new year reflections & substack 101
postcard 44: on 2024 memories, reflections and resolutions, a paid subscription giveaway, and my favorite substack newsletters
[This post is too long for email—please view on app or desktop! The paid subscription giveaway is a few scrolls down]
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.—Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
2024 recap & memories, by season
Here is a recap of my past year, along with precious memories I want to immortalize in writing—
winter, part 1 [jan-feb]
Flew back home from Korea on January 2nd. Started Substack. Dropped off the face of the Earth for two weeks and became a hermit, the way I always do in January. Long distance friends had to ask for proof of life. Took on one more job, tried to fight new year blues by trying to fill up my day as much as I could. Edited over fifty essays. Read almost forty books. Cranked up the heat in my room. Went to a soccer game, saw Messi and David Beckham. Watched two Christopher Nolan films in IMAX with Oliver. Started pottery class. Massive pre-birthday book haul. Took a lot of walks and some hikes. Saw a wild boar too up close and personal, stopped taking hikes. Read a lot of longform articles. Played a lot of pool with my dad. Journaled six pages a day. Seasonal depression hit anyways. Started pilates. Ate a lot of gummy bears.
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spring [march-may]
Favorite season of the year was well spent, with so many bottomless brunches with friends and day trips with family. Stopped being a hermit. Spent so much weekend time with Catherine and Ema. Turned twenty four, which was mildly terrifying. Wrote about it, and then forced my friends to write about their twenties as well. Bought a Jellycat bunny, named her Maisie. Work trip to Seoul, spent all of my free time with Nana. Had a massive existential crisis post birthday, spiraled for a bit. Dogsat the cutest dog in the world twice. Went to a lot of museum exhibits. Cooked something new every day. Began running 5ks every morning along the beach path next to my house. Got my abs back for summer. Bought way too many candles. Enjoyed the desperately needed sunlight. Went to see seven movies in the theater. Felt so deeply comfortable with being bored. Felt my frontal lobe slightly develop.
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summer [june-august]
Started taking Substack seriously and cemented it as my main platform. Joan and Mihir came to visit Hong Kong. Annual trip to Seoul—shopped a lot, ate a lot, hugged my grandparents a lot. Took a little trip to Paju Book City. Saw Nana and Minnie and a crazy amount of family. Missed Sue the entire time. Went on a terrible blind date. Enjoyed monsoon season for the first time in my life. Told myself that the dollar was strong and spent a bit too much money (but also thank you tax refund). Read a lot of NYRB books. Drank my body weight in iced Americano, the way a true Korean does. Went to so many wine bars. Walked everywhere, logged over twenty thousand steps a day. Got the ARC for Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, which Emma kindly express shipped to me, and almost cried tears of joy. Tried going to the beach every week. Cut off six inches of my hair.
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autumn & winter, part 2 [september-december]
Stress baked a crazy amount. Olivia Rodrigo concert with Catherine. Went back to the US for the first time in four years and saw all of my friends, some for the first time in years, others for the first time ever. Felt so insanely loved. Saw Lily, Daniella, and Genevieve in Los Angeles;
in Chicago; (and Paul), Simone, Lorea, and Emily in Washington D.C; Olivia, Meredith, Alexandra, Emma, Mei, Jean, Adeline, and Minnie in New York; in San Francisco. Missed Elle, who now lives in London, so much the entire time. Realized I hate L.A. more than I thought I did, love New York more than I thought I did. Bought a lot of books for friends. Ate so much good food. Became well acquainted with the airline baggage weight limit. Took a spontaneous trip back to Chicago and spent Christmas week with Griffin. Watched so many movies, drank so many gin and tonics. Got wildly and deeply sick.
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favorite food of 2024
Had such good food this year, but some highlights from around the world—
Hong Kong: Samsen, Maison Libanaise, Grand Majestic, Le Petit Maison
Seoul: Osteria Orzo, Sav Bar, L’Impression, Teppan, Clap Pizza
New York: American Bar, Bar Bete, Kiki’s, Gramercy Tavern
year end reflections & new year’s resolutions
Happy New Year! It seems like January 1st of every year arrives faster and faster now as I get older, kind of like a broken washing machine cycle, and I’m somehow simultaneously left prepared and unprepared all at once. I think the shiny appeal of the new year that I used to look forward to, making pages and pages of resolutions, has slowly waned off into the slight excitement of a blank slate—and that’s maybe for the best. I think I have learned to focus on patiently continuing ongoing projects, instead of giving myself a December 31st deadline and trying to finish them all before the new year starts in order to begin things anew. This way, the new year has started to feel less like a forced milestone and a date to reckon and write out my successes and failures from the past 365 days like a pro-con list, and more like renewed motivation to continue doing the things I need to do.
