140/ Best of 2024 From Around The Substackverse

+ coaxing the algorithm out of Fashionstack.

As someone who writes a style newsletter, it’s not surprising that my Substack feed has long been filled with notes from other fashion writers. Since most of what I read and engage with on here is in the fashion space, the algorithm earnestly directs more and more fashion content my way. Not that I mind, I’ve discovered so many fashion enthusiasts and even made a few friends along the way. (Love you!)

Yet, while I breathe fashion, I — like you — most certainly have a wide range of other interests. If my feed was my only data point, I would never have known that Politics is the most popular category on Substack. Writers like Heather Cox Richardson, Dan Rather, Adam Grant and Bari Weiss rarely crossed my feed, although Tom Cox authored every other note for a while.

Despite what my feed suggested, I suspected there were other clusters of the Substackverse waiting to be discovered. Determined to adjust the algorithm, for the last six months or so, I began smashing the follow button every time I read an interesting note. It was slow going, but my feed has since become much more diversified. Just yesterday, I hearted Taylor Sacks’ note, and I’m hoping the algorithm will nudge me towards where she’s been:

Earlier this month, I reached out to my favourite reads outside of Fashionstack to share their 2024 Best Ofs. Every single writer opened me up to something new and had me ferociously googling a book, place, and/or idea. On this eve of a brand new year, I hope you’ll also enjoy their Best Ofs, and if you’re interested in more content like theirs, make sure to smash their Follow or Subscribe button — you never know where it might take you.

The best books read by our panel in 2024.

1) Leyla Kazim

Leyla Kazim is a food and travel BBC presenter, journalist and writer you can usually find on the TV and radio in the UK. I’m interested in pretty much every topic Leyla discusses in A Day Well Spent with Leyla Kazim, her Substack about seeking pathways to more purposeful living, where she shares a side of her most don’t see. Most recently, she posted a piece about why we need intergenerational relationships, a topic I think about a lot as someone with few relatives living nearby.

• Best book I read: “Ultra-Processed People” by Chris van Tulleken. It’s about why we all eat stuff that isn’t really food (called Ultra Processed Foods or UPFs) and why we can’t stop. In my role as a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, I’m lucky enough to be exposed to a huge amount of information about the complex web that is the food system and how it affects us and our lives. I thought I knew quite a lot, but this book humbled me. Chris explores the origins, science and economics of UPFs to reveal their catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. I read chapters out loud to my husband most days. I would class it as essential reading for everyone.

• Best meal I ate: Any time I go home for my mum’s Mauritian cooking.

• Best song I heard: “Mum Does the Washing” by British poet and musician Joshua Idehen. I first heard it on BBC Radio 6 Music on a Saturday afternoon and I had to stop what I was doing and give it my full attention. Joshua explains theories of the world through the analogy of a Mum doing the washing, reciting the lyrics to the backdrop of a dance beat. It’s genius.

• Best film I watched: I’m not really a TV or film person (this was not always the case!) – I only tend to watch them on flights. On a recent flight I watched the real life version of “Mulan” (having never watched the original animated version) and thought it was absolutely brilliant. Girl power!

• Best outfit I wore: I was photographed for the cover of a magazine this year, it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked to do this so it felt like a pretty big deal. The shoot was late summer in Lisbon in Portugal and it was the first time I had ever worked with a stylist. I gave her a very precise set of parameters for my likes and dislikes and she did an amazing job, visiting local couture designers and vintage shops. She brought back some options that were totally me and I adored all the four looks we settled on. One of them was a completely one-off handmade couture piece, retailing for about €1,000, which is more than twice the amount my wedding dress cost. I’ve never worn something quite so unique or beautifully crafted.

• Best thing I purchased: One of my favourite things to do whilst travelling is purchase artesanal crafts. I bought this gorgeous textile in Cusco in Peru to hang on a wall at home, handwoven by women from the indigenous Andean communities that surround the city. The symbols represent the ancient Andean calendar. I also saw a video online about how to survive a long haul flight in economy and as a result bought a foot hammock. It loops over your closed tray table, providing a small support on which to rest your feet that is much higher than the floor. As a quite short person this thing has been a game changer and has made flights infinitely more comfortable.

• Best experience I had: I spent two weeks working on three different farms in central Portugal in April. It had a big impact and helped confirm a few things for me.

• Best place I visited: I spent two nights in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, sleeping in a wooden hut that had one side completely open to it. I was woken by the cacophony of the Amazon rainforest at dawn with otherworldly howler monkeys as the base note. Frogs, butterflies, insects, birds, snakes, lizards. And the trees, oh the trees. The density of life is staggering. It felt like a privilege of the highest honour to be there.

