Emma Christley is a music writer and personal essayist currently publishing on Substack. Her weekly album review series focuses on albums that she’s not heard, but probably should have by now. When she’s not working on her newsletters, she’s either reading or watching ER.emma christley writesweekly (new to me) album reviews and long-form essays covering popular music with a sprinkle of musicological perspectiveBy emmaechristley

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PHYSICAL

• Mechanical Keyboard—All writers know it can be hard to wrangle your brain into settling down and actually focusing on doing the thinking and the writing. I love the ASMR videos of these online so I got one thinking the more I write, the more I get to listen to the fun sound. And you know what, it’s actually working.
• Noise-cancelling headphones—Like I said I have trouble focusing with all the noise in my brain and the literal noise of the world so these have been life-savers. Plus they’re cute.
• My ecosystem of notebooks—I am an obsessive notebook keeper. I prefer handwriting as much as I can, but I need separate notebooks for each category. I have one for a planner, one for my journal, one for Substack ideas, one for research notes, etc. They are truly my brain outside of my body, so when my notebooks were lost in an overseas move a few years ago, it was a devastating blow. I cried like someone had died. Because I had moved for school, I couldn’t completely fall apart and had to just carry on with my life. And while it is still the loss of my life (so far) I have rebuilt my ecosystem and come to believe that any ideas in those lost notebooks that were truly important will come back to me, and if they don’t, they must not have been that important.

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DIGITAL

• ER (1994-2009)—I started watching this series for the first time earlier this year. I needed something to fill the void left by The Pitt before the next season. I know people started watching the show initially for Clooney and stayed for Noah Wyle, whereas I started watching it for Wyle, but stayed for Anthony Edwards’ character Mark Greene. Obviously this show is specific to what goes on in hospitals, but I’ve learned some very real general life lessons from watching this show.
• swipewipe—My brain gets overwhelmed very easily and this has been something really helping to quiet the noise. It turns cleaning my photos into a game so it helps to keep me from doomscrolling too, which we know is all too easy to do.

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INVISIBLE

Your choices don’t have to make sense to anyone else.

As I’m searching for my next big step, I find I can’t help but be a little concerned about what other people will think. Will my next job be prestigious enough? If I pack up and move countries, will the people in my life think I’ve lost it or worse, think it was the wrong decision? But none of that matters. It’s my life, not theirs. And if the choice is mine and not theirs, so are the consequences.

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11/26/25