the taste issue

things i've loved this past year / things i'm excited about in 2025

my energy going into 2025 (image via pinterest)

I have found a surprising amount of value from a few objects, decisions, investments, routine changes, and mindset shifts that I have discovered over the past year, and I figured: what better time than now to share those with you, my dear reader? I don’t know where this post will take me because I am writing it rather spontaneously, but I am going to let my mind snag on whatever comes up as I reflect on what has made this year so special. So, let us dive into the first ever taste issue of my substack!

Note: I have been deeply inspired by a dear friend of mine’s substack

Baer Necessities

, where she frequently shares things she is loving, which I find to be such a fun way to get to know her and her taste! So consider this issue Ellie-inspired <3

Update: This ended up much longer than expected… I created a table of contents in case you want to revisit and navigate more intentionally through it. Here is ~ the taste issue ~ created just for you, this holiday season <3:

Habits/Mindset

• falling in love with where you live

• hosting more!

• seeing my family more often

• knowing my priorities

• sharing myself on video more!

• RESTING MORE!

Objects

• a good cookbook

• a travel yoga mat that fits inside your luggage

• a book for the men & women in your life, respectively

  • King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

  • Goddesses in Everywoman

• a good water bottle that makes you excited to drink water

• actually high quality tea

Other Investments (of time, money, energy, etc)

• pilates membership

• othership

• business coaching

• learning about my menstrual cycle

• coffee + croissants

Recommendation Request <3

Habits/Mindset

falling in love with where you live

At the start of this past year, I committed to staying in one place as much as possible and building my ‘nest.’ This mindset has totally transformed my relationship to where I live, and I actually get sad leaving my home now! (Not something I could have imagined saying at this time last year). I am deeply of the belief that you can have whatever you want where you are, and so much of enjoying your city/home/life is just deciding to, and crafting experiences you love with the things, activities, and people around you. In short: you can make anything meaningful in your life by earnestly trying to make it great. I really believe that. This year, I tried to make living here great, and it went extraordinarily well. I do not believe this is exclusive to my city or any other city. This also isn’t me saying ‘I will live here forever because I have now made living here great’. It is me saying: we are powerful meaning-making-storytelling creatures that can make any narrative feel compelling, and we can make any circumstance (within reason) fantastic by simply trying to make it so. This past year, I honed the skill of commitment, of creating what I want where I am. I can now take this skill with me wherever I go. I have written two essays about commitment: ‘commitment is the only secret knowledge’ and ‘find novelty through commitment’. Maybe I will write more about this soon. But for now, I’ll just say: doubling down on where you are will often give you what you think is waiting for you somewhere else.

hosting more!

Related to the above, one of the things that has made my experience of being more rooted/grounded this past year more enjoyable and meaningful has been creating memorable experiences for others. My boyfriend and I have gotten into hosting dinner parties, brunches, and other opportunities to use our space to bring people together and create delight for others. This has been beyond rewarding, and is genuinely a highlight of the last year as I look back. I am excited to do more of this in the coming year and get more creative with the themes (I am hosting a vision board/collage night for a few of my friends in the new year and I am already very excited!!)

Maybe I will write soon about what I have learned / noticed through hosting in an upcoming essay, and some tips I have picked up from doing it more. Would that be interesting to you?

seeing my family more often

One of the reasons I chose to live in Toronto (the main reason, really) is to be close to my very large family. I am super blessed to have a wonderful, loving family that is based mostly in one place. It was becoming increasingly challenging for me to miss big milestones and gatherings for those I loved which seemed to be happening at a rate that was just too frequent to come home and keep up with if I was based somewhere else. In considering this factor so significantly with where I chose to live, I also committed to going to as many family gatherings as I possibly could (again, within reason) to be there to support and celebrate my loved ones! It has been so rewarding to do this! It also feels like a pleasant reminder of why I made the choice to be here: to be close to, and in connection with, those I love. Seeing my parents more regularly, spending time with my grandmother, welcoming new faces into my big family, and celebrating my brother’s engagement this year come to mind as a few major highlights that stand out when I reflect on what has made being so rooted feel so nourishing.

knowing my priorities

Obvious, perhaps overdone, but absolutely timeless and infinitely rewarding is this little axiom right here. Knowing my priorities. Part of having a more ‘rooted’ year was deciding what truly mattered to me, and putting that first. That included strengthening relationships with family and friends, having time to focus and create things that I feel inspired to make, writing, thinking, walking, and spending more time alone, honing my taste and preferences, crafting a beautiful space to live in, being thoughtful about the hobbies and activities I spend my time on, and taking responsibility for what I do and do not make time for in my life.

