100 things that made my year (2025)

Walking cookies to friends on New Year’s Day.
Accepting the sad fact that my nervous system can only handle one cup of coffee a day. Drinking lots of herbal tea instead. Peppermint. Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend. A cup cap accessory for my Yeti Rambler that turns it into a thermos like workers take to construction sites.
Having tweens! One of them now a teen! 6-7!
Taking the boys to see the movies they love at the Village Alamo Drafthouse. Sonic The Hedgehog 3. A Minecraft Movie. FNAF 2.
Pizza and a movie every Friday night. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Mousehunt. Freaky Friday. The Adventures of Tintin. The Wild Robot. Flow. Harry and The Hendersons. KPop Demon Hunters. Napoleon Dynamite. (The kids still shout, “Make yourself a danged quesadilla!”) Rango. The Gold Rush. Good Burger. Young Frankenstein. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Addams Family Values. Galaxy Quest.
Building fires in our fireplace. Chopping kindling. Dipping into The Book of Building Fires and experimenting with the top-down method.
Riding bikes with Marty.
Making mixtapes to listen to in the studio. Sharing a mixtape, then getting a comment from a young man who said he didn’t understand what a mixtape was or how you make one. Recording an explanatory video for him that made me feel a million years old. Splurging on a brand-new Tascam cassette deck. Rob Sheffield’s memoir Love is a Mix Tape. (“There are all kinds of mix tapes. There is always a reason to make one.”)
Texting old photos to college pals on a Friday night.
Spaghetti every Monday night. Making a “Red Sauce” mix for Meghan to play while she’s making the meatballs. Discovering the Ultra-Lounge series of compilation CDs.
Mixing gin martinis with three olives.
Getting through winter with soup and heat. Soup lessons. Seeing The Soup Peddler sign with an elegant edit of something I wrote: “Soup teaches us some things get better tomorrow.”
Flowers on the kitchen table. The way Meg buys bouquets and deconstructs them into mini-bouquets.
Keeping the calendar clear to write. (“Open the document, stay in the document.”)
How often the spiritual problems of a piece of writing are connected to its technical problems, and how often a fix to a technical problem also solves a spiritual problem.
All the great typewriter interviews I published.
How many neighbors we meet, how many adventures we have, and how many treasures we find just by taking a 3-mile walk every day.
Our family being so clueless about football that we bought our junky Super Bowl food a week too early. (We ate it while watching Groundhog Day.)
Sick days with my teenager and watching violent movies his younger brother can’t handle. Hunger Games. Temple of Doom. Commando. The Terminator. Terminator 2. The Matrix.
New glasses!
Buying a 50-watt Orange Crush bass amp. Learning Paul McCartney and James Jamerson lines on my little short scale Squier Jaguar Bass.
Talking to Matt T. and Jamie on the phone.
How good the newsletter gets when I’m using it as a way to procrastinate on writing a book.
A Laity Lodge retreat. Checking my phone one last time before I drove into the canyon and lost cell signal and finding an email from my editor that she loved my book. A block printing workshop with Dana Tanamachi. A long hike by myself up to the bluff. Drinking bourbon with Alan and Steven. How when I arrived on Friday it was still winter, but by the time I left on Sunday, it felt like spring had sprung.
Driving south to get a haircut at Avenue Barbershop and record shopping at End of an Ear afterwards. Buying used CDs and 99 cent cassettes to tape over for mixtapes.
Throwing a crawfish party! Making a mix with a bunch of New Orleans funk and soul, most of it built around some wonderful Soul Jazz compilations like Saturday Night Fish Fry.
Living somewhere that people visit. Hanging out with Drew and Detria during SXSW. Burgers and beer with Craig at Billy’s. Beers with Oliver in Hyde Park before his gig at the Commodore Perry. A beer with Kelli before her event at First Light Books.
A gig in New Orleans. How I always assumed I was too uptight for the city, and how I wound up really loving it. Walking from the French Quarter to Bacchanal and having dinner at the bar with Rob, Clayton, and Katie. (Thinking of Dave Hickey in The Perfect Wave: “When something that is not your thing blows you away, that’s one of the best things that can happen. It means you are something other than you thought you were.”) Stepping into cathedrals when traveling and saying a little prayer. Coming home from the trip and Owen had taught Meghan the piano chords to Destroyer’s “Looter’s Follies.”
