Good morning, my friends. Welcome to the last week of November!

We are now in the final few weeks of the year… are you happy with the progress you’ve made this year? If not — what are you doing to change things going into 2026?

If you feel like you’re behind, you’re not alone!

There were years where I felt the same. 2025, however, I managed to accomplish a lot more than I’ve done in the last 10 years combined. I am proud of the growth I made this year. But not every year will be as productive as this year was for me and that’s okay.

Not every year will be productive for you, either. Not every year will be full of growth. But at some point in your life, you will want to look back on a few years of your life and be proud of who you became, the things you did, and the things you accomplished.

So if this year was hard — exhale right now. Forgive yourself for any mistakes you made or finish lines you didn’t cross. It is okay. A new year will be upon us pretty soon and you have the power to change things for the better — right now today. Not on January 1st… you can start today.

Now get cozy, grab your coffee or tea and let’s chat a bit.

☕️ The Sunday Brew

So a few months ago I decided to create my own little encyclopedia. Not something I’d sell (or maybe I will? WHO KNOWS. Idk, probably not) anyway… I wanted to create something that I could leave behind for my children, but also a living artifact of notes of all things that I’ve learned because I wanted to. Not because it was required in school or because I had to read it in my studies for college — just simply because I wanted to learn about these certain topics. Like I said in my fall curriculum post, it’s apparently a trend now that I had no idea about when I decided to do it.

I love seeing that so many people are yearning for substance. When you’re someone who’s chronically online, the burnout becomes real at some point. You don’t feel like you’ve consumed anything that’s worth much after you realize how many hours you’ve spent mindlessly scrolling. So to see an influx of people desiring to disconnect a little bit and get back to the basics of learning and feeding their mind, it made me feel good — a little warm inside if you will.

If you haven’t heard about this “personal curriculum” trend, that’s okay! I’m here to shed some light on my curated curriculum for 2026 and how I plan to achieve learning these things.

I aspire to be someone that can hold intellectual conversations about any and everything. If you know me personally, you know that I am a deep thinker. I love conversations with substance. I want to know how your brain works and what your conspiracy theories are. But there’s a level of intelligence that I have yet to reach — that I will reach. Not only just talking about things, but knowing exactly what I’m talking about because I did an in-depth study on those things for fun. That’s the kind of person I want to be. Now that I’m out of college, I have free time to study things for the love of reading and soaking up knowledge. I’ve already started my journey and it’s been a ride — one that I don’t plan on getting off of any time soon.

I’ve purchased two books so far — one surrounding the voices of the Harlem Renaissance and one focused on Healing Herbs. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg in my curriculum, but it’s a start. The local library has been my best friend though, too. I think that learning and researching from books can be better than online surfing sometimes. Why? Because it gives you a break from looking at a screen and allows you to slow down. It’s not as easy to just flip to a page to find what you’re looking for in a book. You actually have to sit down and read it. In doing so, you soak up so much more information than you may have been looking for. It may sound like “too much,” but in reality it’s a great way to build your vocabulary, learn things you weren’t expecting to, discover new ideas, and practice patience (which if you read the last newsletter, you know that I’m currently doing things that require me to be more patient).

So, how does one build a personal curriculum?

Well… that depends on what interests you. The great thing about building this is that you are the curator. You aren’t on a timeline. You aren’t being forced. You are the professor and the student. The easiest way to go about this is to choose a handful of topics at a time and assign them to a learning block. For example, right now I’m really into bread making — so over the next few months I’ll be learning the basics of bread making and perfecting my craft with making bread from scratch. The most popular way I’ve seen with breaking up your learning is to go by season. A winter, spring, summer, and fall curriculum.

Maybe you’re super into a certain genre of music right now. You could decide to do a deep dive into the genre — who pioneered it, when it came about, the legends of the genre, the region where it originated, etc. Or maybe you want to know more about a country you’d love to visit one day. You could do research on that specific place, check out books on it, cook a dish inspired by the country you’re interested in, learn its history, the ways of life of the people that live there (YouTube is a great resource for that), maybe learn the basics of that language — the sky is the limit.

How do I plan on carving out the time for this learning journey? Well, since I’m already on it, I’ll let you know what I do right now so that I don’t feel overwhelmed.