• Best conversation I had: My brother and I attended an empowering day of talks about death and dying at a Buddhist centre in London and the conversation we had after was really excellent, deep chat. It made me realise we don’t do those kinds of conversations often enough. Something to address in 2025!

Leyla in Chile!

2) Stella Tsantekidou

Stella Tsantekidou is a writer and political commentator in London. In her Substack, the Human Carbohydrate, Stella says the quiet part out loud in frank and urgent prose, giving a glimpse of life in Westminster and cultural commentary on feminism, dating culture, self-development and British and American politics. I subscribed after reading, “I too am an unfuckable hate nerd,” and maybe you will too.

• Best new book I read was “Yellowface.” It deserves the hype. The second best was “Down the Drain” by Julia Fox. As far as celebrity memoirs go, I believe her when she says she wrote this herself. It was a thrilling read.

• Best meal I ate: Friendsgiving dinner with my London friends, I made sticky toffee pudding, which is everyone’s favourite, and my friend made a roast with my favourite stuffing (it has liver in it!).

• Best song I heard: I rediscovered Thomas Newman’s “American Beauty” soundtrack, it always puts me in the right pensive mood to write.

• Best film I watched: I need to cheat and say a T.V. series instead because it shook me to my core: Baby Reindeer. It’s a real story that shows human vulnerability and the need for attention in all its glorious twistedness.

• Best outfit I wore: a red linen gown by Reformation. I would wear it grocery shopping if I could.

• Best thing I purchased was a yoga jumpsuit for my barre classes: life-changing and so much more flattering than I expected.

• Best experience I had: a summer island fling with an extremely attractive younger man.

• Best place I visited: my inner citadel when I decided to jump ship and become self-employed.

• Best conversation I had: my conversations with a young nazi, a 24-year-old boy who works in a Walmart freezer in Illinois, trades crypto and believes in conspiracy theories. I interviewed him for an article at frist and then continued chatting to learn about his life. I have been cataloguing it in my Substack.

• Best miracle I witnessed: My relationship with my mother is explosive, but this Christmas, I had a half-hour conversation with her without fighting. She listened to what I was saying and did not try to attack me. She even stayed calm for long enough for me to paint her nails. I was pinching myself.

  

  The best films/TV shows of 2024, according to our panel.

3) Lauren Collins

Lauren Collins is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and the author of “When in French: Love in a Second Language.” Her newsletter, Lettre Recommandée, covers life and language in France, where she’s lived since 2015. I’d been reading Lauren’s work long before I knew she had a Substack. Her piece “How Kevins Got a Bad Rap in France” gave my husband (a Kevin) and I a good laugh.

• Best book I read: A trilogy, of a sort, deepening my thinking about the American South: “The Barn” by Wright Thompson, “Biography of X” by Catherine Lacey, and “South to America” by Imani Perry.

• Best meal I ate: For the fun of it: a doubleheader soup-dumpling-off featuring Joe’s Shanghai vs. Din Tai Fung in New York with my mom and kids. For the food of it: Le Doyenné, which unexpectedly left me dreaming for months about watercress.

• Best song I heard: “Smoke From a Distant Fire,” the Sanford Townsend Band, cooking in the kitchen. “Copines,” Aya Nakamura, dancing in the kitchen. “II Most Wanted,” Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, cleaning up the kitchen.

• Best film I saw: I'm going with T.V.: “Industry,” particularly Sagar Radia’s performance as stealthily poignant market maker / vulgarian Rishi Ramdani.

• Best outfit I wore: Long sleeves, short shorts, and my increasingly unpresentable but literally irreplaceable (trust me, I’ve tried) white “reptile effect: Céline slingback flats.

• Best thing I purchased: A grommet-studded bucket bag from Alaïa and a pair of earrings from & Other Stories that remind me of oak leaves dipped in silver. A pretty water jug. A new peppermill!

• Best experience I had: Swimming with my family in the cold, glittering river at the Pont-du-Gard aqueduct. Swimming with my family in the warm, murky Canal Saint-Martin. Finishing the manuscript for my second book, which I’d been working on for seven years.

• Best place I visited: Le Banc d’Arguin. The salt flats at Aigues-Mortes. The Mollat bookstore in Bordeaux. The Olympic cauldron, a marvel.

• Best conversation I had: I wish I could remember. The best piece of advice I got was about a conversation I wasn't looking forward to having. My husband told me: “Just be a journalist.”

