I am a firm believer in New Year’s resolutions . As one year ends and another begins — and the days are at their darkest — I find it helpful to throw myself into a new hobby or practice a new skill. At its best, New Year’s resolutions are a fundamentally hopeful practice that helps us recognize our ability to change and grow and start anew, even in times of struggle. I especially love reading resolutions.

I have always found it very difficult to write about love, regardless if it is for people, for places, or for things. It’s hard to tack down an emotional experience so vast with just words. Love is huge, terrifying, unfathomable, calamitous, and persistent. It can’t be ignored. It refuses to be ignored.

As the weather gets colder, the days get shorter and the leaves begin to change colors, it is once again time for everybody’s favorite fall holiday — I am, of course, talking about OCD Awareness Week.

Over the course of her nearly 12 year career, the mononymous musician Mitski has said many things about love. In “Square,” a track from her 2013 album Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, she cuts to the quick of the matter with scalpel-sharp precision: “God's very simple and love doesn't burn.”

Horror fans of the world, our time is approaching. Fall is here, and soon spooky season will be in full swing. I’m always on the hunt for new horror media in the fall, and if you’re like me in this regard, you’ll want to check out Caitlin Starling’s new book from St. Martin’s Press, Last to Leave the Room.

It’s no secret to anyone with a pulse and a Netflix subscription that the American film industry is in crisis right now. We as viewers have likely yet to feel the worst of the effects of the combined WGA and SAG strikes, and even before that, things have been… not great. But in our darkest hour, a hero has come to save us all from the endless slog of reboots, sequels, and cinematic universes — Emma Seligman’s sophomore directorial outing, Bottoms.

The translation of grief into language has been a site of frustration for generations of writers. As British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in his poem In Memoriam, “I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; / For words, like Nature half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within.”

First and foremost, let it be said that I didn't mean to watch all of Heartstopper Season 2. I’m a self-identified cynic who has a complex relationship with the rom-com genre and didn’t even finish the first season. Having heard the overwhelmingly positive reviews, though, I decided to check out the season premiere of the internet’s favorite queer teen drama—and much like falling down a flight of stairs, I couldn’t stop and ended the experience in tears.