There are the normal reading links and recs in this edition, but I want to make sure you to scroll down and read everyone's lessons and firsts of 2019. They're so good! Sure, I click on a lot of year-end lists of best TV shows and books, but they pale in comparison to hearing about the ways you've all grown and changed this year. Thanks for sharing.

People are living longer, but culture hasn't kept up. Maybe the quest for immortality is worse than death. How Lizzo owned 2019, and the Kardashians owned the decade. Just because a woman is in charge doesn't mean there's a healthy corporate culture, and just because there's a "diversity" effort doesn't mean more black executives. The new politics of abortion, and the woman at the center of a landmark Irish abortion case reclaims her story. How money warps friendships between men and women. What happened to an ambitious nationwide education reform effort. A robotics queen steps away from the spotlight. The false promise of morning routines. The aesthetics of post-normcore and sassy mom merch. Removing likes won't fix Instagram. Read this if you eat shrimp. The singular "they" is the word of the year. Is it "emotional labor" or just "labor"? Why Americans work more than people in other wealthy countries. How Berlin reckons with its past every day. Why rage defines popular East Asian films. Indians are protesting rape culture, Australians are demanding action on climate change, Hong Kong residents are still in the streets, and a young Russian dissident stands trial. There's a lot of power in "no."

Become a paying member for just $5/year, and you'll never miss another hand-drawn chart or recommendation or piece of writing. Today you're missing a pie chart that contains the phrase "All I want for solstice is you."

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On CYG, a topic I think is really important: Unpacking the popular narratives around sex work—which have greatly informed a lot of harmful legislation regulating it (like SESTA/FOSTA). The Dream, season 2. ACLU employees read the hateful holiday cards they receive.

This is me realizing I have failed to mail my sister's birthday gift in time. (Happy birthday, Carolyn!)

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• Writing a book. This is a big one, something that's been on every list of "things I want to do this year" ever since I was old enough to write. I knew it would be different than writing and editing articles, but actually do it was... wow. The co-writing process challenged me so deeply. I'm feeling very proud but also surprisingly ambivalent about having Big Friendship out in the world in a few months because then I can't change it anymore—it's fixed in its state of imperfection. However, there is one thing I feel no hesitation about: I can't wait to write another book, because I want to get better at it.
• Making a full-size quilt. I made a few baby quilts in 2018 and set a goal to make a big one in 2019. I am now working on my fourth quilt this year. (Machine-quilted, not hand-quilted. Don't worry.) Turns out that hours and hours of staring at text on a screen makes you need hours and hours of non-words, non-screen work. Quilting filled that need for me.
• Breaking a bone. A tiny fracture near my right pinkie toe. Still counts, right? This is the mark of a true indoor kid: You don't break something until age 37, and even then you do it by tripping on the leg of your sofa. 
• Successfully propagating my beloved fiddle-leaf fig. Thanks to California and its unrelenting golden sunlight for making it possible to turn one big plant into a dozen little ones. Also, this is what I was doing—trimming the fig tree—when I broke the toe. Truly, no achievement comes without pain.
• Having armpit hair. I grew it out in January, and I've mostly liked it... but perhaps not so much that I'll keep it into 2020. If you can't experiment with how you live in your own body, what good is having agency over it?
• Eating Yunnanese food, seeing an embalmed authoritarian leader, climbing the big uneven stones of the Great Wall. All highlights of my trip to China.
• Starting to identify as middle-aged. The beginning of what I can imagine is one of the emotional projects of the rest of my life: Dealing with the negatives and enjoying the very real positives of aging. No one told me there were so many pleasures associated with getting older! I was prepared for only bitterness and back pain. And yes, I do have back pain. I spent most of this year hunched over a computer or a sewing machine.

• Turning 30.  I'm still grappling with feeling truly mortal, and trying to acknowledge the looming fear of dying as the earth dies, without getting swallowed whole.
• Fluoxetine! (AKA generic Prozac)!
• Marriage! Beautiful, messy, illuminating marriage.
• Pregnancy! So far it is both annoying and magical.
• A real sort of independence? This was my first year truly living on my own, no family or roommates.
• Staying as a guest in my son's first real apartment! I made a grown-up person and he's a good one!
• Telling someone I had feelings for them, them not reciprocating... and still being friends afterward.
• The death of a parent
• Having short hair! I cut off a foot of my hair in January and it has been AMAZING
• Reading books about *rolls eyes* management.
• Stand-up paddle boarding and therapy. Both have a similar outcome, although the paddle boarding is much more pleasant in the moment
• A vibrator.
• Making membrillo - quince paste. It takes 10 hours in a low oven and several more days to draw out the moisture. It is simultaneously nerve wrecking and meditative.
• Budapest's spa culture. Highly recommend.
• Sharing a home with pigs (I pig sat and it was great)
• Moisturizing gloves.
• Getting scammed. 
• Watching "The Rock" starting Sean Connery. Apparently some say it is a *secret* sequel to the 1960s James Bond with Connery. Blew my mind! [Ed note: This is reminding me that I did a Con Air and Face/Off stoner double-feature this year. They came out the same month in 1998!]
• A commitment to my writing without any external deadlines or guarantees, just my own passion and discipline.
• The courage to wear just a sports bra in the gym.
• Coming out in my late twenties!
• Moon lists by Leigh Patterson—an easy, thoughtful way to document my year
• I’ve spent many holidays apart from my family, but for the first time I spent a holiday alone without sorrow.
• Converting Judaism, so I suppose you could say that this is both my first time being Jewish as well as the first time I've been part of a caring, supportive religious community.
• Reading your newsletter. Fucking adore it! [Ed note: Awwww.]