• Best miracle I witnessed: To be honest, I’m still a little hung up on the one I didn’t.

The salt flats at Aigues-Mortes!

4) Keris Fox

Keris Fox is the bestselling author of fourteen novels, and her first non-fiction title, “The Harry Styles Effect,” both a fandom memoir and celebration of Styles, will be published in March 2025. Keris writes two Substacks: her author newsletter, Happy Endings, and The Ladybird Purse • Opening up about money, where she interviews women about money and shares her own money misadventures.

• Best book I read: “When the World Tips Over” by Jandy Nelson. The most beautifully written, magical novel about family and love and loss. I cried towards the end, not because it was sad, but because I didn’t want it to be over.

• Best meal I ate: Spaghetti vongole with my 15 year old in Mallorca. I’d never had it before. I will definitely be having it again.

• Best song I heard: I heard “Please, Please, Please” by Sabrina Carpenter for the first time one morning walking around London in the sunshine and it made me laugh out loud. And then I listened to it over and over. Still makes me laugh.

• Best film I watched: I’ve seen over one hundred films at the cinema this year. My 20 year old and I have season tickets and it’s the one thing we do together, just the two of us. “All of Us Strangers” was the most affecting; people were sobbing in the cinema and I couldn’t speak afterwards. I felt like I could have kept watching “Perfect Days” forever. And I saw “The Fall Guy” twice.

• Best outfit I wore: Since 2020, I’ve pretty much been wearing the same thing every day: black soft pants, black v-neck t-shirt. It’s pretty much changed my life since I now never worry about what I’m going to wear. But I did buy a cutwork sweater after I saw Sali Hughes write about one. Hers was from Massimo Dutti and was sold out when I looked (it seems to be available now) but I found a similar one on Vinted (“lightweight open holey black jumper”) and I love it.

• Best thing I purchased: Denon PerL earbuds. I have hearing loss but I can’t play music through my hearing aids. These earbuds adjust to your personal hearing profile, so I’m getting detail in songs that was lost to me before.

• Best experience I had: Hampstead Ladies Pond on my birthday. Even in May, it was freezing, but swimming with ducklings in sun-dappled water is always going to be joyful.

• Best place I visited: Copenhagen. My eldest wants to live there so we went to check it out and I totally fell in love with it. Such a lovely atmosphere. And the cardamom buns!

• Best conversation I had: How can I narrow this down when I never stop talking? Maybe the conversation with the server who admired my necklace and then asked if it was me. It was Iris Apfel. But I loved that she thought I might be wearing a necklace with my own face on.

• Best miracle I witnessed: We fostered a cat, Noodles, who had been alone in a house for months. She was timid and traumatised and the rescue said it may take her weeks if not months to come out from under my son’s bed. Within days, she was sleeping in bed with him and a few weeks later roaming throughout the flat and making us all fall in love with her. So much that we decided to keep her. She’s the miracle.

I see the resemblance!

5) Janet Asante Sullivan

Janet Asante Sullivan runs her own consulting firm, partnering with law firms, tech companies and nonprofit organizations to train and coach their leaders. Janet is also an oil painter and in her Substack, Movement is Life Studio, she explores art and introspective living. A few months ago, notes of her in-progress artwork began appearing in my feed, and I was hooked:

• Best book I read: “The Street” by Ann Petry

• Best meal I ate: Fisherman Soup in Svolvaer, Norway.

• Best song I heard: “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar.

• Best film I watched: “Past Lives.”

• Best outfit I wore: Tibi Sid jeans, thrifted plaid blazer, Wolford bodysuit, thrifted Issey Miyake Jacket and Tibi boots and Maison Louis Marie No. 9 perfume.

• Best thing I purchased: monthly in-person oil painting art lessons — I attend every Sunday.

• Best experience I had: While celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary in Athens, Greece, my husband and I joined an impromptu bar crawl with a mix of locals and tourists. The night turned into an unforgettable night of partying with strangers that brought us unexpected joy. 

• Best place I visited: Lofoten Islands in Norway.

• Best conversation I had: On a gray day in Bergen, Norway, I met a fellow traveler from England while sitting on a bench. As we shared stories about solo traveling, she opened up about her painful recent breakup. In that quiet moment between strangers, it felt like we were meant to meet on that particular bench. 