How Owen can just learn any melody by ear on his keyboard while watching TV. How you’ll be watching a ball game and he’ll start playing the organ music.
Trying to replace my dread with curiosity. Being a long-term pessimist, short-term optimist. Believing in the wild possibilities of a single day. (C.S. Lewis: “It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for.”) Keeping my expectations low. (“Are the lights on? Is the water running? Is there food in the fridge?”) The title of the movie Do Not Expect Too Much from The End of the World. The Zen Master’s refrain: “We’ll see.”
Feasting on corned beef, soda bread, and extra stout Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. T-Loc’s fish tacos during Lent. BBQ for Easter.
The new apron Meg bought me for the studio.
Listening to dub reggae and making block prints. Stringing twine and clothespins across the studio so I can hang prints to dry.
Scrabble. Uno. Checkers.
Plant sales and art supply shopping.
Judging a book just by its epigraphs.
Staple-gunning hand-printed flyers to telephone polls all over our neighborhood to try to save our son’s middle school. Finding out six months later they got to at least one of the people they were supposed to get to.
Thinking I should write a book about something and then just making a zine instead.
Burgers at Crown and Anchor with the boys before seeing Kraftwerk at Bass Concert Hall.
Eno at Austin Film Society with Owen.
Turning old oversized shirts into sleep shirts for the 10-year-old.
Giving the kids sticky notes and then collecting all the funny ones they leave for us and themselves around the house.
Having a word for “Maycember.”
Getting inspired by Erik Winkowski’s “Zinemail No. 1” dispatch — probably the most interesting use of Substack I’ve ever seen — and immediately trying to steal from him by making a moving block print and one of my collages with an animated frame.
Impromptu retail dates.
The magic of rearranging the furniture in a small house.
June in Austin, Texas. School is finally over, so it’s quiet and empty. Warm enough to swim, but not too hot yet.
Tolstoy summer! Reading War and Peace on a raft in the pool. Going ahead and reading Anna Karenina, too. How weird “the classics” are when you actually bother to sit down and read them. (For example, within 50 pages of War and Peace, a bunch of drunks have tied a policeman to a bear and thrown them in a river.)
A Wimberley day trip with my mom to the Leaning Pear, the Devil’s Backbone, and the Arnosky flower farm.
Watching The Simpsons and Seinfeld and X-Files and 90s movies with the boys.
Saving funny Instagram reels to bribe the boys with so they’ll get into bed.
Surviving a surf lesson on Oahu.
Standing on a cliff in Kaua’i 200 feet above sea level with hundreds of strangers, admiring a rainbow over the Pacific, and waiting for the tsunami to roll in. (It never did.)
How our short California layovers were more fun than our long Hawaiian vacation. The zoo and room service cheeseburgers in San Diego. The Presidio and art museums with Ted in San Francisco.
The Akai MPK Mini Play MK3 I bought so we would have a portable keyboard and MIDI controller we could use for making music while we were away from home.
Not worrying about what’s streaming and just paying for a damned movie when you really want to watch it.
Leaving books lying around like traps for the tweens. My 10-year-old cartoonist ensnared by Tom Gauld’s Physics for Cats and Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud’s The Cartoonist’s Club. A new development: the boys picking up books I didn’t set out for them! The 10-year-old being into Guy Deslile’s Muybridge and Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half. My 13-year-old coder spotting Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification on our coffee table and getting a big grin on his face. Me saying, “You can read it if you want!” and him proceeding to do so. (Cory sending him a nice card thanking him for his review in the newsletter.)
Drawing succulents on old sheet music with Caran d’Ache Classic Neocolor II Water-Soluble Pastels. How drawing them got me thinking a lot about light — how often in Texas you can’t feel the seasons coming, but you can see them.
Exploring color. Getting inspired by Tara Booth’s Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It. Thinking I understood color theory, but learning from Betty Edwards’ Color that it’s “complementary” colors not “complimentary” colors. (I obviously didn’t go to art school.)
Hiring Dean to make me the “Walk-ins Welcome” sign I’ve always wanted.
Finally tracking down a good place online to buy the cigarette pencils I like to “smoke” in the studio, and buying a couple canisters of them so I can give them to people who visit the studio.
