What This Won't Be is a Recap

The first annual CNFin' Holiday Gift Guide, #Flash52, and the winner of the first annual CNFin' Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence!

Author

Brendan O'Meara
December 01, 2025

It’s the end of the year.

December Events

  • Monday, Dec. 1, Zoom event with a New York City running club, 4 p.m. PST

  • Thursday, Dec. 4, Hodgepodge Books in Eugene for a lecture on biography, tips and tactics, Q&A, 7 p.m. PST

  • Sunday, Dec. 7, Holiday Cheer at the Oregon Historical Society, I’ll be tabling The Front Runner from 12 to 4 p.m.

Purchase Signed, Personalized Books

It’s crunch time, but you can purchase signed, stamped, personalized copies of The Front Runner directly from me (while supplies last!). The cost is $30 per book. That includes Media Rate shipping (what a deal!). If interested, reply to this email, and I’ll invoice you through PayPal and ask you how you want your book personalized. I can only grant this to people living in the United States. The cost of shipping outside the country is bonkers.

Issue 7 of Pitch Club with Shawna Kenney

Ever want to know how to pitch a podcast series? Check out the latest Pitch Club.

The Riff

It’s the end of a long, arduous, and, on balance, pretty depressing year. Times are tough. These are upsetting and scary times. It seems like each year since the COVID-19 pandemic took root (2020), we’ve been saying, “Wow, it can’t possibly be worse than 2020 … 2021 … 2025.”

Big Tech is intent on numbing us into AI-induced stupors. Civil liberties are under attack and will continue to erode. Are protests working? Can groceries get anymore expensive? Things are bleak.

But we have some power.

Short of extricating ourselves from the capitalism machine, we can buy from ethical companies who treat their employees fairly, not predatory modern-day Robber Barons.

I’ve compiled the first annual CNFin’ Holiday Gift Guide. It should be “view only,” but who knows anymore? All the links to books are to Bookshop.org. I don’t use affiliate links at all, so you know my recommendations aren’t getting me a commission.

I’ve broken them down as best I could into categories.

I’ve also listed all the recommendations from podcast guests this year.

I hope this gives you some ideas for the people closest to you.

However you celebrate the holiday season and the end of the year, may it bring you at least one or two smiles. Three is asking too much.

This will take you to (I hope) the Google Doc: The First Annual CNFin’ Holiday Gift Guide.

I also want to mention and celebrate the first ever winner of best book for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence: Cassidy Randall for Thirty Below. I read this back in February and March and thought, “Damn, this book is the best thing I’ve read in a long time, so keep it front-of-mind all year so recency bias doesn’t skew you away from it.” No book, IMO, topped it this year. Well done, Cassidy! Your bamboo plaque commemorating this honor (suck it, Pulitzers!) is being made as we speak from plaquemaker.com.

The Books (Didn’t You Get Enough from the CNFin’ Holiday Gift Guide You Insatiable Monster?! These Are Not in Gift Guide.)

  1. Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself by Jane Marie Chen

  2. Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America by Howard Bryant.

  3. A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed by Scott Eden

  4. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I read Normal People recently, and Rooney has a real knack for dialogue. I’m on something of a novel kick lately, and as soon as I hit send on this Rager I’m going to the library to pick up Intermezzo.

The Other Stuff

  1. Jack Conte, founder of Patreon, is raging against the algorithm by advocating for building an algorithm that doesn’t rot your brain. I’ve been on Patreon for several years (you might wanna consider it to support the work I do … as I say, the podcast and lots of other stuff I do is free, but it sure as hell ain’t cheap), so I really like Conte’s vision. And he seems like a force for good; and he seems anti-algorithm … but isn’t that what they all say? He posted a longer version of his Benevolent Algorithm “state of the union kinda thing” on Patreon for Patreon people … I hope it works. I’m in the “beta” for “quips” (think tweets) and other such stuff. Maybe it’ll lead to bigger and better things?

  2. Vince Gilligan talks about potential plot holes in Breaking Bad. He’s heading up a new show for Apple TV+ starring Rhea Seehorn, she of Better Call Saul fame. When Vince talks, it’s best to listen.

  3. Having no followers is cool now?

  4. I caught myself wishing away the miles and thought this was bad practice.

  5. It’s been fun digging into the archive of my blog for random posts that nobody read. Like this one about how to deal with dejection.

  6. Scrolling is the new smoking … The Minimalists went a year without social media. Watch their TEDx Talk. Nothing really revelatory about this talk, and it’s a little clunky through the first half, but gains more elevation in the second half.

  7. Why workshop? Glenn Stout used to wonder as well. A workshop skeptic, he writes, “Laboring over my laptop alone, I felt lucky. Then, about ten years ago, after I’d added editing to my resume and found some success, I was asked to help run a workshop. And I said ‘yes.’ Gulp.”

What a Sentence!

A new feature of the rager. If I come across a really cool sentence (or 2 or 3), I’m gonna drop it in here. This from Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight, but featured on This American Life, titled “A Few Hundred of My Favorite Things.”

“Dmitri’s never been afraid of a scheme that runs a little pink on the inside.”

The full passage starts with a cliche, about ideas being half-baked, then Goldstein gives us “a little pink on the inside.” Brilliant.

#Flash52 in 2026

Can you write one flash essay a week for an entire year? Even if you aimed for the stars of 52, could you land on the “moon” of 26? 15? And isn’t that maybe more than you wrote a year ago? Join me in 2026 in trying to write 52 flash essays and maybe we land a couple. Might maybe do this as a Zoom group where we simply write in community for thirty minutes and peace out. Likely through the Patreon portal.

ICYMI: November on CNF Pod

Coda

I hope you dug this issue of RATA. To support what it is I do, you can buy copies of The Front Runner, subscribe to Pitch Club, and/or leave kind reviews for the podcast on Apple Podcast and/or leave kind reviews for The Front Runner on Amazon and Goodreads. My understanding is the book is well received, and well reviewed, though I still refuse to look. Can always use more.

If you have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you may check out Patreon.com/cnfpod.

Otherwise, rage on ragin’ on,

b.r.o.