• Best miracle I witnessed: My youngest, a 17-year-old quarterback for his high school team, experienced a remarkable turnaround. During his sophomore year (last year), the team went winless, and he endured constant sacks as they were considered the worst team in the area. It crushed him. Just one year later in 2024, his team became top-ranked and won the district championship. He was named the number one quarterback in our county and ranked among the top 10 in our state. A bit of a miracle in our little corner of the world.

6) Karen Rosenkranz

Karen Rosenkranz is a writer, researcher and trend forecaster exploring cultural shifts and post-urban life. She is passionate about regeneration and spends most of her free time climbing, hiking, or making ceramics. Karen writes City Quitters and her piece about achievement culture, Not the best, not the worst, really resonated with me.

• Best book I read: “Shy” by Max Porter

• Best meal I ate: so many… À Moro in Marseille was memorable

• Best song I heard: “That Night In Hawaii When I Turned Into A Panther And Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control ... Sh¥t Was Wild” by André 3000

• Best film I watched: “The Outrun.” It's always tricky when you've read and loved the book first, but the film was a great adaptation.

• Best thing I purchased: Black Tencel trousers from my friends at SONO, perfect in any situation, I’ve been wearing them a lot this year

• Best experience I had: Climbing in Gorge du Tarn.

• Best place I visited: A remote bothy in the Scottish highlands looking out at the isle of Skye.

• Best conversation I had: One of the many mind-expanding chats I have with my 12 year old son. He often makes me view things in a new light.

This is Karen!

7) Tommy Dixon

Tommy Dixon is the only Canadian on this list, who I discovered when I read his viral article, the end of our extremely online era. Tommy is a 24-year-old writer, living amid the rolling farmer’s fields and weather-beaten barns of the Ontario countryside. He writes deeply personal reflections on a patchwork of topics, but finds himself often exploring beauty, belonging, and what it means to be embodied.

• Best book I read: “I Served the King of England” by Bohumil Hrabal and “The Odyssey” by Homer had a profound impact on me, but the most important book I read was “The Bible,” cover to cover.

• Best meal I ate: Working on a farm this fall in the Okanagan Valley, we had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner in the farmhouse. Special because all of the other 20 or so volunteers were from around the world and had never experienced Thanksgiving before. There’s always something warm and delightful about the bustle and clatter of a communal meal.

• Best song I heard: Anything by Gregory Alan Isakov.

• Best film I watched: I didn’t watch many movies this year, but one weekend I saw both “Pinocchio” (1940) and “Peter Pan” (1953). With every frame hand-drawn, the detail and care that went into the storytelling is sublime.

• Best outfit I wore: Blundstones, army green Carhartt work pants, and gray Patagonia better sweater for 30 days straight (and counting).

• Best thing I purchased: My Carhartt pants ($30 at a vintage store on St Laurent in Montreal).

• Best experience I had: Watching tens of thousands of bats fly out of a cave at dusk in Northern Thailand.

• Best place I visited: Two months this summer living in a remote off-grid cabin in rural Newfoundland, a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.

• Best conversation I had: The best conversations need continuity and constancy and patience, and tend to unfold and evolve across many months. For me, my conversations about life and love and philosophy with my older brother during our long walks in the countryside.

• Best miracle I witnessed: Planting a seed the size of a pinhead in my garden and watching it grow and bloom into wild roses.

  

  The best music of 2024, according to our panel.

8) Alexandra Fasulo

Alexandra Fasulo writes House of Green. She is a 31-year-old entrepreneur, brand-new farm owner, writer, and author who is passionate about showing others how they can buy land, start farms, start businesses, and start living a life outside of the 9-to-5 hustle. Her farm is located in Upstate New York, where she resides with my rabbits, chickens, and cats. I was intrigued when I stumbled upon this note by her:

• Best book I read: “The 2024 Farmer’s Almanac.”

• Best meal I ate: All-you-can-eat sushi.

• Best song I heard: “Big Black Car” by Gregory Alan Isakov.

• Best outfit I wore: All of my dark academia outfits bring me immense joy.

• Best thing I purchased: An Amish-made barn.

• Best experience I had: Working with the Amish to have my farm built out.

• Best place I visited: Greenwich, NY

• Best conversation I had: Talking with two older gentlemen in my town about the meaning of life and what’s in store for my future.

• Best miracle I witnessed: The electric company and the county in which my farm resides deciding to issue my electric grid permit after they assured me they never would for the first half of 2024. They changed their mind and it was truly a miracle. Without that decision, I would not have electric at my farm.

9) Isabel Cowles Murphy

Isabel Cowles Murphy lives with her husband and four sons in rural New York, where she writes unsellable literary fiction. On her Substack, The Nobel Try, Isabel mines her inner-conflicts: motherhood & autonomy; ambition & surrender; sovereignty & culture.