I had to make a whole separate category for Things You Ate for the First Time in 2019:

• A smoked oyster on a food tour in New Orleans.
• This Midwest girl finally tried lobster for the first time! At 31!
• Takoyaki. These are like hush puppies with octopus.
• Whole artichoke, instead of just the heart! When the waiter brought it to our table, I started chewing the leaves in their entirety, and my friend had to teach me to suck from the bottom.
• REAL ITALIAN PASTA IN ITALY!
• Okonomiyaki, the Hiroshima-style savory pancake that is perfect drunk food.
• A new salad: roasted carrots/onions/potatoes on arugula with chevre and salted pecans.
• I ate a green ant (deliberately!) in Outback Queensland. It was spicy! Can recommend the Green Ant Gin made with them.
• Alligator meat in NOLA
• Canned fruits and vegetables from my garden -- so simple and so satisfying.
• Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches
• My own breastmilk. It tasted like warm melted vanilla ice cream, but I might be biased. [Ed note: OMG.]
• Chocolate hummus from Trader Joe's...which is actually not bad. [Ed note: OMFG.]

Lesson: I'm non-binary, motherfuckers. 
How you learned it: Some combination of podcasts, stand ups like Rhea Butcher, and articles. Eventually just realizing how many times I thought "well, this is certainly how I've always felt also."

Lesson: Service industry jobs can be just as fulfilling as "career" ones, whatever that means
How you learned it: Dropping out of law school & picking up a retail job

Lesson: How to style my hair (it's not frizzy, it's actually curly!)
How you learned it: Trial and error and reddit.

Lesson: How to ask for help in a way that felt so painful and heart-opening, because I was fighting shame
How you learned it: By paying attention to what my body was saying, and trusting that expressing it—at the risk of being too much or not enough—was the only way to learn.

Lesson: Bringing a new person into your family (however defined) is hard.
How you learned it: We adopted a daughter from foster care this year, so she was 12 when she joined our family. No matter how much I thought I'd prepared myself for it, it was so different. What surprised me most was how similar it felt to having a new roommate in my college/immediate-post-college years.

Lesson: I am loved.
How you learned it: Someone came into my life who wasn't scared away by my chronic illness, she decided to be my friend and broke down my 10yrs long isolation and loneliness.

Lesson: That joy should be the measure of success. 
How you learned it: By unpacking my notion of "ambition" and focusing on what I think is actually important.

Lesson: I am happier not living in a city.
How you learned it: I tried not living in a city.

Lesson: I learnt to weave on a 4 shaft loom.
How you learned it: A course through the weavers guild.

Lesson: You have to tell people how you need their help - they aren’t mind readers.
How you learned it: An cancer diagnosis at 34 that left me needing LOADS of help from friends and family

Lesson: How to use a Diva cup!
How you learned it: Thanks to a friend who essentially acted as a birth coach to help me remove it.

Lesson: When a loved one shares a problem in their life with me, I don't need to fix it. Nothing is being asked of me, and I can just be present and make space for them to be with their problems. It doesn't make me a bad friend or partner.
How you learned it: Therapy, multiple clashes, feeling emotionally drained.

I could read these all day but we're out of space in the newsletter. Here's a link to the full spreadsheet of all the lessons and firsts.

Cookbooks. Sex. Spin class. Prayer. Popsicles on a picnic blanket on a summer afternoon. Telling other people about my feelings. The excellent writings of anarchist feminist Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912). Bread...like really good crusty bread with butter. Therapy. Newborn breath smells like burnt sugar. Reading like a child, in big ravenous gulps. Fred Rogers. MoMA. Playing the piano. Iron & Wine. Orthodontia. Intergenerational friendship. Dating. Walking. Lexapro. Candles. Sweet potatoes. The power of nature in making things feel lighter. The color bright, bold red. That jolt in the stomach when you have an instant attraction. The joy of a long train ride. The joy of sending and receiving snail mail. The joy of dancing alone. Joy!

Ed note: I love you all so dang much.