Monthly Roundup: November 2025

Gone are the days of my weekly roundups. Life has been too busy. But I am aiming to do monthly roundups going forward. I am in complete disbelief that tomorrow is DECEMBER. What? I do feel like time goes faster as I get older, and Jessica Yellin recently added some insightful information on this topic:

“Does time fly because I’m older? Because life is faster than it used to be? Because we live inside screens that don’t know day from night? The answer, apparently, is YES.

There’s proportional theory. When you’re 10, a year is 10% of your life. At 40, it’s 2.5%. Each year becomes a smaller slice of your total experience.

Then there’s the brain. According to the experts, the hippocampus needs focused attention to form long-term memories. Our online life makes that harder. We jump from text to alert to Zoom to notification. Multitasking fragments attention, so we encode fewer distinct memories. Which, I deduce, contributes to the feeling that time is passing faster. (Fewer memories means the perception of less time passing, right?) I know this much: When I’m scrolling Instagram, I genuinely cannot tell if I’ve been there three minutes or thirty.

Finally, the well-documented part: Novel experiences create more memory markers, making time feel slower in retrospect. Our daily routines — news, work, Zoom, dog, dinner, repeat — don’t get encoded in detail. I guess our brains are efficient that way.

So here’s one trick: Commit to small novelties. Walk somewhere new. Try that restaurant you’ve driven past for years. Learn something… The trick isn’t to slow time. It’s to make it feel richer. To mark it. Because the days are long but the years really are short, and the only way to hold onto them is to pay attention.”

I love all this I’m going to try for more novel experiences in my life. On to the roundup…

Quotes I’ve loved this month:
“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom…is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.” —Anthony Bourdain
“The world is full of men who have never read a book a woman wrote.” —Joyce Carol Oates
Also from Oates: “I oscillate between thinking I’m crazy and thinking I am not crazy enough.”
“For me, success is not a public thing. It’s a private thing. It’s when you have fewer and fewer regrets.” —Toni Morrison
“People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is—just be a little kinder.” —Aldous Huxley

Books I’ve read:
I read (or listened to) some AMAZING books this month…

I really loved Discontent and Heart the Lover. The Mad Wife, Lilith, and Ordinary Love were also great. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of Kerri Schlottman’s new one, Daytime Moon, and loved it. Her writing is beautiful. How to Lose Your Mother and No Ordinary Bird were great memoirs.

What I’ve been watching:
My daughter and I saw Wicked: For Good in the theaters. I thought it was great, but the songs were way less fun and interesting than the first movie.

I watched the second season of Nobody Wants This, seasons 2 and 3 of Squid Game, the documentary My Father, the BTK Killer, and probably a few other things that I’m forgetting. Oh, I watched Joker: Folie a Deux last night and totally understand the negative reviews now. Just not what people want with a Joker movie.

Writing news:
I got advance copies of MOTHER IS A VERB and am mailing out a bunch (after a very long visit at the post office haha). The book releases on February 17—right around the corner!

Interesting things I learned this month:

• Earth now has two moons. A new moon will travel with us until 2083, according to NASA
• According to scientists, the first kiss dates back 21 million years
• Studies show that reading a book as little as 6 minutes a day can help to decrease risks of Alzheimer’s Disease, improve communication, and improve memory
• Cow cuddling is becoming a new source of income for dairy farms
• If every U.S. adult moved just one $40 gift from Amazon to a small business this holiday season, we’d redirect $10+ billion to support small businesses. SHOP SMALL!
• From 2016-2021, we globally consumed over 75% of what we did for the entire 20th century
• California is the fourth largest economy in the WORLD. The state contributes $83 billion to the federal government. Fun fact: Texas takes $71 billion
• 40% of U.S. women want to leave the country permanently, according to a new Gallup poll. That number was 10% in 2014. The sharp rise began in 2016 when Trump won the Presidency
• While less than half of movies pass the Bechtel test where two women are speaking together about something other than a man, 95% of movies pass the reverse Bechtel test where two men are speaking together about something other than a woman
• A record 14 U.S. states will be led by female governors in 2026
• New research from Pew shows that high schoolers, and especially high school girls, are less likely than ever to say that they want to get married someday. In 1993, 80% of high schooler seniors said they’d like to marry, while 5% said they didn’t plan on marrying and 16% said they weren’t sure. Now, 67% say they want to marry — still two-thirds of them — while 9% say no marriage and almost a quarter say they’re unsure
• Related to above: having a husband adds 7 more hours of housework a week for a woman, regardless of if she has kids or works outside the home
• Also related to above: A study published by the American Psychological Association found that women often experience their highest stress levels when their partners are physically present at home but not actively contributing to household responsibilities
• A National Institutes of Health study found that mothers, especially working mothers, have the highest cortisol levels, with being a single mom equating to working three full-time jobs
• 75% of adults reported they are more stressed about the country’s future than they used to be, according to APA’s latest Stress in America survey
• In 2003, the average American spent 3 hrs/mo partying — now it’s just 90 min/mo. For young folks, it’s an even bigger drop
• A poll conducted for Global EV Alliance, made up of electric vehicle driver associations around the world, found that 52% of Americans would avoid buying a Tesla for political reasons
• In 2011, researchers in Taiwan asked more than 400,000 adults how much vigorous exercise (like jogging or running) and moderate exercise (like brisk walking) they did. They found that regular five-minute runs extended subjects’ life spans as much as going for 15-minute walks did. Regular 25-minute runs and 105-minute walks each resulted in about a 35 percent lower risk of dying during the following eight years
• A new study found that about 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day can slow cognitive decline in older adults who are at increased risk of developing dementia
• The country’s first all-electric hospital will open in Irvine, CA along the San Joaquin Marsh
• After decades of protests, Vogue publisher Condé Nast will no longer feature animal fur in any editorial content or advertising
• Dormiveglia is an Italian word for the state of being half-asleep or half-awake. It describes the delicate space between sleep and waking, where one is neither fully asleep nor fully conscious, and can be a time for musing or grasping the tail end of dreams
• Kuchisabishii is a Japanese word for when you’re technically not hungry, but you eat because your “mouth is lonely”

What I’m grateful for lately:
Wow, lots has happened since my last roundup—lots of great things I’m grateful for.

• I celebrated my 46th birthday and Halloween with my girl. A favorite time of year!
• I started a new full-time job and I’m LOVING it. I write advertising copy for healthcare companies and I’m working with a great group of people
• So many fun activities with my daughter—Mom & Me book club gatherings, soccer games, karate (she got her purple belt!), school events, playdates galore…
• Oh, and we did a great mother-daughter trip to one of our favorite tiny houses in Rainbow, CA
• The usual pet snuggles. My white cat was just diagnosed with diabetes so he’ll start medication this week and I’m hoping it works well
• A great Thanksgiving that included time with my daughter, friends, my boyfriend and his family, and my mama
• I got into both the Sydney Marathon and the Berlin Marathon, two of the seven majors. It’s my goal to do all seven eventually (I’ve already done Boston and Chicago). I’ll have to pick between the two since they’re a month apart. Running hasn’t felt great lately. I’m getting some bloodwork done this week since I’ve had low iron before, then I’ll go from there. I ran the Turkey Trot 10K on Thanksgiving and managed to finish 1st in my age group (though I was far off from my PR)

Some favorite snapshots from this month:
From top to bottom: Trying to work with a very cuddly puppy; hoping beautiful views help me get my running groove back; with my pretty kitty; gorgeous post-storm views; Turkey Trot done; Thanksgiving sunset; a little stroll in the hills with my pups and my guy