Before leaving the city, Isabel worked as a prosecutor at the Brooklyn DA’s office. Isabel’s mother is a successful actress. Her father was an actor and writer, whose psilocybin-assisted Catholicism edged on the mystical. His favorite phrase was “there’s no federal law says you have to!” which he employed freely to justify all misbehaviors, including: not making his daughters finish their homework and not making anybody wear a motorcycle helmet on the two-wheeled ride to school. Practicing law was an act of individuation and rebellion, but in the end, Isabel is glad to have come home to a creative life.

• Best book I read: “This is Happiness” by Niall Williams. My mother-in-law reads non-stop and I love everything she sends me. She turned me on to “Fup” by Jim Dodge, “One Long River of Song” by Brian Doyle and “True Grit” by Charles Portis — all in my top ten. When “This is Happiness” came in the mail it was an automatic YES, even though it took a few tries. The writing deserves deep quiet and muscular focus. But it’s worth the effort... Williams is a writer’s writer and every page, properly consumed, feels nutritive.

• Best meal I ate: A bacon cheeseburger from JG Melon, unfortunately.

• Best song I heard: “wacced out murals” by Kendrick Lamar.

• Best outfit I wore: I own about 20 pieces of clothing because when my closet gets full, I become confused. I buy nice things and feel bad about the money until I wear my stuff into the ground. The clothes are either elegant / urbane or peasant-ish and the two styles mix together like a wink. This summer I discovered a great combination in a hot red Eres one piece with a scratchy, cream-colored cardigan on top.

• Best thing I purchased: This Virgin of Guadalupe pendant from Frank Ronay. It draws the eye right down that red swimsuit.

• Best experience I had: My husband, Christopher, and I love to travel and we did a lot of it before we had kids. In the dense years of early parenthood we forewent anything with a time change (also, we were broke). There’s a big gap between our youngest baby, Bruce, and our others, and we realized when Bruce was born that we couldn’t keep waiting for life to ease up. So we booked a surf trip to Portugal and had the time of our lives. The days were whole-body exhausting and the sleep was animal deep.

• Best place I visited: Melides Beach, Portugal.

• Best miracle I witnessed: When I was little, I saw a green smear in the night sky and in the morning, I learned it was a hint of the Northern Lights. It felt like magic, just for me. Since then, I’ve longed to see them properly, but never found a way. This fall, while I was cooking dinner, Christopher came in from walking the dog and announced the sky was “weirdly pink.” We walked to the field behind our house and stared as the Northern Lights bloomed fuchsia, neon green and blue. The show lasted for hours. Everything in nature is a miracle to me, but that experience felt mythical.

Christopher and their three older boys mesmerized by the Northern Lights!

10) Lindsey Stanberry

Lindsey Stanberry is the founding editor of Refinery29 Money Diaries, and the writer behind The Purse, a newsletter about money, motherhood, careers and and relationships. Check out her Home Economics series, where (brave) women give an extremely detailed breakdown of their financials.

• Best book I read: I love to listen to nonfiction books while I take long walks, and the highlight of the year was “One in a Millennial” by Kate Kennedy. It was at equal turns funny, relatable, sad, and insightful, and I found myself both laughing and crying while listening to her essays. Now I need to buy a physical copy so I can go back and enjoy her writing on the page.

• Best meal I ate: I’m not much of a foodie, but we just had a really lovely meal at Il Cantinori right before Christmas. The food was delicious, but what made it so special is that we were with my aunt and uncle and cousins, including my cousin’s daughter who I had never met before. She and my son played so well together, and it was so good to catch up after many years apart. It was such an important reminder to me of how much I love to spend time with my extended family, and I don’t get to do it enough. A resolution for the new year!

• Best song I heard: “Forget About Me” by Maggie Rogers. In May, I wrote a piece about motherhood, and how that song reminds me of my son. (I know it’s a love song! But still!)

• Best film I watched: It feels like a million years ago, but I loved “American Fiction.” My husband and I got to see it in the theater while our son was vacationing with my mom, so maybe that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much. But I thought it was very clever and the story stuck with me for a long time.

• Best outfit I wore: I have a skirt from Hannoh and a blouse from Me + Em, and I love them both separately, but together they make my hands-down favorite outfit right now.

• Best thing I purchased: I got a pair of Freda Salvador “Brooke” boots after wanting a pair for years. They totally live up to the hype: they’re as comfortable as everyone promises.