While the appeal of the New Year has faded with age, I have always stuck to two new year traditions: counting down, and watching the sunrise. For the first time, this year began with neither, as I spent the first hours of 2025 stuck on a plane on a sixteen hour flight from Chicago back to Hong Kong, while being the most sick I have ever been in my life. The new year doesn’t feel like the new year as I am still trying to recover, but hopefully I’m at the tail end of being sick and I can actually look forward to the rest of the year. I was also wildly unproductive for the entire last week of December, filling my brain with a lot of movies and a lot of alcohol (as one does in the weird purgatory that is the week after Christmas), so I am hoping to get back into my usual routine as soon as I am feeling better.
For my last reflection (and my first post ever on Substack!!!), I wrote a lot about how 2023 was the first time I was fully out of anything related to academia, and how incredibly lost I felt in the first half of the year. I had always defined myself as a student first and foremost—and a good student at that—so not having that identity as a shield made me feel like I had to scramble to find another one to stick on me, in order to measure my success and goodness. In 2023, I became a real adult with a real adult job and real adult responsibilities, and to be honest, I felt like a bit of a fraud for a while. Like I was not a fully formed adult and I was doing things that only fully formed adults did. It took me months to realize that I’m most likely never going to feel fully formed, and thank god for that, because I think feeling so would lead to complacency. I know the phrase twenty something year old teenage girl took social media by storm in the last two years and while I do have my qualms with that phrase, it is how I feel a lot of the time. This past year has allowed me to come to peace with that too.
I think I’ve always had a habit of denying myself to feel satisfied or happy in a way, unless I think I’ve done something worth commending myself for. And a lot of times, this results in me living life passively, like I’m allowing my brain to go on autopilot, I’m in the backseat of the car, and I’m simply waiting for time to pass. One of my biggest goals for 2024 was trying to let myself feel and celebrate all moments, whether small or big. Allowing myself to share things with family and friends and putting my hyper-independent tendencies aside. I think I somewhat was good about it, and I hope I can continue to do so this year in a greater capacity as well.
While it is also the start of an exciting new year, it is also just past my one year Substack anniversary. Substack has truly changed my entire life—it has given me so much confidence that I can somewhat ‘make it’ as a writer (lifelong childhood dream), it has allowed me to find so many amazing writers whose essays I enjoy immensely, and I am finally getting paid for my writing for the first time since writing online since I was thirteen. I also finally found the courage to put my full name online (after getting doxxed when I was fifteen…on Wattpad…because I killed off my main guy and someone got very angry…) after a decade, and it’s such a wonderful feeling to see my actual name on my work—like I can finally really own my writing.
Most of all, one of the best and most unexpected parts about Substack has been finding so many wonderful friendships on here. I’ve never had such a large support network of writers, and being able to share writing in advance back and forth with people has been such a great experience (rower pangers group chat!). I met some of my best best friends on Substack—not something I expected to come out of a writing platform when I started twelve months ago. I got to visit and spend time with them in person at various points throughout last year, and it was easily the highlight of 2024. I can’t quite imagine my life without them and they’ve become such an intrinsic and invaluable part of my day to day. It’s such an pleasant surprise when I find some of the best people I know through a writing platform.
I talk about friendships a lot because they’re all incredibly special, but I think last year redefined what friendships mean to me. I don’t consider myself an easy person by nature, and it does historically take me a very long time to trust someone. I always say that you either know me completely or you don’t at all, and I keep such a close knit circle of best friends because of this. I had a rough time at various points of the year, and the amount of unconditional love and patience and time and support my friends gave me truly made me realize and appreciate just how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful people. I never once felt alone, even in my most lonely moments, even when so many of my friends are oceans apart from me.
In my Valentine’s Day post, I talked about friendship, I wrote: We are the sum of everyone we love, and you choose to love your friends every day, with no obligation or transaction. And there is nothing more wonderful than that, that I get to choose and love these incredibly kind and brilliantly smart and effortlessly funny and endlessly patient people, who love fiercely and make my every day a bit brighter — and it still remains true, that my friends are one of the most stable parts of my life. I would drop everything for them and they would drop everything for me, and somehow having such an incredible support system makes life a bit easier to get through.
For this year, I hope to grow a little more into my skin and allow myself to be confident about the things I’ve accomplished. I want to stop living my life anticipating and waiting for the other shoe to drop because I’ve learned that sometimes it just doesn’t drop—good things happen without bad things to counteract it, and expecting something bad to happen ignites a negative confirmation bias. I used to think that hoping and preparing for the worst was the best way to live because then I wouldn’t feel let down or disappointed by anything, but sometimes the feeling of good things happening after I expect them to happen beats the watered down feeling of oh, I knew that would go wrong.