Knowing your priorities is a constant dance, and requires you to pay attention to what feels energizing vs. draining, and to find the right balance of things in your life that makes you feel most alive, grounded, inspired and nourished. Making big decisions from a place of clarity and intention (i.e. from a place of knowing your priorities and living in alignment with them) has made this year one of my favourite ones. I feel clearer and more confident in what genuinely resonates with me (i.e. my taste and preferences), and in what matters most to me than I ever have. I recently saw this quote that said: “It only needs to make sense to you.” Which feels very resonant. The way I would say this is: when you know what makes sense to you (because you have thought about it, tested it, prioritized it), it doesn’t matter very much what others think, because the gains of living in alignment with your genuine priorities are far more satisfying than any amount of external validation or attention could possibly be.

sharing myself on video more!

One of my intentions for this past year was to stop hiding behind text (hello!!) and to share my face and voice more—something I had been quite shy about doing for a long time. This is, I am sure, quite comical to anyone who really knows me, because I am notoriously gregarious and verbose in real life. But this block was holding me back for a while, and now feels like something that holds no weight in my mind. I still prefer to write than to share in other mediums, but I have shared myself on video pretty regularly on both Twitter and Tik Tok, and through doing so, realized it just isn’t that big of a deal. If you have been similarly blocked on this front (or a related one), I encourage you to just do the scary thing and put in the reps! It is probably not nearly as scary as you think :)

And if you want a little more guidance/encouragement, I have a very exciting announcement about Creative Liberation to share soon— my virtual course to help you unblock yourself and share your gifts more freely with the world. You can learn more when there is more to learn by signing up here. Hint: it involves a lot more of my face and my voice than you get over here!

RESTING MORE!

Oof, this is a big one. I have written a few essays about rest this past year, so I won’t get too into it here but I will just say that 2024 really was the year where I learned the power of rest. And when I say the power of rest, I don’t mean just resting for resting’s sake. But: learning how rest actually fuels Good Work. I learned to follow every inhale (intense work exertion) with an exhale (rest!!!) and noticed how much better and happier my body and mind felt when I prioritized this. I learned to just let myself rest without forcing myself to ‘earn’ or ‘justify’ that rest, and to enjoy myself when resting, without guilt! And wow, what a life hack, guys! I am excited for more nourishing, rejuvenating, and life-force-replenishing rest in 2025. I hope you will join me in doing the same.

Note: much of my journey with embracing rest has been aligned with learning more about my menstrual cycle, which I will talk a little bit about below… But I will just say as a quick note especially for women: we need to let our bodies rest! It is part of the process of being able to operate at full energy during the peak ‘energetic’ periods of our monthly cycle. If you rob yourself of rest, it disrupts the body’s natural process of exertion and recovery that is so organically programmed into us. All we really need to do to help our bodies flourish is listen, and surrender when we need rest. Easier said than done, I know. If rest is really hard for you, I will point you towards these essays I have written about my journey with embracing it this past year: embrace the exhale, slow down, in defence of pleasure.

Objects

a good cookbook

I like cooking a lot, but I noticed I was making the same things repeatedly and was getting kind of bored. Also, something about looking up recipes on my phone (while I do it plenty), just doesn’t hit in the same romantic-delightful-pinterest-coded way as cooking with a cookbook does. Which is ultimately the vibe I felt my repetitive, seemingly unoriginal cooking was lacking. A couple of months ago, I started flipping through some of my favourite cookbooks and picking out recipes that I wanted to try. After doing this a few times, I entered a totally new and very inspired cooking/baking phase that feels pleasantly fuelled by getting more intimate with a few cookbooks that I really like.

