Reader Survey: Help shape what comes next in 🌐 Work That Lasts! If you've already responded, thank you. If not, there is still time provide input.
Click reply with your answers:
What content do you want MORE of? A) Regenerative Workflows & Focus Systems B) Boundary-Setting & Energy Stewardship C) Community-Centered Practice D) Purposeful Career Design
What's your biggest challenge in climate work? (One sentence)
WTL Issue 014 | December 17, 2025 |
|
|
Turning Toward What Actually Happened
Lessons from the Long Haul
The neighborhood houses were barely visible across the street. Ice fog had descended on Fairbanks, turning a day already dark for 21 hours into something dimmer still. My car tires had frozen slightly flat where they bore the most weight, creating an ominous thump-thump-thump as we inched down the block. The high that day was -45 degrees. Cabin fever had won out over common sense.
I was driving to a friend’s house because staying still felt impossible, and because I was young enough to think this was reasonable based on my limited years of driving when it was this cold. It was 1999. The world was holding its breath for Y2K, worried that banking systems and transportation networks might collapse when calendars rolled forward. I’m not sure why I was worried about it all the way up there in Fairbanks. I wasn’t a programmer. I had no role in fixing whether computers would think it was 1900 or 2000. But I worried anyway.
That anticipatory anxiety taught me something. Since then, I’ve tried to turn the year’s end into something different. Instead of bracing for what might go wrong, I look back at what actually happened. The moments that surprised me. The reads that shifted something. The unexpected turns that became the path.
This year, three newsletter issues became conversation starters. People wrote back. They shared their own stories. The common thread? Each one offered a framework that readers could immediately put into practice.
→ Issue 005: The Art of the Strategic No offers a four-question filter for declining opportunities without guilt. Readers told me they used it to protect their energy for the climate work that matters most.
→ Issue 009: Home is Where Care Lives explores what home means when you’re leading from a distance. It resonated with climate leaders trying to balance rootedness and reach, offering a framework for relationship preparedness.
→ Issue 010: Finding Your Creative Current makes the case for stepping away from screens to unlock your most innovative thinking. Readers shared the creative practices that renewed their capacity for complex problem-solving.
What surprised me most? Keeping this newsletter going every two weeks. I’d feared running out of things to say. Instead, I found that the practice of writing clarified what I’d been learning all along. The flip side of writing, of course, is reading.
Three books (Bookshop links) became essential this year for how I think about climate leadership:
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder offers hopeful, actionable lessons from history on protecting democracy. The core principle that I return to: do not obey in advance.
- The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer meditates on gratitude and reciprocity, imagining an economy built on gift-giving rather than extraction.
- Pollution Is Colonialism by Max Liboiron challenges environmental science itself by centering land relations and Indigenous frameworks for understanding harm.
Thank you for reading, responding, and sharing 🌐 Work That Lasts. Your presence here makes the work possible.
Field-Tested: The Commonplace Book
I heard about commonplace books for the first time on a December 31, 2024, episode of The Daily Podcast. Melissa Kirsch interviews Dwight Garner about how writers like Virginia Woolf and W.H. Auden kept logs of quotes, ideas, observations, questions. Things worth remembering. Things that connected to other things.
Before that, my notes were scattered everywhere. Phone notes. A moleskin. Voice memos I’d record while walking and then never transcribe. At the start of 2025 I decided to consolidate. One Google doc. Chronological. Still somewhat messy, but beautifully evergreen.
Now when I finish a book. I open that doc and add a few lines. Key lessons. A quote or two. How it connects to something else I’ve read. When I’m looking for inspiration for Work That Lasts, I scroll through recent entries. An idea catches my attention. I pull it into my Notion file of ideas for the newsletter, then into a blank document when it's time to draft. I follow whichever thread pulls strongest that day.
For climate work, this practice matters because it slows thinking down. It captures insights before they dissolve. The work we do is interconnected and intersectional. A commonplace book helps you notice those connections across time and sources. Ideas from six months ago suddenly speak to what you’re working on today.
Start your own: Pick any notebook or any app. There are no rules. Add to it when you want. Revisit when something calls you back. Don’t force it into a daily practice. Imperfect is perfect. The point is having a place where your thinking can gather and grow.
Signals & Shifts
The value of public radio in America. KYUK in Bethel, Alaska shares the impact of reduced public radio funding on rural communities. Listen to this Code Switch episode with highlights from Elder Esther Green’s show Ikayutet on spiritual wellness wisdom.
Books to close out 2025. Time's 100 most-read books article list is out. I read Audition by Katie Kitamura this year. Added to my library holds list: Heart the Lover by Lily King, Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundati Roy, and Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Other lists I check → The New York Times Best Books of the Year (coming soon) and Cup of Jo's book recommendations archive.
Wishing you and yours peace and light this holiday season. I’ll be on winter break through the end of the year. The next issue of 🌐 Work That Lasts will arrive January 14, 2026.
Take good care of yourself and the work that's yours to do. Both matter more than you know.
Nikoosh
Work That Lasts arrives every other Wednesday. Forward to a colleague who might need these tools, or reply and let me know what's working in your own practice.
Follow me on LinkedIn • Read past issues
Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here
