a devotion of a kind

reflections on a year of writing, and where we'll go next year

I’m writing this note as dusk settles over the city, and lights come flickering on in the buildings opposite mine. We spent this year quite similarly: turning on the lights in small corners of our minds, of lives lived with intention.

So much of what I’ve written this year has come from wrestling with questions: How do we make meaning in a world that moves too fast? What does it mean to truly choose our path rather than inherit one? Every month, the cursor blinked and I wore my backspace key thin. but—so slowly, each time—something true emerged.

To me, this newsletter has become a kind of practice, a kind I’ve never really had before. It’s not devotion to any doctrine, but more to the belief that meaning reveals itself through sustained attention. Writing is a watered-down form of altered consciousness, and so many ideas evolved as I wrote about them, breaking free from the constraints of my initial framework, insisting on their own form. Of course, many of those seeds were planted during my conversations with friends and some early paid subscribers. Like stones in a river, their gentle interrogation and shared experiences helped so many of my half-formed thoughts find their course.

I think this kind of attentive living is slow, humbling work. It really does feel like being a beginner at life, despite having lived it for nearly three decades now. There's no finish line to cross, no moment when you finally "arrive" at an intentional life. There’s just this moment, and the next, and the next, when you re-confirm your existence and hold on just a little tighter to the life you’ve been given.

I guess that’s what draws me back to my notes each month, to find meaning while becoming. I recently wrote that opportunities whisper rather than shout. What I didn't understand for a while was how I was sitting plumb in the middle of such an opportunity. Kindred Spirits, to me, has evolved into not just a space for writing about agency, but a living practice of it.

And of course, your response to my work turned my once-solitary writing into something far richer than I could have created alone. I still struggle with imposter syndrome and the idea that, often, the most personal is the most universal. I look longingly at other essayists, wishing I could borrow some of their eloquence and try it on for size. I didn’t tell people for the longest time that I had a newsletter, because I was pathologically worried that they would laugh or—worse—dismiss it as insignificant.

As a result, so much of my feedback and support comes from strangers. It’s only now I realise that, in fitfully stumbling over ideas and broadcasting towards people I don’t know, I’ve managed to live up to the name of my newsletter: kindred spirits instantly recognise the same spirit and energy in each other as they do in themselves, even if they’re interacting for the first time.

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Like anything worth doing, this newsletter needs more room to grow, stretch its lengthening wings. As we go into 2025, I plan to deepen my explorations of agentic and attentive living. I'm thinking of creating more intimate windows into my process. Think:

• reading lists and research rabbit holes that feed my curiosity

• excerpts from my personal weeknotes and questions I’ve been thinking about

• voice notes and readings of essays, with commentary and tangents

If any of my essays have cleared the fog for you, please share Kindred Spirits with people in your life who might appreciate that clarity, too.

The lights in the distant windows look like a constellation of their own now, dimming and flaring as people walk in and out of their beams. Perhaps that’s also what we’re doing here: creating pinpoints of light. Not answers exactly, no, but something better, something that helps us recognise meaning in the making.

Already, the first of 2025’s essays are taking shape: treating self-respect as a habit of mind, knowing when to quit, diversifying meaningful friendships as an adult. I’m so excited to dig into these, and I hope you are, too.

The calendar turns. We carry on. Thank you for the support and see you next year,

Sindhu