Everyone’s tastes are different and if you are like me, you probably already have a few of these books lying around that you can open up and dive into, but a couple that have been especially fun for me lately are Three Times a Day, which is full of just beautiful photographs and recipes, and The Artful Baker, a baking book that helped me make my first croissants! Really any cookbook that inspires you to make something new and gives your eyes a break from the screens we look at all day will do the job, though. Also makes for a great gift for a loved one! Or at least, it would if I was the loved one :)

a travel yoga mat that fits inside your luggage

This is relatively new to my life, but since developing my pilates-addiction (to be explored more thoroughly below), I have become very attached to always having a way to do a brief, bodyweight workout/stretch wherever I am, especially when travelling. I used to let myself off the hook when travelling, thinking ‘I am only here for a week (or two), it’s fine if I break routine’ — which: true! It totally is fine, and I am sure I will do it many times in the future. But I happen to be in a phase where I really like moving my body in the morning, and I find 15-45 minutes with a very thin, foldable yoga mat on a bedroom floor is more than enough to give me what I need to take care of myself while travelling (and keep myself from being brutally sore when I return back to my typical exercise routine).

I am liking this one from lululemon, but I honestly didn’t do much research and just got one that was convenient enough before a recent trip, so I am sure any thin, packable mat will do the trick. I wish I had gotten one of these sooner!

a book for the men and women in your life respectively

King Warrior Magician Lover

by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

You might have heard me talk about this book before if you listened to my recent interview with Douglas Gillette, co-author of the book, but the long and short of it is: this is an amazing book for any man in your life who wants to understand their nature, strengths, weaknesses and qualities more deeply. I also think this is a great read for women to get a better understanding of your own masculine energy and the men around you (I somehow got 6 of my closest female friends hooked on talking about this book for a full day of a canoe trip we did together a few months ago, so it really does appear to be rather gender-neutral in its ability to captivate the masses). I also am sending out an introductory guide to this book shortly, which you can sign up to get here when it is live, meant to introduce you to the archetypes and the concepts in this book more casually.

Goddesses in Everywoman

by Jean Shinoda Bolen

I ran a book club with my friends earlier this year and we read this book! It was so powerful to see a group of women relate to their femininity and womanhood differently through the lens of this book, which focuses on seven key goddesses in greek mythology, and explores how modern women exude and express the different energies and traits these goddesses possess. I wrote an essay earlier this year on how this book impacted me, which you can read here if you are so inclined. I view this as a must-read for women interested in diving deeper into myths, womanhood, feminine nature (and the various ways it can express itself), and an amazing tool to to better understand the women in your life (and thus a great read for men as well!)

a good water bottle that makes you excited to drink water

I went through a phase this year where I just was not drinking enough water and I could feel it in my experience of life. I was getting more tired, more hungry, more drained more frequently and quickly than I should have been! I knew it was because I was letting myself get dehydrated, but it took me far too long to properly solve this by just getting a water bottle I actually enjoyed using. I ended up getting a relatively small hydroflask (basic, I know) because I wanted it to be light enough for me to take it with me whenever I left my home. It is doing the job! But I would encourage you to just find one that you like, if you also experience this problem, because all a water bottle should do is make it fun, easy and appealing for you to drink more water!!

actually high quality tea

My boyfriend and I have become rather pretentious about our tea collection and now struggle to drink the basic prepackaged-tea-bags (I think they just call that not loose leaf tea? lol). Having good tea around has drastically improved my bedtime routine, because I deeply look forward to having a tea in the evening that is genuinely delicious and feels pure and nourishing. I am sure standard tea would do this for most people, but now that I am hooked on Actually High Quality Tea, I cannot go back. I order from this place which is based in Toronto (they ship for free if you order enough tea!), but honestly any good quality tea shop near you would probably have an amazing selection where you can find flavours you love. Having good tea has also significantly improved my experience of winter! Sipping on a non-caffeinated, delicious drink to warm you up any time of the day is just so lovely. I wish it for everyone, for you, for your friends, for your family. Have more tea! It is so comforting!

Other Investments

(of time, money, energy, etc)

pilates membership

One of the best things I started doing this last year was going to a pilates studio that is a <5 minute walk from my current home 4-6x/week for the last ~7 months. The main thing that catalyzed this consistency is the aforementioned <5 minute walk. I love exercise, and always have, and I feel off when I am not engaged in some sort of consistent exercise practice. The hard thing for me is not showing up, but rather: finding a workout that is efficient, well-rounded, and is the right balance of consistent and novel (i.e. doesn’t feel boring) and is actually a good workout (i.e. makes me stronger).