Here are some random resolutions I have for this year: Less texting, more calling. Stop doomscrolling!! Like seriously!!! One nonfiction book a week. Write a literature essay every two weeks. Don’t let work eat my soul. Learn three new words a day. Tell friends and family I love them more often. Pilates once a week, spin class once a week. Call grandparents more often. Finish manuscript and get published. Not everything has to be perfectly done. Get abs back and keep them. Meet more new people. Journal daily. Stop expecting the worst every time something good happens. Write three things I’m thankful for every day. Go on a walk every morning. Watch more sunrises.
postcards by elle: wrapped
One of my biggest goals every year is to continue writing in whatever form (so my brain doesn’t explode), and Substack has made that so easy. I love that I’ve also learned more about myself through writing personal essays, and I’m glad that I feel more comfortable sharing them online. Expect a few more personal essays this year! I was inspired by
’s end of year post, so I am doing a little postcards by elle wrapped, and using ’s ranking format from his end of year post. If you want to revisit some of my essays (or read old ones if you are new here), here are some that you can check out!my three most popular:
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my three personal favorites:
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three favorites from friends and family:
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three most popular paid posts:
substack 101: best way to use substack? on your desktop, or download the app
I often get messages on my Instagram asking me what Substack newsletters I recommend they get started with if they want to start reading essays on here, so I thought I’d compile together a little guide! Here is a general Substack navigation guide, some of my favorite newsletters, and favorite essays I’ve read so far.
Firstly: I know a lot of you will be reading this right now on your email, but download the app! Like, do it right now!!
Not only does it declutter your email (because the notification appears on your app instead), but it makes navigating Substack so much easier. You can use it like any other platform—you can like things, comment, look at peoples’ Notes pages (which is like Twitter, with ‘restacked’ notes and just regular notes). Many times, I find good posts through other people’s restacks, and I try to restack my favorite essays as I read them as well.
I’ve recently been trying to use my Substack notes like a curated collection of things I love at that moment, so I can look through it like an archive later on.
taking a pause from the 101: here is a paid subscription giveaway!
I often give 3 month paid subscriptions as gifts to people who are always actively engaging with my essays as a thank you. It’s always so wonderful reading people’s thoughts on my writing because writing in itself feels very lonely, and I want people who love my stuff as much as I love writing them to be able to read everything!
In my subscriber section on my newsletter dashboard, I can see how active people are on my Substack—5 stars being the most active, 1 star being the least. This is purely dependent on how many posts of mine they read. You don’t necessarily need to have a Substack account for this to show (my #1 most active subscriber is my best friend and she does not have an account or the app).
I would love to gift 25 people who are moderately/very active a 3 month paid subscription! It’s really because of your support that I’m able to continue writing, so I don’t want to be stingy about that. I plan on doing this every season, so this is the fall giveaway. If you are already a paid subscriber, I’ll add on 3 months to your already existing subscription.
Here are the three simple steps:
Make sure you are subscribed to this Substack, and that you like this post if you have a Substack account.
Make sure you follow my two accounts on Instagram: postcardsbyelle and ellereadsomebooks.
Send me a DM on postcardsbyelle and tell me:
your favorite post of mine, and/or a paid one you want to read.
the email which you are subscribed to my newsletter with, so I can compensate you directly from my subscriber list.
Also, feel free to send me anything you want to see on my Substack in the future (general or specific)! This isn’t a part of the giveaway, I just really love hearing ideas from you.
So excited to do this!! Giveaway will close in a week (Sunday, January 12th 11:59PM EST)!
substack 101: favorite substack newsletters + essays
Okay, back to the Substack 101 part. I am also still discovering really good newsletters every day (so expect an updated 2.0 guide in the next few months again), but here are some of my absolute favorites—most are in my recommendation section on my newsletter. These are ones that I enjoy every single post from, and who you should subscribe to to get you started on Substack!
➞ by
Sarah is a genius at turning moments of current culture into something so unique and interesting and heartfelt. Her writing is perfect, and her humor and talent is unmatched. Both of her personal pieces and cultural pieces are so good; her essays are uncannily reminiscent of an excellent think piece on the New Yorker, and I look forward to her posts every week.
favorite essays: oh, so you’re a thought daughter now?, we don’t have to work it out on the remix, this is me trying
➞ by
I always say that I am a Faith Zapata fan first, human second. Faith writes beautiful personal essays that have so much character, relatability, and empathy. She has an incredible ability to process complex human emotions and feelings into eloquent prose. Reading her essays always leaves me with such a warm and fuzzy feeling and a better ability to process my own emotions.
favorite essays: are you normal or are you the eldest daughter, your twenties are a second chance at teenagerhood, the romance of friendship
➞ by
I could recognize any of Griffin’s essays from a mile away. They feel cohesive and comprehensive, yet intelligent and philosophical in the best way. His writing is a masterclass in alchemizing heartfelt personal anecdotes with sharp analysis on culture and politics. He also pretty much singlehandedly influenced a lot of my reading taste and book choices last year.
