The Ritual of Reading: A 2025 Reflection on Slowness and Intention

When Creation Becomes Listening

There’s a particular moment at the end of the year when I feel the need to take stock—not in numbers, not in lists, but in atmosphere. To ask myself not what did I produce, but what did I move toward.

And this year, something shifted.

If you’ve been here for a while, you may have noticed that I made fewer videos in 2025. At first, I worried about this. In our culture of constant output, pulling back can feel like failure, like disappearing, like letting something important slip away. But I didn’t stop creating. I just started listening more carefully to where my attention wanted to go.

What I discovered was this: sometimes the most important creative act is permission. Permission to slow down. Permission to follow curiosity instead of consistency. Permission to let a project grow in directions you hadn’t planned.

The Shape of Attention

I found myself writing more this year—letting ideas unfold slowly on the blog, the way reading itself does. Not racing toward conclusions, but lingering in questions. Not announcing, but exploring. There’s a particular pleasure in this kind of writing, a sense of thinking alongside the reader rather than presenting finished thoughts from a distance.

I started sending newsletters not to announce things, but to offer inspiration: a book, a fragrance, a recipe, a way of inhabiting a season. These letters began to feel less like marketing and more like correspondence—written as I would to a friend who understands why the right candle matters, why a novel can change how you see November, why rituals around reading are not frivolous but essential.

And I began recording a weekly podcast—small, steady companions that open the mind to a new idea. Something you could listen to while walking, or making tea, or doing the quiet work of the day. Not polished performances requiring your full attention, but gentle voices accompanying your own thoughts, the way reading itself so often does.

I gave myself the freedom to explore all these new means of expressing myself, and as the year draws to a close, I’m looking back at what felt right for me. Not what the algorithm suggested, not what other creators were doing, but what allowed me to say what I most wanted to say in the way that felt truest.

Returning to Origins

The Ritual of Reading started as a place to talk about books, yes—but underneath that, it was always about a way of living with books. About attention. About slowness. About the rituals that form around reading: the chair, the light, the hour of the day, the inner weather.

This year, I gave that idea more space to breathe.

I realized that what I’d been circling around all along was not book recommendations or literary analysis, but something closer to a philosophy of presence. The way that reading—when approached as ritual rather than consumption—can become a lens through which everything else comes into focus. How a novel can teach you to notice architecture. How poetry can attune you to seasons. How a memoir can give you permission to live more deliberately.

Reading, for me, has become increasingly a lens for living—not just in terms of geography, but in experience. Books as a way of traveling, of noticing landscapes, cities, interiors, moods. As a way of living more creatively, more deliberately, even more gently.

And The Ritual of Reading has grown into that wider shape.

Opening Doors

So if you’ve come here mainly through YouTube, I wanted to take a moment to invite you further in. The channel is still very much part of my work—but it’s no longer the whole house.

There are essays on the blog now, where thoughts are allowed to wander and linger. Where I can follow an idea through several thousand words without worrying about watch time or retention rates. Where the pace is slower, more meditative, closer to the rhythm of reading itself.

There are monthly mood boards that inspire reading explorations—not just “what to read” but “how to read,” pairing books with teas, with music, with seasonal rituals that transform reading from a solitary act into an immersive experience.

There are book-inspired recipes to carry your imagination all the way to your taste buds. Because if a novel makes you hungry for the meals its characters eat, why not cook them? If a setting makes you crave certain flavors, why not bring them to your table? Reading, I’ve discovered, doesn’t have to end when you close the book.

There are newsletters, written like letters to my friends, arriving with seasonal inspiration and free goodies all year long. These might include reading guides, curated playlists, printable mood boards, recipes—small gifts that extend the experience of literary living beyond the screen.

And there’s the weekly podcast—quieter, more intimate—where I explore the reading life in a gentle sound setting, inviting you into my reading ritual. It’s the closest thing to having a conversation over tea, the kind where ideas unfold slowly and there’s no rush to reach conclusions.

Together, all of these spaces form a platform for inspiration and creative living around books. Not a brand, not an empire, just a collection of rooms where different kinds of thinking can happen. Some require your eyes, some your ears, some your hands. Some are quick visits, others are long afternoons. But they’re all part of the same vision: that books can shape not just what we think, but how we live.

The Door I’m Opening

I didn’t want to assume that everyone would naturally find those other rooms- the algorithm prefers to keep you watching videos, not reading essays or listening to podcasts. And I wanted to open the door myself, to say explicitly: there’s more here, if you want it.

If you’ve ever watched one of my videos and felt that what you were really drawn to wasn’t just the book, but the feeling around it—the atmosphere, the ritual, the sense of time slowing—then you might feel at home in what The Ritual of Reading is becoming.

There’s no obligation to follow every path. You might love the videos but find the essays too long. You might treasure the newsletters but never listen to a podcast. That’s fine. That’s more than fine. I’m not trying to build an audience that consumes everything I create—I’m trying to offer enough variety that everyone can find the form that speaks to them.

But I wanted you to know the doors are open.

What Matters at Year’s End

As the year comes to a close, I’m less interested in doing more—and more interested in doing things with intention. In choosing forms that allow for depth rather than noise. In letting reading remain what it has always been for me: a way of paying attention to the world.

There’s something quietly radical about this, I think. In a culture that rewards speed and scale, choosing slowness and depth feels almost subversive. Every time we spend an hour with a book instead of scrolling, every time we write a thoughtful response instead of a quick take, every time we choose complexity over convenience, we’re making a small declaration: that inner life matters. That attention is valuable. That some things can’t and shouldn’t be rushed.

This is what The Ritual of Reading has always been about, underneath everything else. Not just celebrating books, but preserving space for the kind of thinking that books make possible. Creating corners where people can slow down, look closer, think deeper. Where the goal isn’t to consume more content but to live more fully with the content we choose.

I don’t know if I’ll make more videos next year or fewer. I don’t know if the podcast will grow or remain intimate. I don’t know which essays will resonate or which recipes will become favorites. What I do know is that I’ll keep moving toward whatever allows me to say what matters most, in forms that honor both the message and the reader.

A Grateful Pause

Thank you for being here this year—whether you’ve been watching, listening, reading, or simply passing through. Your presence, in whatever form it takes, means more than you know.

Every comment, every shared post, every quiet moment you’ve spent with something I’ve created—these matter. Not because they’re metrics or engagement or reach, but because they’re evidence of attention given and received. Of the small, invisible community we’re building around the belief that books and beauty and slowness still matter.

I hope the year ahead fills your shelves with stories worth savoring, and your days with the kind of quiet that makes room for wonder.

I’ll see you in the new year—in words, written or whispered, in all the small rituals that make reading a way of life.

---

P.S. If this reflection resonated with you, you might enjoy the quiet conversations I share each month in my newsletter. It’s a space where I write as I would to a friend, weaving together books, seasons, and the small rituals that give rhythm to our days. Click here to subscribe and join our small community of thoughtful readers.