It seems to be that every year is harder than the last, but maybe that’s just because the most recent year’s difficulties are always freshest in your mind. For me, 2025 was a year that, on paper, looked like it was on par to be a complete success. I wrote and defended my MFA thesis. Finished graduate school with a 4.0. Got married to my perfect match. Started a full-time job. But, by October, it was impossible to ignore that my mental health was suffering tremendously. I’m convinced it was because grad school was a years-long pursuit during which I was forced to ignore all the emotional hardships that occurred in my life while trying to keep up with my studies and writing and teaching and all the things that grad school demanded of me. And even after I finished, I kept forcing myself to continue “pursuing,” despite my brain screaming at me to stop and take a freaking break.
By November, the mental breakdown was at its peak and I ended up spending eight days in the hospital. It was a scary time, because my brain was telling me things that weren’t true, almost convincing me of their reality. But it was also a time that allowed for serious self-reflection—being entirely removed from the outside world—and by the time I was discharged, I was determined not to let my mental health suffer like that again. I was also able to recognize how I’d allowed things to get so bad: never saying no even when I knew I should have, over-committing myself and not taking enough time for true rest or self-care, neglecting the things I really wanted to be doing because I was so worried about what I “should” have been doing.
As I wrote in my most recent post, the “breakdown” led to a “breakthrough” and I was forced to make some necessary life changes that will hopefully keep the “breakdown” part from ever happening again. I’ve been focusing on spending more time with family, reading more books, exercising, making more art. So, in 2025, despite all that was happening, I ended up reading more than twice the number of books I read in 2024—even if most of them were audiobooks.
Some people may say it’s “cheating” to listen to audiobooks, but as I mentioned in a previous post, you’re actually activating some of the same centers of your brain when you listen to a book as when you read it yourself. I listened to a lot of audiobooks in 2025 because I spent so many hours each week commuting to and from classes and work. I also listened to them while working on crafts and art projects or while I was exercising. I read a lot of books that helped me with my own writing. I read books that helped me heal my inner child (a journey I’ve been on for quite some time now). And whether I read the words on paper or listened to them on Libby, I was still immersed in each story, touched by the characters and life lessons, and I learned a lot both as a human being and as a writer.
So, the moral of the story is: do what you can, do it the way that works best for you, and make sure you aren’t neglecting the things that truly matter to you, no matter what life tries to demand of you.
The point of reading is to appreciate the narrative, appreciate the beauty of the language, and the particulars of how you got to that point of appreciation really doesn’t matter so much.
Daniel Willingham
- Nine Stories by JD Salinger
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- True Grit by Charles Portis
- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (audiobook)
- 1984 by George Orwell (audiobook)
- Requiem for a Redbird by Torli Bush
- Trampoline by Robert Gipe
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (audiobook)
- Night by Elie Wiesel (audiobook)
- James by Percival Everett
- The Library of Lost Dollhouses by Elise Hooper
- The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
- The Duke and I by Julia Quinn (audiobook)
- The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (audiobook)
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (audiobook)
- Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham
- Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery (audiobook)
- Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (audiobook)
- Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery (audiobook)
- Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery (audiobook)
- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (audiobook)
- Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (audiobook)
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (audiobook)
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (audiobook)
- The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu (audiobook)
- Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (audiobook)
- The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
- Holes by Louis Sachar
- Little Women: Fully Illustrated and Adapted by Kathryn Knight (editor)
- The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by Ann Brashares (audiobook)
- The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares (audiobook)
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (audiobook)
- Window Person by Megan Williams
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (audiobook)
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
- Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (audiobook)
- Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers
- The Craft of Novel-Writing by Dianne Doubtfire
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (audiobook)
- Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch
- Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
- The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
- Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure by Joseph Scott Bell
E.V. Zukowski 