forget the haters 'cause somebody loves ya

"we can't stop x where is my mind" by miley cyrus & new year's goals

This will sound hella dramatic but I’m just not in the place for “share your biggest accomplishment in 2024!” type threads, so I decided to skip the 2024 wrap-up and just get right into some goals I’m setting for myself this year. I also want to make an announcement from the top that the “s” key on my keyboard has been sticking a lot, so if you see any missing s’s in here, that’s why, and also please appreciate every single s you DO see because know that I fought for it.

The past few years, I’ve kinda eschewed any sort of New Year’s resolution or goal. I’m a wild heart, I can’t be tamed, I don’t want to be held down, I don’t need a new me when the old me is working just fine¹, etc. etc. But I’m a very goal-oriented person, actually, and I find that I always have clear goals in mind whether I call them that or not, whether I codify them in writing or not. I need to give in to my true nature. I’m not a wild heart! I can very easily be tamed, I’m tame already.

So here are a few I’m setting for myself in 2025:

Read More Personal Recommendations

The last few years, I’ve set my Goodreads goal at 200 books a year and I’ve made myself almost sick over it. It’s an arbitrary, self-inflicted number that doesn’t mean anything and yet that is the EXACT type of number that ends up becoming my sole purpose, my one fixation, the entire basis of my self-worth. It’s not healthy!!

I DO read a lot, in general, so the goal is very doable for me. I just don’t want to do it anymore. Next year I’m setting my goal at one (1) book and giving myself pep talks anytime I can feel myself still striving for that private, secret goal I carry inside me no matter what the Goodreads Challenge publicly says. I should probably get off Goodreads entirely, to be honest, but it’s hard because I have years and years of book reviews on there (please rest assured that I never look up my own books on Goodreads because just like Nicholas Cage finds out in 8mm, there is some evil that you can’t unsee lol).

Anyway, this year I’m trying to set some more qualitative goals around my reading, and one is to read more books based on personal recommendations. I already do a lot of that, but I want to do more, especially books that otherwise wouldn’t have crossed my radar. My priorities for this are particularly books by diverse authors, nonfiction, books in genres I don’t read as much (mystery, sci-fi, etc.), and books that came out a while ago (like maybe pre-2015, at least?). So if you’ve got anything that fits those categories, hit me up.

Keep My Duolingo Streak Going But Also Hablar Más Español

Okay, I’m a little worried about the optics of this one on the heels of the last one lol because ONE COULD ARGUE that the way Duolingo gamifies its language-learning sets me up for the exact issues that plague me with my Goodreads goal. Namely, that I fixate on completing my daily challenges, staying in the Diamond League, pulling my weight on Friends Quests, etc., and for what. This is true.

But I do want to keep my streak going, and as a more qualitative goal I’d love to find a way to get better and more confident in speaking Spanish because I will tell you that at this point I can read it pretty well, I can write it okay, but NO HAY SUFICIENTE DINERO EN EL MUNDO to get me to speak it aloud to a native Spanish speaker.

Duolingo also has me out here lying because you think I thought it was FUN when a grown man ate all of a child’s candy?!?!?! I didn’t!

Bike 302 Miles

It’s disingenuous to act like I had NO goals for 2024, because I actually did put one about my bike on record in my newsletter around this same time last year: “get comfortable enough that I could ride up to our local grocery store all by myself for an errand like grabbing creamer for my coffee when I run out.”

And . . . I did it!

Now why Publix got rid of their bike rack, that’s a problem for 2025 Me to solve.

I love my bike! It’s brought so much to my life this year. I had this big dream of biking as many miles as the bike cost but that didn’t quite happen. I underestimated just how miserable a Florida summer actually is (not that I underestimate it in general, but historically I’ve never tried to bike multiple miles a day during it) and also how much I’d end up being out of town. There was also a span of two months where, I stg, it would start pouring at the EXACT time we’d usually go on our bike ride. When the hurricanes hit one of my family’s inside jokes was to go, “Records & Rides?” as they were raging outside.

I ended up biking around 220 miles in 2024, all told, so my goal for 2025 is to hit 302 (I have a reason for picking this hyper-specific number and it’s not because of the cost thing, because I’ve let that go). I’m going to keep doing our Records & Rides (where we bike around while listening to a record in full) and then also my little errand trips where I will passive-aggressively wheel my bike all through Publix because that’s what you get if you’re not going to have a fucking rack.

Write Something Just for Me

I don’t even know what this is yet. It may not be an entire novel, it may not even be prose. I just want it to be something I write for myself and not because it’s under contract or because it’s in this newsletter or anything else.

. . . but also a big goal is that I need to write the thing under contract lmao because it is KICKING MY ASS and it is due TERRIFYINGLY SOON. It’s just that this newsletter is supposed to be about fun things to focus on in 2025 and not about the things that I have literal breakdowns over every single day!