A gig in Baltimore. Walking to the top of Federal Hill. Finding the one outdoor balcony at the Austin airport. (Hint: it’s upstairs at the end of the Delta terminal.) Finding myself on an airplane in a window seat, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Green Shower” playing on a loop in my headphones, the clouds flying past my window while I read Tolstoy. Bliss.
Kate Bingaman-Burt’s story about texting and befriending a roof cleaner and sign painter.
Practicing being a disappointment.
Calling my parents on Saturday instead of Sunday.
Being bowled over when my dad told me he was enjoying sitting around and reading a novel.
Listening to Walter Martin Radio Hour while cleaning the pool and doing the dishes. Thinking about how stoked my 19-year-old self would be to learn I was doing a live chat with a member of The Walkmen. Figuring out the ending of my book while listening to his song “The Soldier.” Getting the top score on the quiz at the end of the organ episode.
Keeping up with bird cams instead of the news.
Selling over 2 million books. The 20th anniversary of my blog. My newsletter having over 300,000 readers. (!!!)
How the one-hour studio always works.
Teachers emailing me for “clean” versions of posters and zines.
When my son’s fifth grade teacher emails me his weekly segment on the school’s morning news, Chillin’ With Jules.
Worrying less about making new friends, and worrying about keeping the friends I have.
Texting Matt B. to ask if he was going to see One Battle After Another and him texting back that he had an extra ticket to see it in IMAX. So much fun.
Embracing my love of boomer music.
Inflatable hot tub!
Watching a ton of baseball in October. A. Bartlett Giamatti’s baseball writings, A Great and Glorious Game. (Especially “The Green Fields of the Mind.”)
Carving pumpkins. Sending the 13-year-old off into the Halloween night to trick or treat with his friends from school.
Drinking cognac at Hank’s. Discovering a screech owl in the box I gave him for his birthday last year.
Taking the boys to see cartoonist Nathan Hale’s well-honed draw-and-talk about Lewis and Clark at the Texas Book Festival.
Homemade crunchwraps!
The three Thanksgiving pies Meghan made, but especially her apple galette.
Geese at Stubb’s. Getting Killed. Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal. How I said to Meg, “They should cover the New Radicals!” and then they did.
Trying to get “waymo” to take off as an insult for when you meet someone and nobody appears to be behind the wheel, so to speak. (As in, “Look at this waymo over here.”) But also: really wanting to hate Waymos and then riding in one and reluctantly admitting it was pretty cool.
How AI slop is making us really think about what it means to be human and make art.
Dates at the Paramount! Hrishikesh Hirway interviewing Samin Nosrat. Running into Thor and having drinks at the Driskill before the Jeff Tweedy show.
Reading five books worth of Sherlock Holmes stories. Michael Dirda’s On Conan Doyle. Thinking about how Holmes and Watson are related to Quixote and Panza.
Introducing the kids to Bob Ross and them being totally incensed when I started goofing on him. The youngest shouting, “Let the man work!” The oldest shouting, “I’d like to see you do better!”
How my oldest laughed at me when he discovered I use Google Docs to draft my books. “I thought you, like, used something professional.” My oldest asking my youngest, “Do you have any feedback for my novel?” My youngest replying, “Make more things happen.”
Napping with noise-canceling headphones on.
The British term “lie in.”
The moments of synchronicity that I live for, like the one afternoon, after reacquainting myself with the rapper Juvenile’s performance of “Back That Azz Up” on NPR’s Tiny Desk, I came across an unexpected footnote in the book Space Odyssey that included the definition of the word “callipygian.”
Feeling absolutely miserable, and then going for a bike ride with Marty and stopping at Top Notch for a cheeseburger and strawberry milkshake. Suddenly, life was perfect.
Playing until the ninth inning. Having a great live chat with filmmaker Penny Lane on Christmas week.
Stardew Valley on the Switch. (I’m obsessed.)
Looking up the answer to the question, “How did this even get made?” (Usually, the answer is: “Well, it wasn’t made like anything else was made.”)
Keeping old diaries and logbooks in 5-year increments by my spot at the kitchen table, and if I have nothing to write about, dipping into them and doing a little time travel.
Taking creative advice from the Bhagavad Gita: “It is better to do your own duty / badly than to perfectly do / another’s….”
Just showing up over and over again. Robert Fripp’s definition of discipline: “our capacity to make a commitment in time.”
Finishing a book I’ve been trying to write for 10 years.