• Best experience I had: We hosted our first The Purse event in October, and it was such an amazing night. I love to entertain in general, and this felt like taking that love to the next level, with so many wonderful women—both friends and strangers who now feel like friends—coming together for intimate conversations about money. It was so special!

• Best place I visited: My husband, Ken, and I spent five days bumming around Northern California in early December to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary, and it was such a fun trip. We spent a couple days in Sonoma, hiked among the red woods, drove the Pacific Coast Highway, and then saw a 49ers game. The weather was gorgeous, and it was such a lovely break from our usual hectic lives. Turns out after 15 years, I still really like my husband!

• Best conversation I had: This year, I brought on a cofounder to help me with the business side of The Purse. It’s not an understatement to say that nearly every conversation I have with Erika is fun, exciting, and interesting, but that initial chat we had way back in June was such a big turning point for me and the future of The Purse!

• Best miracle I witnessed: I hope I never get over the privilege and joy I feel raising my son. I look at him every day, and I think it’s an absolute miracle that I get to be his mom, and I’m just the luckiest. 

Jodi Ettenberg’s best book of 2024.

11) Jodi Ettenberg

Jodi Ettenberg is a former lawyer turned travel and food writer whose life changed dramatically in 2017 when a routine medical procedure left her with a spinal CSF leak and disabled. Now writing primarily about chronic illness, loss, and how to get through terrible times, she also has a free monthly newsletter here on Substack, Curious About Everything that compiles the best things to learn from each month. You can also find her on her main website, Legal Nomads.

• Best book I read: “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth,” by Zoë Schlanger. A beautifully-written book about how plants communicate. Do they have intelligence? Do they have consciousness? Schlanger presents interviews, studies, and her own views all woven together in a read that is part travelogue, part memoir, and all science journalism. I really enjoyed it and the questions it forced me to ask myself about plants and their place — and ours — in the wider natural ecosystems we live in.

• Best meal I ate: simple and satisfying, a local Berlin döner spot called Wolf Down makes celiac-friendly rice bowls with their special sauce, a rich garlic and dill creamy topping for the chicken döner. It’s a treat whenever I indulge.

• Best song I heard: Music is hard with a leak; I explain is an ongoing, mild concussion in how it impacts my capacity for noise and movement. But last year, I read about a band called Marconi Union, who created the track “Weightless,” what scientists called “the most relaxing song of all time.” Built using principles of entrainment, to try and align your brainwaves with the song’s musical frequencies, it slowly teases your heart rate to slow and sync with it as you’re listening. The song didn’t change my life, but it is one of the few things I can listen to and it does really ground me. It’s ethereal; it soothes. I usually listen to Marconi’s 24/7 Youtube channel with all their tracks as they do the same thing for me. Great background music, or just put it on to lose yourself and float away.

• Best film I watched: I can’t watch movies any longer, as having an ongoing spinal CSF leak prevents me from enjoying the movements and sounds onscreen. No movies this year, or during the last many years!

• Best outfit I wore: the many soft and comfy lounge sets that keep me warm and don’t irritate my skin. I’ve worn Aritiza pants and sweats for years and the bottoms come in short lengths so I don’t need to shorten them, being 5 ft tall.

• Best thing I purchased: Electric blinds! I can’t use my blinds in my apartment because they are using a lever system where you crank them up and down. With my mobility restrictions, it’s not possible. Electric blinds, made to measure for the window and patio door, weren’t cheap — but they’ve made my life so much easier. I got blackout blinds to help me sleep better, and they run on a rechargeable battery that only needs to be charged once per year.

• Best experience I had: helping to plan a conference on spinal CSF leaks that brought together physician and patient speakers to bridge the gap between their understandings. While it was a lot of work, it was so gratifying to hear medical professionals say that they would practice medicine differently having heard and onboarded the patient speakers’ challenges and stories.

• Best place I visited: Unfortunately, I’m mostly bed-bound so I can’t travel any longer, even within my home city. Grateful to have traveled as much as I did prior to this big life change.

• Best conversation I had: A friend of mine passed away earlier this year, and a few days prior I was thinking I hadn’t chatted with her in awhile. I reached out and we caught up on each other’s lives. Less than a week later, I would never have the opportunity to speak with her again. I’m so glad I listened to that little nudge telling me to reach out. Don’t ignore those feelings; you may not get the chance do to so later.

---

Let’s hear your Best of 2024 in the comments!

Love and gratitude,
Irene

Next Post: 141/ Rambling Year-End Style Reflections