First, I make sure that I’m in the mood for learning. Sometimes, I just don’t feel like learning new things, and that’s okay. We all have lives, whether they are busy and hectic, or the opposite — we all have responsibilities and things we have to tend to on the day to day. A personal curriculum shouldn’t feel like a burden, it should feel light — a fun way to get your creative juices flowing and expanding your mind to the depths in which you want it to go. So for me, that looks like carving out 30 minutes to an hour every day to learn something from my list. Some days I don’t have the time, but if I have that extra time during the day, I tell myself let’s learn something instead of scrolling. If I go over my one hour? Fantastic. But I don’t force myself to do more or less than the time that I’ve set for myself. I go with the flow of my curiosity at the moment, while still holding myself accountable for doing some type of learning during the day.

Need ideas? I got you. Below I will share my 2026/2027 master list. These are things that I want to learn more about over the next two years — this list will probably be expanded, change, or stay the same. Again, you are the professor and the student! You can literally learn whatever you want and change up things if need be. But right now — these are the things that interest me the most.

Literature & Philosophy

Harlem Renaissance
Shakespeare
Gothic fiction
Deep Dives on Famous Philosophers

Art & Music

Harlem Renaissance art
Jazz roots
Hip-Hop origins
Blues

Science & Nature

Herbal teas
Oceans
Astronomy (planets, stars, galaxies, black holes)
Human body: circulatory, nervous, digestive, reproductive, immune, endocrine, brain, etc
Marine biology
Earth’s geology

Culinary Arts

French wines
Italian wines
Mexican cuisine
Middle Eastern cuisine
Japanese cuisine
Caribbean cuisines
Indian cuisine
African cuisine

Survival

Pantry building + staples
Knife skills & kitchen safety
Gardening basics
Canning, drying + freezing food
Bread + pasta from scratch
Fermenting
Sewing basics
Fire skills
Water safety + filtration
First-aid
Plants (edible vs. toxic)
Emergency prep
Fishing & outdoor cooking

As I go through and learn each and every one of these, I will take notes — handwritten notes first (which I have already started in a composition notebook) — and then I will put them together into a Google document, print, and bind them. That will be my “Soul Anthology Encyclopedia” — that’s the name I gave it.

It’s going to have pictures and some of my copied handwritten notes. It’s going to take a while to put together, but I’m excited to do it! There will be volumes of this as well. I know that I have so much more life to live and so much more to learn, so this won’t be the end all be all. As I continue on in my journey of life, I will make more of these! This is just the first one :)

So, I challenge you to get creative for your 2026 year. Learn new things by way of self-study. Make the notes look nice. Type it up and print it out. Create your own little world of things you’ve learned and put them together to look back on years from now. It doesn’t have to be long either. It just has to be something that interests you and you decided to go on a self-study journey to find out more about that topic. Take up that pottery class you’ve always wanted to take or those piano lessons. Learn how to make zines! I have been obsessed with zines and I’ve made two already this week which I posted as notes here on Substack :) Learn how to paint — and be terrible at it but do it anyway. Get yourself a creative journal where you draw your day when you don’t feel like journaling. For the love of GOD get creative with your life!

☕️ The Sunday Sip: The Creative Roast

This week we are brewing something new and different. We’re brewing up something that adds a little pizzazz and color to your world.

Maybe this week you pick up a cheap canvas from dollar general and some paint and have a paint and sip with yourself. Find a picture on Pinterest that makes you feel happy and try to recreate it.

Or maybe you can make a collage out of old magazines and pin it to your wall. Something that you will wake up to every morning and it makes you feel warm inside to see it.

I will definitely be painting something this week and I’ll share it in the next Sunday chronicle.

✏️ Journal Prompt: “Color My World”

If your life had a color palette this week, what colors would be in it — and why?

Write about:

• The “base color” of your mood going into the week.
• One bold color you want to bring into your life on purpose (creativity, joy, softness, curiosity, confidence, etc.)
• Where in your real life you can express that color — through art, your space, your style, your routines, or your mindset?
• What small creative action can you can take this week to make that color come alive?

📝 Margin Notes

Write these down in your planner, journal, or on the back of a piece of paper laying around that you’ve been meaning to throw away.

Creativity doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful.

Let color say what words fail to express.

Your joy and or pain is a valid reason to create.

Art is proof you showed up for yourself.

Notice what makes your spirit exhale and lean more into that feeling.

This week deserves a splash of color.

💻 What’s New on The Blog?

New episode of Wives of Blue dropped this week! Be sure to check it out! :)

Nolaverse: Wives of Blue

Welcome to Episode Three of Wives of Blue — the series inside the Nolaverse that follows the wives of the detectives fighting to rebuild the city and chase crime. Interested in what the Noalverse is? Click the link below.

Letters from the Bayou Soul x SWMarie ✨

Episode four will be coming this week — make sure you’re subscribed!