My 2025 Bingo Card

Starting my Señora Era with a different way of setting New Year's resolutions

I used to be a big fan of setting New Year’s resolutions but my funk of the last two years was so powerful, I did not set a single goal in 2024. If I did, I didn’t write it down, which is a telltale sign that I did not truly believe anything good would come out of my own efforts and was not worth committing to paper in any way. As I was careening towards 2025, marveling at how it had been seven years since I last felt I was finishing a year in triumph instead of despair, I wanted to go back to creating a plan for my year. I was struggling to choose my one singular focus, however, even though I have about a dozen ideas bouncing around my brain every day. It’s hard for a project to gain momentum without sustained effort, but I don’t think I can pick one unless I make some sort of headway in any of them.

A perennial favorite when it comes to resolutions is setting a daily word count for my writing but none of my project ideas are at the stage where I can put words to paper, unless you count research notes, outlines, and scattered thoughts. I have other dreams involving community, hobbies, and money, my primary source of stress. I felt like committing to one writing project was going to come at the expense of everything else and I no longer want to live my life that way. I’m fully embracing the mediocre impulses the rest of the world seems to run on (complimentary) and didn’t want my entire year to revolve around professional aspirations that seem further and further out of reach with each passing day.

Early in December, my friend Erica sent a TikTok of a woman who makes bingo cards for her year instead of standard resolutions. She fills every square with something she wants to do or accomplish, and crosses them off when she completes them. The point is to get a bingo. Once you get a bingo you get a big treat. If you cross off small squares you also get treats, I think. I’m all for anything that justifies a treat fest.

I liked this idea, a lot. I’m not usually one to fall for TikTok trends because I rely on others to curate the platform for me and send what they think I’ll like my way LOL. A long way of saying, I have no idea what’s trending on TikTok, ever, unless Anne Helen Petersen writes about it. I also don’t embrace anything that requires arts and crafts and, for someone who is as hopeless in the arts and crafts fields as I am, a bingo card is hitting pretty close. But I’m drawn to the gamification of my life in this particular way. It’s no surprise that someone who uses multiple colored pens for her daily planner, like me, gets an intense thrill when she crosses something off a list. The randomness of what lies in each square is bringing out my inner wartime strategist, analyzing which line might be easiest to X out.

There are other unforeseen benefits to the exercise that I didn’t realize until I sat down to write my squares. Since it’s not feasible to finish off 25 hardcore goals centered around productivity, it forced me to list fun and whimsical events that would make my year more entertaining—work culture be damned. It’s another way of saying it clarified what I was hungry for.

This is about as arts & crafty as I can get, I really am that bad

Here are my Bingo 2025 squares, divided into very general categories:

Writing

• Send 12 pitches: I struggle with pitching because the return on investment is so, so low but I can get my shit together to send one per month (and resend, if they get rejected).

• Launch my website: IT’S BAAACK!!! The resolution I can never keep!

• Write 12 poems: Poetry is interesting because I think I can do it in 20 minute spurts, but if I’m not retreating into the emotional space of the poem, I spend those 20 minutes staring at a blank screen. Feelings exhaust me, much to the chagrin of every therapist I’ve ever seen, so I want to only do that deep excavation once a month.

• Take a craft class (on writing): I’ve relied on my natural talents for way too long. Time to actually improve my writing.

• Finish my potato essay: I literally have about 2-3 pages left to write but they have been mocking me for the amount of time it takes to fully form a baby.

• Draft two more of my Peruvian food essays: This is a project I began in 2021 and I have only managed to draft, revise and submit one of about ten essays I’ve outlined.

• Outline six podcast episodes: I know the industry is dying, but when have I let the demise of industries stop me from doing anything? I’ve made a career out of defunct industries!

• Outline eight death essays: I don’t want to say much more about this, but it’s the first time I’ve written in Spanish in a long time.

Community

• Go on 1 group bike ride: There’s a delightful biking group in Lima that rides to restaurants in every outing. This is the kind of athletic activity that motivates me.

• Go out with an old friend I haven’t reconnected with yet: Let’s turn this city of ghosts of my past into fully-fleshed people.

• Organize 1 community event, like a reading or a write-in: I’m that rare creature that really prefers an extroverted writing life instead of the stereotypical secluded one.

• Go out with one new friend: Yes, I’m desperate for friends.

• Volunteer at least once: You’d think in a country as troubled as Peru, it would be so easy to find a weekly volunteering gig BUT. Unless you’re a college student, a foreigner with a savior complex or a religious freak, it’s incredibly difficult.

• Read at 1 reading: The best way to consume my writing, my favorite way of sharing my writing.

Hobbies & Pleasure

• Read 48 books: I hit a solid 36 every year but I still find it shameful. Back in my grad school days, I could easily clear out 100 a year. Under duress! But an exquisite form of torture.

• Take a class for fun: I need to learn how to stop monetizing everything I like.

• Try a new sport or exercise class: Blame Pluto in Aquarius entering my 6th house for my evolution into Sporty Spice.

• Find a great wine bar in Lima: One that plays music at a low, quiet-as-a-mouse setting, preferably.

• Attend a musical event: I still love concerts! Even loud ones! Because I don’t need to carry a conversation with anyone while I’m there! Unlike bars!

• Take a cooking class: Ever since I left my beautiful, big kitchen in Chicago, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with my cooking skills. Bouncing around the country meant making meals in places with an unpredictable array of tools and little incentive to invest in any shelf-stable items. Being respectful of roommates’ time and personal needs meant I rarely took over our shared kitchen for the long-ass food projects I so enjoyed when I lived alone. My parents LOVE to micromanage whatever I’m doing on the stove, even going so far as to telling me which knife to use for tomatoes. I know, I know, they’re trying to help. A cooking class will come with its own nuisances but at least I’m alone with strangers who I’ll rarely see again. Maybe it’ll help me reach the meditative state cooking granted me back when I had my own space.