Pick Up the Guitar Again

Trying to make this one easy so I can like, go into the next room and literally pick it up and then say, “See? I did it.” But since my 2025 romance Never Been Shipped is all about music, and I wrote my beloved Squier Telecaster right in there, it seems only fitting that I get back to it because I used to be really proud of the seven or so chords I knew.

My son has also been learning guitar, and I heard him playing part of “Where Is My Mind?” the other day from his room. It sounded so good, and was one of the reasons I chose the song for this week that I did.

Sprinkle the Word “Terrific” into My Daily Vocabulary More

Rereading Sweet Valley High has made me realize that we just don’t say “terrific” in casual conversation like we should anymore. “Wow, Jess, that dress is really terrific!” or “It was just a terrific party!” That kind of thing. I’d like to bring it back.

Forget the Haters, ‘Cause Somebody Loves Ya

This performance of Miley’s — of “We Can’t Stop” crossed with a cover of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” is so iconic to me. I will go on record, though, that I did think she was singing “dancing with Miley” this whole time until I looked up the lyrics for this newsletter and saw it was “dancing with molly” lolol. What can I say, I thought it was cute that she referenced herself in the song! I also just love the part where she’s doing the “it’s my mouth and I’ll say what I want to” bit and that opening riff to “Where Is My Mind?” comes in. It can get me to cry on a good day, and it’s New Year’s Eve and I’ve been on a knife’s edge lately so let’s just say it’s a very good day!!!

I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time this year letting a lot of shit get to me and focusing on a lot of the negative shit. So without getting too in the weeds about it here, I’d like to try to find ways to forget the haters (in my own brain) and remember that somebody loves ya (in my own brain). Where is my mind, indeed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Currently reading . . . I’m still on my Sweet Valley High reread kick. Well, I say “reread,” but I was more of a Baby-Sitter’s Club girl myself so I realized I actually haven’t read a ton of these. It’s so interesting to me how all these series always have this “lore” that they start with, just to kinda bring you up to speed, and in Baby-Sitter’s Club it’s like, hi, I’m Kristy, I started this club because one night my mom was looking for a babysitter for my kid brother David Michael. I love sports and my best friend Mary Ann is shy and bookish. She does have a boyfriend, though. His name’s Logan . . . Meanwhile, the “lore” for Sweet Valley High is literally just Hi, we’re the two most beautiful girls in all of Sweet Valley. Unless a hotter, meaner girl comes along to fuck shit up. We have blond hair and blue-green eyes, sun-kissed skin and are perfect size sixes. We’re twins but we couldn’t be more different [because Elizabeth is a judgmental goody two-shoes and Jessica is a straight sociopath] . . . Just very different vibes. I’m having fun and keeping my husband apprised of the full soap opera, which leads him to text me things like this when something isn’t going his way:

watching . . . If I haven’t explicitly said it, you might’ve gleaned from this section that I’m not a huge movie watcher, especially new movie watcher. I probably do more rewatches of movies I already love than anything else. But something² made me want to try to watch as many Dakota Johnson movies as possible, so in the time since I sent my last newsletter alone I have watched:

• How to Be Single (2016) - I’ll be honest that these “a collection of interrelated stories that all get at a central theme” movies are not my favorite (He’s Just Not that Into You, Love, Actually, etc. Even the ones I like — Playing By Heart, for example — I realize I only like because of one or two story lines and I wish I could fast forward through the others). I do really enjoy that Dakota plays a paralegal in this one, even if we never get to see her paralegal-ing.

• Suspiria (2018) - Probably the biggest stretch for me, because this one has a LOT of body horror and I am a real wimp about that kind of thing. They intercut one of the worst scenes with a modern dance performed by Dakota, so it was hard to look away! On the one hand, well done, filmmakers. On the other hand, ooof. I have seen the original Suspiria but it’s been a long time. This one is quite different (to my memory, and also based on Dario Argento saying basically “what’s the point of even remaking a movie if you’re going to change it so much” lol) but I thought it was really good, despite being a hard watch. Set in wintery 1970s Berlin, Thom Yorke does the score, Tilda Swinton plays both a female teacher at the dance school and the only major male role of a psychologist, it was a real experience. Dakota said she went to therapy over making this film and I get it.

• The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) - Kind of surprised by how much I’ll probably be thinking about this one even a while from now. The plot follows a man with down syndrome who really wants to train under this legendary old wrestler that he saw on a video tape. And then when you read the trivia for this movie (which I always do), you find out that they made the movie basically because they’d met the guy who plays the lead, Zack Gottsagen, at a camp for disabled people. He said he wanted to be an actor, so they wrote a script to make that happen. I don’t know, I thought that was pretty cool. Art inspired by life or whatever. At one point Dakota walks into a convenience store and everything stops because they can’t believe how pretty she is and that felt very realistic to me.

