Six Links to Love
Trying out a new format to share the love
Thank you so much to the 350+ of you who have already filled out the 2026 Reader Survey. So much helpful feedback already! There’s still time to fill it out if you haven’t.
The feedback on the Reader Survey thus far was pretty overwhelming, especially on this one point. You all still love Link Love. Which is great. I didn’t know! Thank you for letting me know.
Because of the nature of sharing links, it leads you away from Sayable, which is fine and good—I don’t want you to spend all your time here ;) But leaving Sayable to look at something good also means there’s less engagement on those posts (fewer comments/likes), which means from my end, it looks like you pretty meh about LL, when really, the opposite is true. You’re actually reading and appreciating the links. Thank you for letting me know! See, this is why we have to talk about such things.
I am going to be tweaking how I deliver these links, though. In the past I’ve had anywhere between 5-20 links per category. I have been thinking about merely sharing six, one in each category, but making sure each one is the best IMO. In addition to the categories we already have (Read, Listen, and Watch), I also want to add a few: Make, Appreciate, and Practice—as I think this will drive you even more offline and hopefully inspire you in other ways!
This Link Love is a free one for all, so all you free readers can know what it’s all about, but generally, these are behind the paywall.
This piece from The Atlantic made the rounds last spring and I shared it then, but it felt like a good time to reshare it. Nate and I have met a lot of great people since moving to Lancaster, but the touchpoints felt few and far between. We have been working hard to make those visits with the few more frequent because I think it’s true, We’ve Probably Already Met Our New Best Friends.
When I was in my mid-twenties I traveled to Nepal with a group of friends and it was an unbelievable trip. I will never forget aspects of it, good and bad. I watched this documentary last week and was thrown back into the mid-aughts when this girl’s story began. Bring your handkerchiefs, friends, this one is gonna make you cry. Between the Mountain and the Sky.
I guess this is technically a watch, but I listened in the background while doing other things. Hope is a big one for me this year. I’m over cynicism, I’m over despair, I’m over raging every single damn day about things I can’t change. I can change one little thing and it’s to react with hope instead of *all that*. I scribbled this in my journal a few weeks back, maybe it will be helpful to you too. But anyway, I really appreciated this antidote to despair that John Green offered. Maybe you will too. Hope is not a feeling.
Listen, you already know that 2026 is the year of the analogue. We’re listening to mixtapes, we’re making papier-mâché, we’re collecting tiny little things to stick in printer’s drawers, we’re folding origami, we’re habituating our lives with an eco-system of planners and journals, we are collecting the stickers! But, in case you ever stopped doing this, we’re making vision boards with actual paper and thumbtacks and hanging them up where we can see them every single day. Here’s Emma Gannon on how to make one, in case you need “a lantern while looking for yourself.”
PS. I recently read that that quote from Emily Dickinson was actually literal. She wrote it in a letter to a friend after moving, describing how she was scrounging through all her still packed belongings, looking for what she needed. And I don’t know, I just loved that.
I don’t know how possible it is for many of us to practice this right now in our lives, but I loved this piece in the NYT from fellow substacker, Elizabeth Oldfield, on communal living in her 40s. I confess I vacillate between wanting to live in a commune and wanting to live on 40 acres in a tiny house with my husband and dogs and absolutely no one else. But the practices she writes of in here, especially loosening grips on preferences and prioritizing relationships, I need this. Her third recommendation feels terribly scary but you can make your own judgement on that. Gift link to the article here.
This is the sort of thing I think to myself, “I want to do that. I could do that. I’m going to do that,” and then, someday, when the time is right, I do that. I love a high friction, high reward project like this one.
Okay, friends, that’s it. Let me know how you feel about this format of Link Love. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this in some form for a decade and a half. Time is weird and the Internet is fathomless.
Don’t forget to make a vision board. Who cares what everyone else thinks? Your inner 12 year old will be so impressed with how cool you still are. Here’s mine, but don’t look too closely cos it ain’t your business.
If you’re reading this in email (which 98% of you do!), consider pressing the heart (♡) at the bottom or top of this email. It helps my work get more eyeballs on it, which is nice for me and kind of you!
I didn’t know 2026 was going to be the year of the analogue but I made a violin (and bow) and a guitar out of cardboard and yarn for my kids this weekend and they have been loving them. The sound of their singing while “playing” the instruments is far sweeter than a real violin or guitar would sound played by small children. Highly recommend!!
Maybe something that will help engagement with the link love posts is to ask people to share a comment *before they click the link* on which one has sparked their interest that they are going to explore.