Ten Things I Wrote This Year That I Still Think About

Some things connected with folks. Some didn’t. I kept writing .

TL;DR:

Food, feelings, and the strange business of building a life abroad—continued. Mushrooms & beans were very popular. Cracked mugs and language slips are constants. These got read, shared, bookmarked—sometimes people got really bothered about stuff I wrote, but mostly about food.

If you feel like you haven’t had a chance to catch up this year, here’s a chance to catch up, to see what others liked - and then some of the ones I did.

happy new year, everyone. 2025 was a piece of, uhm, work.

K.

Ce n’est qu’un au revoir — Jeane Manson (1977)

A French disco Auld Lang Syne.

Jeane Manson was an American Playboy model who became a French pop icon—with just enough sincerity to pull off disco ballads like she meant them.

Ce n’est qu’un au revoir is a relic of the endless confidence of the disco era: a sentimental French New Year’s toast given a basic disco treatment. But it also seems to go through a few church hymnals to get there, including Amazing Grace, which is a bold choice even for disco. It’s a sequin-clad version of the bittersweet (and confusing) classic. It’s an odd song.

Ridiculous and might be more catchy if I could figure out just what is going on with the song.

popular posts

There’s no neat way to categorize a year where the most popular post was about mushrooms and the ones I keep rereading are all about music, which folks do seem to read less, but I love them.

I don’t write to chase themes. It’s more like: I notice something (a sound, a stubborn feeling, a weird street sign), and I follow it down whatever odd bit of history it invites me into. I like alternatives, what else might have happened?

A few of those paths turned out to be crowded. Others were kind of personal dead ends, but still a bit curious. Either way, I stayed a while.

So here are ten dispatches from 2025. Five that had a lot of reads. Five that stuck in my head. Music, mushrooms, miscommunications.

More about a new life in a new place, in small pieces.

The usual.

What stayed with you?
What do you want more of next year—music, misfires, small domestic breakdowns? Tell me in the comments.

the year in review, a bit

my most popular posts

1. The One Ingredient That Feeds (Western) France Every Fall
Mushrooms. But also land use, family knowledge, and why no one will tell you exactly where they picked theirs. I thought this was about food. Readers knew it wasn’t.

The One Ingredient That Feeds (Western) France Every Fall

When the markets turn from tomatoes to pumpkins, France quietly shifts gears. But the real star of the season isn’t truffle, foie gras, or even pumpkin—it’s the bean.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

2. Not in Our Timeline
A post written on a strange, dislocated morning. Less about news cycles than about the dissonance of watching your country become someone else’s cautionary tale.

Not in Our Timeline

I sometimes say that my wife and I always wanted to live abroad—and that’s true. But it’s also true that we had a whole life envisioned in America. We made plans, built careers, invested in a community.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

3. One Day, It Is Not Going to Be Like This
A quiet piece that began with a cracked ceramic mug and ended with an accidental kind of hope. Got more emails about this one than anything else I wrote all year.

One day, it is not going to be like this

This started as a late post about tech trouble and spiraled into something else entirely: a meditation on systems we trust too much, from devices to strawberries in February. It’s about our normal and what happens when our comforts shift. My wife once said, “One day, it is not going to be like this,” and she wasn’t being dramatic. She was just early.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

4. French Days: Navigating Life, à la Française
Half-field notes, half language spiral. Tried to explain how time works here—and how I still don’t understand why the pharmacies close at noon on Tuesdays.

French Days: Navigating Life, à la Française

When Everything Feels Just a Little Too... French

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

5. The Art of Moving (And Staying) Abroad
How you arrive, how you stay, how your expectations melt and reform into something both smaller and more solid. This one got bookmarked a lot, apparently.

The Art of Moving (And Staying) Abroad

Adjusting to life in a new country doesn’t end once you’ve unpacked and settled in—it’s an ongoing process of adaptation, surprises, and the occasional bureaucratic headache. As the novelty fades, the real challenge begins: learning how to function within a different system, navigating cultural nuances, and figuring out what still feels foreign (and what, strangely, no longer does). Whether you're planning a move or already abroad, here’s what happens after you start to get used to it.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

Ones I still love anyway

1. Side Doors & Soundtracks of the Holidays
Christmas in France, Eartha Kitt in exile, and the strange feeling of hearing American longing through a French radio filter. Honestly, I loved writing this one. Not sure if anyone got it. Maybe you will.

Side Doors & Soundtracks of the Holidays

Some histories don’t arrive by invitation. They slip in through side doors — carried by people who had to leave one place to keep working, speaking, or becoming themselves. France has been shaped by those arrivals, just as much as by what it claims as its own.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

2. Jacques Morali: Disco’s Visionary Producer
Before there was Daft Punk, there was this Frenchman, inventing gay anthems in Manhattan. Morali made music that crossed oceans, scenes, and sensibilities—and then vanished. No one talks about him. They should.

Jacques Morali: Disco's Visionary Producer

Jacques Morali (July 4, 1947 – November 15, 1991) was a Moroccan-born French singer, songwriter, and producer who was likely one of the most important European producers of disco (in addition to Giorgio Moroder, of course). He’s likely best known as the creator of the

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

3. The Greens Are Missing
It started with a simple question: why is cabbage the only reliable green in my French supermarket? It all ended up roaming between agricultural policy, culinary loss of tastes, and a meditation on taste memory.

The Greens Are Missing

I saw a man on a magazine cover once, holding rainbow chard like he’d just won a pageant — stems fanned out like a vegetable halo. That chard does not exist here. Not in Nantes, not in November, not in the aisles I’ve checked multiple times. What you get instead is the same set of winter regulars: leeks, carrots, cabbage. Turnips. Potato. And they’re also super fresh and wonderful versions of hose things, but that’s also kind of…it.

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4. Do French Cows Moo with an Accent?
The post where I accidentally discovered the best radio station in the Alps, mid-moo. The language slip in a bar was real. So was the feeling of connection that came after. And I love French radio stations. Check it out.

Do French Cows Moo with an Accent? A Bar, a Playlist, and a Station from the Alps

Even after years of living here, the language trips me up in the funniest places. One night, a simple compliment about a bar’s playlist turned into a full-on conversation about cows, accents, and whether I’d lost my mind.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

5. Cheap Ingredients, Expensive Lessons
Beans. Time. Domestic boredom is a good thing. And the small rituals that end up shaping a life. One of the less flashy pieces I’ve written—cooking slowly will almost always save money and make things delicious.

Cheap Ingredients, Expensive Lessons

Three hundred posts in, I’m still learning what it means to slow down in France.

Find Home ElsewhereKeith Christiansen

That’s it. A year in ten dispatches. No algorithm, no agenda—just what surfaced.

Thanks for listening when you did. And for lurking when you didn’t. Both count.

See you in the coming year,
—Keith