I have recently found a pilates studio (that also includes cardio + weights) that has lead to probably the best stretch of consistently sticking with one type of workout class in my life over the last several years. I cannot emphasize enough how important the location proximity aspect of this has been, though. I have no good reason not to go; it is always a two minute walk away from me and they have ~8 class times per day to choose from. This (and me actually liking the workout) has been enough to create a degree of consistency that feels totally natural and simultaneously super rewarding.

In short: if you struggle to find a consistent exercise regimen (or if your current one feels more frictional/challenging than you want it to) and you have the capacity to invest in a good workout class close to you, I would encourage you to become a member and go religiously. At least, this is the best setup I have found in a long time, and I try and get tired of almost everything. Also: pilates is so kind to my body. Other workout styles I have done at this same frequency end up being too intense, hard on my body, causing injuries or just eventually becoming unsustainable to continue. Not pilates!! Do with this information what you will.

othership

(sorry to fit the current meme format with these last two, but they really work)

I am sure you have seen memes floating around about the sauna/cold plunge bros and the way these practices are monopolizing the health world and all of that. Unfortunately, I am here to tell you that I am kind of on board with it? I have had some of the most deep, profound and intense creative breakthroughs of my year in one such place that offers these experiences. The Toronto-based (and now also NYC-based) brand Othership has been a remarkably big part of my year. The long and short of it is: you go, you sit in a sauna for 20-30 minutes as a guide prompts a series of visualizations, a meditation, or an otherwise introspective-themed activity, then you go into an ice bath for two minutes, come back and end the class in the sauna. I am sure something else could provide as reliable and consistent of a path to stress relief, and a deep sense of being in your body afterwards, where all you have to do is show up, but I have not yet found it (yes, exercise does this to an extent but what I get out of this hot-cold-guided-meditation-fusion is something very different and closer to… a sort of psychedelic experience? for lack of a better term).

Not sure how useful/accessible this is to all of my readers, but it might be a very nice treat to yourself (or a loved one!) over this holiday season to have an experience like this, and to give yourself the space to shed whatever has been weighing on you and tune into your body more intentionally. A note of gratitude to those who make this place so special, thanks for existing and

Building the Othership

! <3

business coaching

One of the most significant people in my last year has been my wonderful angel of a business coach,

Lisa Kurolap

. Business coaching is never something I even thought of doing, until chatting with a friend of mine,

Sophie Burns

(fortunately I have now substack-pilled both of them and they are new here, so feel free to say hello!) who was telling me about everything she was unlocking in her world and creative endeavours through working with Lisa. After a single call with Lisa, I knew we were soul sisters and working together was meant to be. I have been working with her for the last nine months, and over the course of our work together, she has helped me remember how to properly organize my brain, act on my ideas, get over my fears and limitations creatively, work in sync with my cycle (more on that below), bring projects to life that I was struggling to actualize (like Creative Liberation, Men to Kings, 1-1 Clarity Coaching, and much more, which you will hear more about soon!). I now feel incredibly balanced in my artist/executive, or feminine/masculine energies and the way they show up in my process, and about as confident as I have ever been in my ability to create valuable things in the world.

Simply having someone there to help me explore my desires and my fears as I continue nursing the creative expression that started out as this substack into something much bigger than that, has been wildly transformative. It has also helped me understand the value I provide for my 1-1 clients more intimately. The conclusion I have come to is that it is a gift to allow people to occupy intentional, structured containers that are devoted to helping them make the changes they want to make in their life, with the guidance and wisdom of someone who has devoted their time, energy and self to knowing how to do that. This is true in both my work, which is more focused on helping people unlock clarity and alignment in their lives, and navigate the shifts they are currently exploring in their world with intention and action, and in Lisa’s work, which has helped me transmute my creative ideas into a sustainable business that supports me and nourishes the world.

Investing in how I want my art and business to grow and evolve together has been immeasurably valuable, and I am excited to see the seeds I planted last year blossom in this coming year :) My work with Lisa also inspired this essay, about actualizing our ideas to completion.

learning about my menstrual cycle

This category probably deserves an essay of its own (maybe one day), but for now I will just say that learning to live in sync with my body and its natural cycle has been genuinely life-changing. It saddens me that we don’t usher young women into womanhood with more information about their bodies and how they work, but it elates me to see that so many of us seem to be gathering the information we need to be better stewards of ourselves as we get older and start to understand all of the nuances of being a woman. For me, this has meant understanding how my energy rises and falls over the course of the month, what kinds of things I can/should expect myself to do during different times of the month, and how I can harness the naturally creative, introspective, outgoing and inwards parts of my cycle to align with what I want to fill my life with.