• Cuddle with a bulldog: Just for five minutes. Feel their little bristly hair on my cheek.

Travel

• Spend a weekend on the beach: Technically, I spend every day on the beach hehehe. Coastal cities for the win! What I want though is a weekend where I open the door and step out onto sand, immediately.

• Travel somewhere in Peru I’ve never been to: Currently looking at Chachapoyas, Chiclayo, Cajamarca, Moquegua.

• Travel to one country I’ve never been to: I have Taiwan and the Philippines on my radar.

Money

• Reduce my debt to less than 10K: I put this one in the middle square because it would probably have the biggest impact on my quality of life.

I do still have an insatiable ambitious troll gnawing at me, but it’s been tempered by other needs and, dare I say, a mid-life recognition that I don’t have time on this Earth to do it all. I’m getting to a point where if mainstream success finds me—big publishing deals, big royalty checks, big prizes, the kind of success I have so unsuccessfully strived for since my early 20s—, I want to be taken by surprise. I want it to find me, flabbergasted, on some beach vacation on a Latin American coast or in a wine night with good friends or dorking it out in pottery class. “Huh, look at that!” I would mutter under my breath before opening a bottle of champagne to toast with whoever is making my life worth it in that moment.

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Homework

If you haven’t done so already, commit to a fun and silly resolution this year. Something that is not meant to maximize or optimize or improve yourself, as if you were a robot that needs annual upgrades. Think, spending one weekend every quarter bingeing movie trilogies. Or eating a piece of cake every month. Or choosing a random subway stop in your town, getting off, and exploring its surroundings on the weekends. Whatever brings you nothing but whimsy!

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Money Lesson

I decided to phase out the State of My Wallet section because I don’t think it’s useful anymore for the majority of my readers who live in the United States. How much I work and the amount of money I decide to take in only makes sense because I am living somewhere significantly cheaper than the US. Until the housing market changes significantly in that country or I stumble upon a miraculous high six-figures salary, I can’t imagine going back for more than a handful of months at a time. I don’t want to stay in Peru forever, but wherever I go next will probably be somewhere with a similar cost of living. While a lot of my financial stress has dissipated, I still deal with a lot of money worries. This is a place to explore that and share all the humbling. lessons I’ve learned along the way.

This month’s lesson: I am so, so, woefully behind on saving for retirement. When I took the freelance plunge in 2018, I needed cash to live. I set aside only $100 a month for my IRA, promising myself I’d raise it once my income stabilized. It never did and I’ve kept that paltry sum for the past SIX years. Even though I knew I wasn’t in particularly good shape, I thought I at least had enough money to retire in Lima without being destitute. WRONG! This retirement calculator slapped me in the face, cackled, and said, “You poor, foolish child!” According to math (that cruel demon), I either need to up my contributions by $8,000+ a year or retire at 75 LMAO.

My main goal this year is to cut down on debt, so that $8,000 contribution is gonna have to wait a minute. I did, however, raise my IRA budget to $150 this year and I have plans to make retirement my number one goal in 2026.

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Progress Report

I’m currently working on three articles for a handful of clients and one article for an outlet. 2025 coming in hot! I hope it’s a sign of how the rest of the year will play out.

I spent the bulk of my holiday break jotting down notes for what I’m calling the death essays, an exercise that is bringing up a lot of memories from my childhood and teen years that I hadn’t thought about in years.

The New England Review passed on my ceviche essay but it did encourage me to submit again, based on the quality of writing they saw. My writer friends insist this is good news. I’ll take it!

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Shameless Self-Promotion

• Going to AWP? Come see me and amazing writers Sam Bailey, Jennifer Rumberger, and Lindsey Trout Hughes share stories on how theater has impacted our writing life. Our panel, “Authors & Actresses: Writing for the Stage & the Page” is on Friday, March 28 at 3:20 PM. Moderated by the wonderful Maggie Andersen.

• Do I feel crass talking about going to a conference in a city that is burning to a crisp right now? Yes. Please donate to Mutual Aid LA Network or share the resource amongst your friends. Thinking of everyone I know there. Thinking of how we need to fight against the oligarchy ruining our world, CONSTANTLY.

• It’s application season! There are so many residency, workshop and grant deadlines at the beginning of the year, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. If you’re struggling with the artist statement, I can help! My On-Demand class, Navigating the Artist Statement, is available for purchase at StoryStudio. Watch at your own time, at your own pace, and send those babies out.

• I’ll also be teaching a class and moderating a panel at StoryStudio’s virtual online publishing intensive, Pub Crawl. I’ll share more info in the coming weeks, but yesterday they announced Gillian Flynn as their keynote speaker.

• Thanks to all my new subscribers, especially the ones that heeded my call to help me reach 1,000 sign-ups before the end of the year. Though I didn’t make my goal, I’m now at 952. A respectable number!

• If you are feeling the spirit of giving and want to upgrade to a paid subscription, it includes:

  • Samples of my pitches & rates, applications, and spreadsheets & templates

  • Weekly, virtual write-ins (resuming next week!)

  • Back on My Bullsh**t city guides

  • Access to the full archive (free posts go behind a paywall after a year)

• If you are into niche culinary scenes, I’ve started an Instagram account where I track every restaurant in my neighborhoods major gastronomic corridor. It’s called Eating La Mar and I’m having a lot of fun with it.

• If you ever want to peruse all the books I recommend in the newsletter, head over to my Bookshop bookstore!