favorite essays: boyhood, how a space becomes a home, it was hot, we stayed in the water
➞ by
Eve's writing is effortless in a way that makes you feel breathless. She is able to pick notes and chords of emotions out of an orchestra, and articulate it perfectly. she infuses musing on culture in tandem, and creates these masterpieces every time. I love that every single one of her essays feels like a mini book in how cohesive and thorough they are.
favorite essays: you’re not an introvert, actually, the vulnerability trap, but for you it’s free
➞ by
I love art maybe just as much as I love literature, but I never view both from a romantic or sentimental lens. I’m more analytical about it, but Emma approaches it from a standpoint imbued with so much emotion. Her essays are centered around art from a human standpoint—what makes art lovable and what makes art the source of human connection? Her newsletter is perfect for literature and art history lovers.
favorite essays: shall i compare thee to a summer’s day, mythologizing lady jane grey, maybe we’re all born to love and worry
➞ by
Arden's ADHOC weekly newsletter concept is so, so brilliant, and nobody is doing it like her. I love reading her posts, which is an amalgamation of culture, personal anecdotes, and musings on aesthetics. Her writing is so witty and smart, and she skillfully fuses together completely different topics into a post every single week. Her sense of style is also unmatched, and is my living Pinterest board.
favorite essays: korea is everywhere, what am i?, am i writing like a white woman?, 22 things i’ve learned at 22
➞ by
Leah is one of the only people who I completely and wholly trust when it comes to literature. Her reviews are a masterclass in concise and analytical writing, and her insight into literature is something I aspire to have. She also has such thorough and comprehensive author guides that I always refer to whenever I am checking out a book.
favorite essays: you’re reading sally rooney wrong, 24 things i’ve learned at 24, a love letter to being a fangirl
➞ by
Esje does something that is incredibly rare: he combines the most gorgeous, poetic writing with 100% of the heart he has. His essays are joyful, wistful, and leaves you with a dull ache in your chest in the best way all at once. If you ever want to chase nostalgia and melancholy in a beautiful way, subscribe to him.
favorite essays: how can a body hold so much grief, another year of living and learning, the answer must be in the attempt
➞ by
I don’t even know where to start with how much I love and adore Valerie’s writing. All of her sentences line up and just create this insane mosaic that nobody else would have thought of. I am always in constant awe of her ability to lace together words to create this beautiful melody of an essay.
favorite essays: a guide to insomnia, where is my boyfriend, i remember everything
➞ by
Ellie’s writing is always so personal and so heartfelt, and reads like the lyrics of the most poetic song. Her essays always read like such good literary fiction, and I am always amazed at the way she is able to articulate her feelings and happenings in her life. She also incorporates a lot of literature and culture into her essays, and has the best tangents.
favorite essays: twilight years, everyone i love is capable of dying, against overthinking
➞ by
Luisa is able to metamorphose simple feelings and concepts into these thoroughly articulate and unique pieces of writing. Her essays explore the intersections of emotion, personal history, pop culture, and literature. I love that her essays are relatable as much as they are deeply personal reflections, and she is able to do produce something so special.
favorite essays: i want to do everything so i do nothing, soulmates are not real, farewell setraline
➞ by
I love Katy’s essays so much that my feelings for them are sort of indescribable. I’ve been reading her writing since she wrote the Hue’s Hues column on The Paris Review, which everyone who subscribes to this newsletter has read by now because of how often I talk about them. She has actually changed the way I view the world and the way I treat aesthetics with her writing. Her ability to see color—actually see colors and the history behind them is a one in a million sort of talent.
favorite essays: cry your eyes out for atlantic blue, a color most atrocious, dove gray, part ii
➞ by
I love Helena’s posts. She is one of the most articulate and intelligent people I have ever read from, and every single one of her posts is so thoughtful and approaches the subject matter at such a unique angle. She is able to concoct together essays, pulling from culture, literature, philosophy, and art, and I’m always left amazed at her writing.
favorite essays: a radical aesthetics?, immaculate bodies, in search of cool
➞ by
Celine may be the most intellectually curious and well read person I know. Her essays are so thoughtful and motivate me to keep reading and keep being academically self-driven as someone who is out of school. Her taste in books is fantastic, and I find so many underrated gems through her. Not only does she write about literature, she also writes about architecture, art, and design—all of which are so interesting as well.
favorite essays: research as a leisure activity, more than real life, don’t deceive yourself
I’ll do a media wrapped (favorite books, movies, articles, shows, podcasts etc) as a mid-week postcard next week, along with my what I read/watched this week! Or else this post is just going to get way too long.
here’s to another good year on substack!!
I loved reading this and I wanted to say that my favorite essay was the one that talked about twenties. I still have screenshots of my favorite part of the essay
wild geese >