Hi Quintessential readers!
I’m so excited to be starting the new year with over 250 of you! I’ve got a lot of reflections from 2025 that I’m dying to share, but I thought I’d ring in the new year on Quintessential with my personal list of Ins and Outs.
Ins
1. Being reasonably online
Do not be fooled by the content creators saying 2026 is the year for unplugging and getting offline. How can it be your new year’s resolution to get offline but then your passion project to document and post about all the details of being offline? It is okay to be a career doomscroller and to identify some niche memes. You’re not a bad person for it. Unplugging is an unrealistic expectation for 99% of us.
2. Listening to songs seven times in a row
This is the optimal way to enjoy a song and each of its components. First listen, just enjoy. Listens two-six, focus on the song’s five main elements: vocals/lyrics, bass, midrange elements, drumline, ambience and sound effects. By listen number seven, you can enjoy the full song again, but now you’re embedded in the landscape of the song.
3. Taking your meds
Need I say more??? Take them!
4. Weekly release shows
When I got my first office job, I learned the rules of football so that I would be able to connect and have conversations with my older male colleagues. There are alternative, more women-oriented doses of pop culture for us to take each week. Reality TV like Love Island or the Traitors, the HBO show of the season, Grey’s Anatomy. If I’m not going to have a Super Bowl-esque watch party for the season finale of a show, I’ll partake in the ritualistic coffee pot debrief the next morning with my favorite colleagues.
5. Extra spicy food
Order your food at the spiciest level every time. Spice tolerance is a muscle. You can use the 2lb weights every day, order the mild, and see no growth; OR you can train to failure by taking two bites of the Thai hot.
6. A passion project
Without revealing what I am cooking, I have planned a large-scale project for 2026 that is purely based on the love of the game. It isn’t for anyone but me and my friends. Nothing to prove, far from perfect, made with care.
7. Local civic engagement
While we are helpless to the federal nonsense plaguing our existence in the US, let me remind you that you make a difference at the local level. Your city council, your school board, your community college board of regents. Don’t let the people on top make you feel hopeless, just maximize your influence. 2026 we are voting local!!!!!
8. Strategic vanity
This one is for my high-achieving girlies in male dominated spaces. I am running an experiment where my top work priority is my personal appearance. My hypothesis is that this will be the factor that results in mobility at work, more than my hard work, expertise, and effort. Worst case scenario, I’m in the same situation but this time looking better.
9. Donating blood
If you are able to donate blood, you should do it at least once in 2026. If not for the chance to save up to 3 lives with little effort on your part, do it for the free cookies. I like to donate through the Red Cross or the Community Blood Center. You can make an appointment online at a clinic or attend a local blood drive!
10. Cartoon character wardrobe
Signature outfit every single day. In this economy, I’d rather have five nice quality work outfits that I recycle each week than a pile of fast fashion nonsense that empowers me to experiment with corporate aesthetics.
Outs
1. Banana ball
Putting on my tinfoil hat for this one, but I think banana ball is some conspiracy to bring back baseball as a symbol for American exceptionalism. Baseball fell off, this rebrand won’t help. Plus, these guys are dancers, there should be more artistic opportunities for them to use their talents. It is such a shame they are forced to play sports.
2. Texting old people
It is so convenient to text grandma, I know, but I promise you that grandma wants you to call. The old people that work with you and won’t retire want you to call. They’ll probably be nicer to you if you call. This habit has the same karmic effect as being the person that designs the old-fashioned looking memory care facilities for putting boomers and above back in their comfort zone.
3. The stock market
The stock market assumes people act reasonably. We live in unreasonable times. Spend your money on experiences for right now.
4. Road rage
If you struggle with road rage, maybe talk to a mental health practitioner about that? There are behavioral and medical interventions to stress, rage, and irritability. You don’t have to live like that lol.
5. Networking
The best way to stand out at the networking function is to be the peculiar girl that somehow gets people to talk about their insecurities, their philosophies, their creative passions. Go in with absolutely no intention of discussing your job or work, go for new life perspectives.
6. Book supremacy
Readers, don’t hate me, and don’t come at me for the irony of writing this in a Substack post, but reading is not superior to any other form of content consumption. It may be a video essay, but you’re still just watching YouTube videos like the rest of us. Maybe you’re reading an American classic novel, but I still don’t care because it is creative slop from some random white man just like an Avengers movie. We are all equal content consumers!!!
7. Taking coding courses online to break into the tech industry
If you think it is your dream to be a project manager at Google, please try to reconnect with the things you loved at 6 years old instead this year.
8. Stanning A24
This is just a peeve of mine. I do not care if the movie is A24 they’re literally a company, a distributor. They are not curators of art and style, they are a corporation targeting you.
9. Asking celebs if they would want to be in a big IP franchise
Actors and influencers need jobs and money just like the rest of us. Stop pretending it is headline-worthy news when actor so and so says they’d love to come back as Glup Shitto in the Star Wars Saga. Of course they want another free ride in the money machine. No amount of artistic integrity or status exempts a celebrity from doing corporate machine slop content in exchange for unimaginable riches. Everyone will say yes every time, so this question is OUT in 2026.
10. The measles
There is literally a way that we can move forward as a collective to eradicate measles. The fact we aren’t doing that is stupid. 2026 let’s be smart!
Happy New Year!
Am I onto something? Do you disagree with this entirely? Something you want to add? Let me know in the comments!
About Quintessential
Thank you so much for reading! Quintessential is a collection of personal writings about how I am managing to live my life authentically as myself. You may be interested in this publication if you:
Are a young woman trying to make it in this world;
Enjoy niche topics;
Care about your communities around you;
Don’t take life too seriously; and
Want to know what makes me, me!
Couldn’t be more right about banana ball and A24
Me reading every number: EXACTLYYYYYYY