Dr. Peeler's List of Things That Will Change Your Life in 2025, Including Little or No Snake Oil!*
*Actually none of it will change your life, but it's all stuff that did help me address my own bullshit.
Hey friends!
I thought I’d do a round up of the things I read, listened to, used, or did last year that were super inspirational. I’m not a big hack person, as in my experience it’s a rare hack that actually works. But I am a big believer in wise people who tell you how they started or how they do the hard work in which they’re engaged. In other words, it’s not about finding an easy way out (sadly!), it’s about inspiring yourself via people who have done it. So here are some things I hope will inspire you to tackle whatever it is you want to tackle, and that happen to intersect with my own interests.
With no further ado and in no particular order:
Finances:
YNAB (or You Need a Budget) is the software (app?) that changed my life, when it comes to money. I wish I could live as a bard (granted, one who can’t sing or play instruments) but because that’s not an option I have to use filthy lucre. YNAB helped me get my finances in order so I could prioritize my spending, while NOT buying all the shit I don’t actually want or need. It helped me get out of debt, catapulted me to a fully stocked emergency fund and rainy day fund, helped me create sinking funds for all the things that used to sabotage me, and (the best part!) means I can pay for some really nice luxuries that I feel are worth it. For example, I’m typing this from Alaska Airline’s first class lounge at SEA TAC’s airport, having splurged on boogie tix for my yule vacay. After an intense six months, this was my treat to myself—a vacation with as little stress as possible, and nothing makes travel less stressful than throwing money at it. YNAB allowed me to have the money on hand to pay for an ultimate indulgence, by pinching pennies in a few other categories that felt right to me. It IS a fee-based app, but that’s because it doesn’t sell your data and because it’s FUCKING MAGICAL.
Perfectionism:
I have struggled all of my life with perfectionism or, more accurately, with thinking I have to talk to myself like I’m the worst piece of shit in order to get anything done. I did a stint of ACT therapy on perfectionism, which was hugely helpful, and this was the workbook I used: ACT Workbook for Perfectionism. As always, I advise doing this work with a therapist (especially one who is willing to call you to the mat when you’re unwilling to really wrestle with something), but this workbook is really, really great. I also really liked this book: The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control. Like all books sold at this moment, it feels it has to justify its existence by being clickbaity. This one does so by initially claiming that we shouldn’t be so hard on perfectionism, as it has probably been a pretty effective coping mechanism under the right circumstances. I agree with this but I also think there’s a lot of nuanced work to be done in tackling the many, many systemic issues that are folded under the umbrella of “perfectionist thinking” (especially for anyone raised female). In other words, the book can oversimplify things, but that’s to be expected. Ultimately, I found the book a very helpful digestif to the therapy I did, as it summarized a lot of the work AND it reminded me that identifying as anything too vigorously (whether that’s a perfectionist or a “recovering” perfectionist) is usually an invitation to overcorrect and get yourself in a whole new kind of trouble.
bell hooks for president
I became obsessed with bell hooks far too late in life and I regret that deeply so if you haven’t read her already, get on it. If you have, re-read her. Maybe every year. We can start a book club? These are the ones I got the most juice from this year: bell hooks on love and bell hooks on women and love.
Re-Thinking Society
I think we all know something is off with the way we’re doing things. On paper, we should have vastly improved lives (as Rutger Bregman has written about a ton, and I also recommend his books). But this year I got so much out of Everyday Utopia by Kristen Ghodsee, which is about how to bring utopia into your everyday life. In other words, instead of thinking about utopia as something society does—can it be something you do, as an everyday practice? Don’t get me wrong—I’m with Octavia Butler on being highly skeptical of utopian ideals, in that getting to someone else’s idea of utopia often means making everyone else’s life hell. But what Ghodsee is really doing is putting an emphasis on anti-capitalistic, communitarian ways of living that are accessible (or theoretically accessible) to us, now. And I loved it!
Another book that made me rethink how we live and how we think about how we live was The Dawn of Everything, by two anarchist archeologists. In full disclosure, I have to re-read this one as it’s a bit above my pay grade and I think I’ll get a lot more from a second reading, but it really blew my mind. Basically, what I got from it is that we based our understanding of the trajectory of civilization (and even the notion of history AS a trajectory) from the societies that built giant stone things that (not-coincidentally) also often resemble penises. In other words, we are obsessed (in the West, especially) with societies that were top down enough to be able to force lots of people to build very inconvenient structures that necessitated tons of labor, by people who thought in terms of power and legacy. Meanwhile, we now have increasing amounts of evidence (and some of this evidence was, admittedly, only discoverable due to recent technological advancements in the field of archaeology) that this was not the only kind of society on offer. Even more radically, they emphasize the theory of schismogenesis, in which societies basically ping-ponged off of each other in terms of their values/norms, rather than the model of history as a trajectory of progress that we usually hear about. Am I making any sense? Probably not. Do they make sense? Absolutely, and it’s fascinating.
Body Image and Anti-Diet Stuff
This is something I always struggle with, so this was great reading that I needed to touch base with again. I loved, loved, loved The Body is Not an Apology, which is a classic in the genre. And it’s classic for a reason. It is so good and we do not deserve Sonya Renee Taylor. A very different but equally fascinating book was Kate Manne’s Unshrinking (which is getting a fancy new re-release, so is a pre-order). Manne is a professor of philosophy, and she grounds this book in both her own lived experience, as well as philosophy, which is fascinating. Finally, I’ve really been enjoying (and joined their Patreon) the podcast Nutrition for Mortals, hosted by two anti-diet nutritionists. Speaking of snake oil, it’s a great one for dispelling myths around nutrition, especially those being sold to us on social media.
“How did we get here?”
If you’re wondering how we got here, as a society, then I can’t recommend Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, enough. I wrote about it, here, so that tells you why. But I also loved the Netflix documentary Mr. McMahon, and my TED talk for the last few weeks has been that this documentary really explains a lot about how we got here. The two together would be….*chef’s kiss*. And if you really want to get into some weeds, this episode of the Ezra Klein show, about media today, will really round out that meal.
Finally, another book I really enjoyed that reminds us that “here” has always been a rollercoaster was Katherine Rundell’s Super-Infinite, her biography of John Donne. While a biography of a metaphysical, Elizabethan poet might seem too niche, this book is insanely readable. In full disclosure, I have a beautiful, aching envy for Rundell’s brain—the kind of envy that helps me root my priorities and re-think my values. She is SUCH a good writer and the kind of thinker that makes me swoon. This book is so fucking good, and it should be an impenetrable brick, considering…Donne! But it’s not, it’s gorgeous, and it reminded me on every page that life is just fucking hard. But it’s also so beautiful. It’s such a gift, but between our wiring and our culture we’re taught to ignore everything that matters and focus on everything that doesn’t. And that hasn’t changed! Since we first stood up and drew on the wall, we’ve made our own lives difficult, and we’ve made our societies torturous (literally, there’s lots of drawing and quartering in Super-Infinite), and we’ve been at the whim of a chaotic universe. But we get to love, and see beauty in a flower, and—guys, did I mention the nachos? So we’re not alone, and we’re not singular, and we’re not particularly badly off. There’s no bubonic plague at the moment and there ARE nachos, so maybe we can get by and have a little joy and connection while we’re at it.
These are just a sampling of some of the things that really rocked my world this last year, or that kept me grounded. Feel free to comment with any recs of your own—I’m always looking for new inspiration! I also hope you enjoyed the dregs of 2024 and that 2025 goes better than any of us anticipate. Which, honestly, for most of us is a low bar, but still—fingers crossed. ;) See you in 2025!
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