Ways to activate humanness in 2025

At first I was all about jumping alpacas, but I have revisited this idea as the world hems in on us. We have work to do, people.

Illustration by Esther Bennink

Hello! So, I’m trying something new here in 2025. Little tidbits through the month, rather than one long rolling monthly post. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t much time to sit down and read swathes of content. If you have been reading my letter in full each month, thank you and I love you! But hopefully, this will be more digestible. Like snacks before dinner.

Content will vary from musings about writing process, industry information, book news, reading highlights and general thoughts.

Let’s start with a bit of 2025 wondering …

Today, TikTok goes down in the States. Also, a bunch of people are getting off Meta apps for the week in protest against Meta’s recent changes. I want to jump on this collective action, but living overseas, I am way too dependent on WhatsApp for my communication needs. Also, so much of my career is Facebook and Instagram dependent. I loathe its power but there you have it.

I’ve been thinking generally, though, about where we put our energy in 2025, and how our actions can make small differences.

My initial draft of this post earlier in the year went something along the lines of: Protect yourself and your mental energy from the villains. Train your algorithm to feed you lovely news (like book news, and craft tips, and jumping alpacas). Give your money to superannuation companies whose values align with yours. Use BlueSky instead of X and Substack instead of Meta. Put your money where your heart is, and your time too, etc.

Since the US election last year, I’ve been putting on the blinkers and taking the above actions to protect my mental and emotional energy so I can stay in a good place. I need to maintain this ‘good place’ for writing and creativity, which by now, my family relies on financially.

However, there was something blasé and kind of irresponsible about this initial draft. Something somewhat selfish, which didn’t sit well with me. So I never published it.

I realised, talking to an ethics professor yesterday about my upcoming book series, what it was.

I don’t think we can afford to take our foot off the pedal and turn away. I think we need to pay attention—now, more than ever. I think in our small and gentle way— writing for kids, presenting to kids—we need to be more present than ever.

As generative AI bears down on us, big companies push down book prices (and push out independent bookstores and therefore book diversity and potentially quality), and literacy rates drop, we need to work harder than ever to get good books (and good ideas) into kids’ hands.

So, yes, I will still be looking for jumping alpacas and cool cross-stitch tutorials wherever possible, but I’ll also be doing whatever small action I can to live by my values and hopefully ‘make the world a better place’, for want of a less clichéd sentiment.

Six ways we can activate in 2025

1. Buy from independent bookstores wherever possible; keep these beauties alive. Book sellers are passionate about books and putting good books into small hands.

2. Avoid using generative AI. For your work and soul, yes, because you don’t need it to create. But also, because it uses an immense amount of water and has huge environmental impacts. Let’s not feed the beast.

3. Use apps and spend money with companies whose values align with yours. For instance, I give money to The Guardian and other newspapers that practice ethical journalism in an attempt to keep this very important aspect of society alive and well.

4. Support authors and illustrators by pre-ordering their books, buying their books at full price, and/or requesting your local library order copies of their books. You can also give them star ratings and reviews on all platforms (like Amazon) even if you didn’t buy from that platform as this helps their overall exposure.

5. Read with kids. Read quality books with kids. Books are gateways to other worlds and other perspectives. Every opportunity we have to engage and empathise with another human strengthens our empathetic pathways and hence our humanness.

6. Read quality books yourself, for the same reasons as above, but also because modelling reading around young people encourages them to read too.

What actions (big or small) are you taking in 2025 to make your world a bit sunnier? Let’s build a list!