Keep Going 085: Best of 2024

Brought to you by the last Red Zone of the season.

Jan 05, 2025

👋🏽 Hello everyone!

Doesn’t 2025 sound so futuristic? I mean, at some point, someone probably asked me, “where do you think you’ll be in 2025?” and I was probably like, “old?” But lo! I am not old, or at least I do not feel old, and cars still don’t fly, and I don’t have a robot butler (though ChatGPT sometimes comes close), and I’m still figuring out this thing called life.

I love lists, and I love roundups and link fests and best-ofs, so here are a few of my fave things from 2024!

🌟 Best New Habit

Saturdates, without a doubt. I look forward to these all week - and I highly recommend them for any couples or families or friends out there! Every Saturday, we walk over to the diner to get pancakes (or French toast) and talk about life. We bring our notebooks, and we have a basic agenda:

Share and celebrate our wins and gratitudes for the week
What’s coming up on the calendar?
How are we feeling about spending and money overall?
Do we have travel coming up? Do we want to plan travel?
What’s the plan for dinners this week?
Do we have any home tasks we need to tackle?
Who do we want to connect with this week?
What do we need from each other this week?

Aside from talking through these things together, we end up with ideas and reminders for everything from buy a veggie steamer to think about our own holiday traditions to remember: lemon-cucumber water. It’s the best.

📚 Best Books

I finished 27 new books this year, started and did-not-finish at least double that, and re-read some oldies. My faves of the new batch:

The Psychology of Money: The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.
Deacon King Kong: He’s a drunk. One of those guys who dies at twenty and is buried at eighty.
Rangikura: And I thought of Mary Magdalene, her beautiful hair and how degraded she must have felt. Doesn’t matter that it was Jesus. All men think they’re God’s gift.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: How does a ceiling bring you closer to heaven? If God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?
The Book of Delights: She is accepting, it seems, what she is: one of the varieties of light.
We All Want Impossible Things: “Turkish delight,” Belle says. “It’s so presumptuous. I feel like, hey, we’ll decide if we’re delighted or not.”
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: What you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is.
The Blacktongue Thief: When listening for danger, one must never mistake silence for safety.
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: You can live your whole life that way, politely being less. Pretending you’re not powerful and calling that modesty.

Best Amazon Purchases

Apple Pencil tip covers - so that when you’re furiously gaming, your taps aren’t so loud and clacky.
Compression packing cubes - because packing cubes are great, but compression packing cubes are fantastic.
Slide out drawer organizers - perfect for super deep cabinets!
Paper incense - we ran out of our usual Papier d’Arménie, so we tried these, and they rock. Specifically the Cedarwood & Hinoki scent, but it looks like they’re sold out?
Portable electric kettle - a game changer for travel, so we can have easy hot tea or instant coffee at any hotel or Airbnb!
Spa wrist bands - so when you wash your face in the sink, your sleeves and arms stay dry!
Braided USBC cables - super long, pretty, strong, and perfect for travel.
Cooling blanket - because perimenopause is real.