• The High Note (2020) - I really enjoyed this movie about a past-her-prime diva (played brilliantly by Tracee Ellis Ross, daughter of Diana Ross!) and Dakota Johnson, who plays her personal assistant who dreams of being a music producer. BUT I am so sorry to do this but these are the kind of details that stand out to me, especially after working on my own music book [insert Never Been Shipped plug], it really made me laugh when Dakota’s roommate had to throw headphones at her because her feverish late-night music mixing was keeping her up (you’re mixing using LAPTOP SPEAKERS?!?!?!) and then when the artist Dakota is trying to record invites her on to do some back-up vocals, saying they can always re-record with someone else later, only to both sing INTO THE SAME MICROPHONE. Two people singing into the same mic makes for a great visual but not so great for separating the tracks later lol. Anyway, truly, not to be That Guy because overall I really enjoyed the movie.

• The Lost Daughter (2021) - I liked this one so much I IMMEDIATELY downloaded the audiobook of the Elena Ferrante novel it’s based on from Libby and listened to it THAT SAME DAY. I’ve never done this before. I just wanted to know every motivation and character dynamic and detail. Once again I’m grateful for this urge to watch Dakota Johnson movies no matter the subject matter, because I don’t think I would’ve ever watched this one because even the title made me feel vaguely sad.

• Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022) - I always enjoy a writer/director/lead actor situation, just because I think it’s so interesting to see what One Person’s vision for a movie really looks like (with the obvious caveat that every movie is a collaboration, so obviously they represent a ton of people’s work no matter what). I thought Cooper Raiff was really charming in this, and I was kinda obsessed with his mouth/teeth throughout? Which is a weird thing to say but I’m going to leave it there. Dakota’s character also delivers what is honestly a very good description of depression: It feels like... like you remember what better feels like and then you do things that you think will make you feel better but they don't. They make it worse. And the things that I'm really scared of doing are probably the things that will help me the most, but I just can't do them. Well, fuck.

• Persuasion (2022) - This is the movie that started me down this path!! I was dying to read Kerry Winfrey’s write-up of it, and then Brandon Taylor’s write-up of it, both of which I had delivered to my inbox day-and-date but saved to read until after I’d watched the movie. And now I finally have. I agree with Brandon that it does not feel like Jane Austen or deliver what made the original novel so good, and simultaneously agree with Kerry that it was fine and Dakota was charming in it so really what more could you ask for. (A better Wentworth, to start, I do agree with that.)

• Madame Web (2023) - Truly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen lol. There’s this part where Dakota and her paramedic team is working a really chaotic multi-person accident, and Ben from Parks & Rec (he is also named Ben in this movie, so I can get away with this) run by with a guy on a stretcher, yelling about how the guy is stable and needs to get to the hospital, etc. And Dakota looks up from trying to save someone’s life and is like “press on his abdomen” and so Ben does and the guy reacts and Ben is like, “Oh, internal injuries, good catch!” That one moment has been living rent-free in my mind. That Ben didn’t know to do that himself, despite also being a paramedic. That Dakota is so good that she’s like, let me pause my CPR for a sec to give my boy a tip. That his response is “Good catch!” Actually this might be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

• Daddio (2023) - Dakota said she filmed Daddio as a palate cleanser for Madame Web, so I watched it in the same spirit. It’s basically only two actors — Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson — and takes place almost entirely during a single cab ride where Sean is the driver and Dakota is the passenger. Once again a movie I never would’ve watched if not for this little challenge to myself, and I’m glad I did because it’s given me a lot to think about. I’m always interested in how people tell stories in such truncated amounts of time. Dakota also has short blond hair in this one, which I weirdly feel compelled to note.

And so ends the longest “watching” section I’ve ever written or will possibly ever write lol

listening to . . . I started listening to the Celebrity Memoir Book Club podcast. I know part of their whole schtick is that they read the memoirs so you don’t have to, but so far I’ve only been listening to episodes for ones I’ve read myself — Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Carrie Fisher, Mara Wilson, Kathleen Hannah, Flea, etc. I’m deep on the three-parter about Leah Remini’s right now, and is it terrible and telling that even KNOWING how toxic it all is, I’m listening to descriptions of learning to be less reactive to things and clearing your mind and I’m like, hmmmm sounds nice?

1. “just fine” being a relative term that may not have any basis in objective reality!!!

2. A few somethings, actually, but the one I’ll tell you about is that I love Kerry Winfrey’s newsletter No One Asked, and she’s sold me on Dakota Johnson. [Edited to add: I realize that the coyness with which I’m saying this implies that like, Dakota Johnson might’ve optioned one of my books or something and lolol no, it’s nothing like that.]