are articulating the ineffable better than we can, and sound more present than most people. We’re in strange territory.
Favorite Experiments
Aerial Silks
It looked easy and elegant. It was all lies. My most challenging experiment of the year has been a series of Aerial Silks classes.
I signed up and immediately learned that climbing fabric suspended from the ceiling is a very efficient way to meet your ego on the floor. But, if you ignore the embarrassment, it’s a surprisingly fun and efficient exercise. I left each class chuckling to myself, and all my muscles were sore for days afterwards.
Digital Detox
This one was so lovely.
I unplugged completely for five days. No screens. No internet. No speaking. Just my very dramatic mind. And then - moments of peace and quiet, catching up on sleep, and the delight of noticing the tiniest things around, without the seduction of technology.
I wrote the whole thing out here, for anyone who feels their attention fraying at the edges: mappyeverafter.com/5-day-diy-digital-detox-meditation-retreat/
Favorite Health Hacks
Future You Says Thanks for Collecting Your Health Data
This year, health hacks felt less like extremes and experiments and more like play and prevention:
Keep Yourself Alive the Next 10 Years - is what we keep hearing. With AI advancements, many diseases might be curable by then. Collect your health data and trends over time. Small breadcrumbs - blood test results and health stats - the more info AI has, the better it will be able to help one day.
Exercise as Play: From animal flow to mini dance sessions, turning movement into a game made it fun. Try some playful routines.
Favorite Money Moves
SoFi + Rakuten combined bonuses, $700 total.
SoFi was offering $300 for new bank accounts. Sweet. Then I stumbled upon Rakuten’s one-day flash deal, $400 if you sign up for SoFi through them. I set up two direct deposits from my business account, and collected both bonuses.
Total time: under 3 hours.
Total pay: $700.
And I did it in my pajamas.
And, another $5 flight to Europe
Courtesy of United points I again flew almost for free (at least cash-wise. I paid with points). If you’re not playing the miles game, you’re leaving free trips on the table (talking to you, Americans).
Favorite Books
Looking back, these books stayed with me long after I first read them:
The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby: A Stanford-educated anthropologist notices that Amazonian shamans keep describing molecular structures they shouldn’t know exist. He follows that thread into the delicious territory between science and mysticism.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard: As if Thoreau reincarnated as a 24-year-old woman in Virginia. Dissolving into the world, noticing the brutality and beauty of every brook, every insect, every breath.
Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt: Instead of “do more, faster,” Hyatt’s pitch is: do less and better, so you have time for what actually matters. He gives equal weight to work and play. It’s technically aimed at business executives but works for anyone trying to get their shit together.
Favorite Movies
Amélie
I don’t rewatch movies, there are just too many I haven’t seen yet.
But Amélie is the exception. A French cinematic unicorn that melts even the most cynical heart. Whimsical, strange, secretly profound. It’s the kind of film you can return to many times and always find something new to love.
Stranger Things
When this came out almost 10 years ago, I thought it was for kids and completely missed the boat. So when my niece and her partner decided to rewatch all four seasons before the final one drops, I jumped in. We have a date on New Years to binge the last season. Snacks at the ready!
Favorite Mind Hacks
From a programmer named Loopy, on the difference between preparing and doing (full version here):
Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Making a to-do list isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading this newsletter isn’t doing the thing.
The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.
And from Naval Ravikant, on how to pick work:
“Do what feels like play to you but looks like work to others.”
Both of these settled in my mind this year.
Favorite Silliness
I still regularly dip into Letters Live YouTube archive and pull out a letter to chuckle over.
🏆 Most Elegant Looting: Olivia Colman reads a 17th century letter from a wife to her husband who happened to inherit her father’s fortune.
🏆 Best Teenage Audacity: 17-year-old Tom Hanks wrote a letter to the legendary director George Roy Hill, listing all the ways he wishes to be “discovered”. Read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
🏆 Best International Smackdown: These letters are from the year 1675, between Sultan Mehmed IV and the Zaporozhian Cossacks and trust me, you’ve never heard history quite like this.
Thank you for letting me share what lingered this year. Now it’s your turn: what quietly stuck with you in 2025? Reply, comment, or just take a moment to notice.
See you in 2026!
Be Mappy,
Mags
