Hello, all!

I hope you've had a wonderful holiday season and have looked back upon a beautiful and prosperous 2025! In the wee final moments of my year, here's a very last-minute cuppa—one that I was previously struggling to finish for weeks into December, only to find some last-minute clarity before the bell rings.

A reminder that this and all of the cool stuff I make does benefit greatly from your support! This newsletter will always be free (I literally cannot monetize it!), so any little bit you can give by joining my Patreon or donating via Ko-Fi goes a long way!

And with that, here's your tea!

Giving Thanks and Taking Names

I had my very first Thanksgiving experience in 2025.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have that many thoughts about Thanksgiving as a date or as a family event--for lots of reasons, I am typically not attached to holidays as participations of family togetherness; as a non-American person of colour, I am obviously very critical of the mythology of Thanksgiving as an American holiday; and because I don't consume a great deal of American media about Thanksgiving, there is no inherent built-up attachment to, like, a giant turkey when Christmas is right around the corner and I have constructed my own celebratory strategies around that.

It didn't help that I was initially very sick for a couple of days (not COVID), and couldn't stand the cold so much that I would much rather be bundled up the entire time than even approach a nearby door for fear of being touched by the breeze.

But then the evening came and... what I noticed in hindsight, and delighted in, was that Thanksgiving is simultaneously about so much food and not really about food at all.

My resistance about most holiday activities is about the awkwardness of community. Family can be fraught, as it is for me in ways that cannot be avoided, and I've spent a lot of time wanting my ideal holiday recreation to be spent alone. Christmas itself was spent this year continuing new favourite pastime of rewatching Tokyo Godfathers alone in my room while I enjoy a slice of sweetbread or some chips; most of the tail end of December was spent still working, or going through a new process I hope will keep me attached to my goals in 2026.

This season is also fraught for other interaction reasons. This is the time of year where it's easiest to feel alone, even when you're surrounded by people, because it becomes 'obvious' (in the way that many paranoias are obvious) that your friends are more successful or more driven or more desirable or more beloved than you feel you are. It is literally the season when a lack of intimacy feels like losing the colour and the warmth from your life. Even when things are going well, the combination of aspirational but entirely consumerist messaging in the media, the rising expense of travel and food making it less worth it to visit people or throw large gatherings, and so many other little things besides can compound into giving you the impression that this was the worst season of your life—that everyone you know is interesting in spending time, breaking bread, and sharing love with you less than they ever have been.

So what I realised, sitting at an unfamiliar dining table in Connecticut in late November and early December, was that the simplest thing to get out of that funk is to just break bread with anybody.

2025 has not been a very grand year. I haven't finished the draft I said I would. I haven't gotten more sustainable income. At times I feel the loneliest I have ever been, and I have only recently come around to reevaluating this solitude as time that I need to work on myself. All of the growth goals I had in mind this time a year ago feel like they slipped from my hand even when I was focusing on them intently.

But it's also been one of my most amazing years. I was the first-ever Poet Laureate of Worldcon, and got to see the beautiful city of Seattle for the very first time, which I am not embarrassed to admit I miss deeply at this moment. I got to geek out about poetry essentially as a part of my duty to fandom, and I feel personally invigorated to have heard the stories of countless readers of science fiction and fantasy who were not only inspired to read more poetry, but to explore writing it themselves. I designed an entire tabletop roleplaying game alongside one of my dear friends and trusted colleagues, and even got to travel to a convention I'd never been to before, specifically to show it off to people; doing so has inspired me anew to dig into the work of designing the rules and writing the lore for my own large tabletop projects. I started writing about tabletop games for one of the most radical gaming news markets on the internet, and even had the good fortune of some of those pieces becoming deeply revelatory for me about what games can do as works of art and shapers of community. And I have been overflowing with new story ideas, and finding new systems to manage both my creative output and my productivity expectations that have helped me write more in the latter part of this year than I may have written at any time in my life since being a high school NaNoWriMo fiend; I can only hope that refining those systems not only brings me at the output that allows me to tell all of the stories I want to tell, but to be more patient with myself in the process.

I did a lot, actually.

But I also did it in the shadow of a wide and deeply compassionate community of friends and peers, both old and new. I met a lot of people this year who with just one idle conversation have widened my perspective on what we can make and what the things we make can do to change the world, and I would want it no other way.

Some days after Thanksgiving, my host (the inimitable Gregory A. Wilson, by the by) took me to his neighbourhood's tree lighting ceremony, and I couldn't help but be absolutely delighted by the simple sight of dozens of neighbours coming together to celebrate the absolutely idle act of lighting a publicly displayed Christmas tree. (In fact, a lot of that day was spent curiously enjoying the culture of the American Christmas tree—how much effort it takes to find one, buy one, and keep it alive for three weeks in your own home, among other things.)

But in that moment, the thing I enjoyed was that, for just a moment, everyone here were actually neighbours—people sharing space and enjoying their surroundings, people who loved where they lived and had enough curiosity about the other people who lived there to share that love with them, too. So many little things about the time I spent hanging out in that neighbourhood felt like this: like people who battle the bearing cold with the temporary but absolutely calming warmth that is community.

So that's one of the things I want to see become a heavy part of my 2026. More community. I want to be in more community with my fellows. With the writers who told me in 2025 that they feel ill-equipped to talk about poetry, I want to build a community of discovering their own poetic sense. With the queer game designers whose deep well of creativity and candidness makes room for the faggot games movement, I want to join their community and discover what truths my own art has yet to admit to itself. At cons, I want to meet more people who are making more cool things and I want to delight in what makes those things cool. In my own personal life, I want to be better at sometimes just getting out of the house and actually touching grass (or at least touching a microphone stand at a poetry reading again).

I want to do so many other things, but this is also on the list.

Wish me luck.

And I wish you, too, the 2026 that you deserve: one full of joy and truth and community. One that is never too cold, or at least one where you always know to whom you can turn to for warmth.

Tasting Notes

First of all: as it's goal-setting season, if you like me have been struggling to find ways to keep yourself accountable to both the big stuff that keep you productive and the little stuff that keep you alive, I have only been using the Finch app for ten out of the twelve months of 2025 and it has been a quiet game-changer. Sometimes you just need to make friends with a birb in order to feel like you are in control of your life.

But also: let this be your last-minute reminder that you don't owe anyone anything that you can't bear right now. You are allowed to take it slow. No one's gonna judge you if you don't have a resolution until three weeks later. No one's gonna judge you if you decide this year you can't get/don't want/don't need a planner. No one's gonna judge you if you decide the first five weeks on your calendar are actually bone clean and bare of perfectly neatly time-blocked tasks. In fact, quite the opposite. Take care of yourself.

2025 was full of things to watch and listen to

No Today's Tunes or What's On TV—not because I haven't been enjoying so many good art this year and especially at the tail end of it, like PLUR1BUS and The Mighty Nein and the surprise October Aesop Rock album drop I Heard It's A Mess There Too and much more, not to mention the primetime network TV that is somehow still good enough to continue watching.

But mostly, the obvious reason why there's no media recap in this cup of tea is because I have been enjoying too much stuff and now the year's done and I don't have time to talk about it all. But expect me to have a lot of feelings about Watson when it comes back in March. And I obviously have to gush about Kamen Rider Zeztz very soon, as it has been getting juicy (and I need to keep reminding you all that you can literally watch it legally and for free on YouTube).

But far more importantly: what have you been enjoying in 2025? And what are you looking forward to in 2026? Feel free to chat about your faves in the comments!

The Leaves

So that’s all for today.

A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch!

My question for today is: what ways are you going to build community for yourself in the new year?

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the tea!