After spending much of this last year sorting this out, I now cannot believe I was ever not living in conscious alignment with my cycle… there is so much power, wisdom and natural energy to be found in harmonizing our life with our bodies. I wish more of us knew how to do this earlier in life.

I will think about writing about this more — it is a deep rabbit hole with plenty of ways to approach it, but in the meantime I will offer up a few basic resources that might help acquaint you with the basics if you are interested in learning more. Books: taking charge of your fertility, the cycle-syncing handbook, wild power, and her blood is gold. Goddesses in everywoman which I mentioned earlier is not cycle-related explicitly, but I also found it to be a useful tool to reflect on how I resonate with different goddesses at different times of the month. This podcast episode is a pretty good light intro to the topic as well, but again: if this piques your interest, I would encourage you to just start looking into it and see what resonates with you as you begin to learn more about your cycle, your body and your experiences with both. The codes you can discover by just studying yourself and how you feel at different stages in your life and cycle are incredibly powerful! Our bodies are such potent portals to deeper self-understanding and self-expression. I hope this prompts someone to tune more into what their body is saying to them :)

coffee + croissants

Everyone has an opinion on how much money/time you should spend on coffee outside of the house, but looking back on my year I do not regret a single moment or dollar spent on leaving my house to get a coffee and croissant. I create such joy and delight in my mornings with my little ritual of strolling to a nearby café, sitting down to read/write if I have the time, and just spending an hour+ alone with myself (accompanied by my coffee and croissant, of course) to just daydream, wonder, and prepare for my day — whatever that looks like. Truly some of my favourite moments of this year have been created alone, sipping on a flat white, in my local coffee shop, thinking through whatever is on my mind. Time, money and energy well spent in my view! Silly perhaps, but essential to my thriving. Cannot recommend this enough.

Note: none of these are affiliate links. I am simply not that sophisticated. But if you do purchase or resonate with anything that I have mentioned or recommended here, please tell me and let me know what you think! I would love to hear how it helps or impacts you :)

Recommendation request <3

a perfect, pretty, practical watch

Now, a request for you, my dear reader. I like going to a café first thing in the morning without my phone, and writing for a couple of hours untethered from the internet and from the never-ending notifications of modern life. However, whenever I currently do this, I have no way of telling the time if there isn’t a clock in front of me so I end up semi-humiliatingly asking strangers repeatedly for the time to know when I need to leave. I know this is an easy problem to solve, but I want to acquire a watch I really adore, so I am waiting to find the right one before I do. Some inspiration pics I have resonated with from pinterest here, here, here and here. But I am curious: do you, dear reader, have a watch you love, or have you recently gotten one for someone in your life that they have loved? I would love to know! Please reply or let me know in the comments as I continue this hunt for the perfect, practical, pretty watch. Thank you!

Happy holidays & enjoy this last week of 2024! I have some exciting stuff to share with you very soon. Looking forward to seeing some of 2024’s seeds blossom in 2025 — for you and me both. This year is going to be wonderful :)

PS - Do you have a word/theme you are choosing for 2025? I am deciding between beauty and alchemy. Would love to hear yours if you are thinking of one as well.

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links to learn more about my work:

• 1-1 Clarity Coaching: figure out what you truly want out of life and start taking action towards it. Possibly a good time to explore this if you have been thinking about it with new year / fresh start energy ripe and available for us to harness!

• Men to Kings: 1-1 coaching for men based on the four key masculine archetypes: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, to create balance, alignment and direction in your life.

• Creative Liberation: my course to help you unblock yourself, act on your ideas, and share your gifts/creativity with the world.

related essays: slowness, taste and living well, on being selective, little beautiful things

Thank you to all of you who are here and supporting Mind Mine’s existence by being a free or paid subscriber. If you feel like upgrading to receive + support more of my writing, you can do so below. Life is so cool and I can’t believe I get to do this. Appreciate you <3