Some people say that summer begins on the Solstice. Some say summer begins when schools let out. I, personally, think that summer begins the first time I get an ice cream cone.

So you can imagine my delight when this Longreads reading list popped up for me yesterday. Each of the articles and essays Blackwell includes in her roundup celebrate not just the history of this (in my humble opinion) pinnacle of culinary perfection, but also the genuine human creativity that’s gone into this delicious treat for hundreds of years.

People have been eating iced desserts since approximately 4000 B.C.E., but new flavors are still appearing every year, and people are continuously finding new ways to write about it. In a publishing landscape where there are genuine debates and organized pile-on campaigns about whether or not someone owns a particular set of facts, it’s lovely to remember that actually, it’s wonderful when multiple people love the same thing so much that they all want to tell other people about it.

What single topic could you write an entire essay about? What makes that particular topic so interesting to you? What is it tied to? (A memory? An experience? A person or place? What emotions do you associate with the topic? (Is it something fun or enjoyable, such that learning more about it makes you happy? Is it something that sparks your curiosity? Is it something driven by fear or anger or worry? If so, does learning more about it make you feel better or worse?) What do you think that topic says about you?

Prompt: Make your own “reading list” on the topic you focused on above, aiming for 4-6 articles, essays, podcasts, videos, etc — ideally ones you haven’t found before! Take some time to explore each one. What do you learn? How do you feel? Create about it.

One of the most exhausting parts of political moments like this one is the constant reminder that we’re undertaking a marathon, not signing up for a sprint. What’s needed right now isn’t just people to turn up at a few “No Kings” rallies, go to a single postcard-writing event, or attend a webinar about local elections. What we need — fortunately and unfortunately — is people who can identify one issue or action and then stick with it.

Anyone who’s ever worked in the nonprofit sector is familiar with the idea of mission creep, when an organization’s work starts to expand further and further out from its original stated scope. For movements and organizers, that means staying focused on what can realistically be done with the resources you have, in the moment you’re in, even when that means making some really hard choices.

For individuals, those hard choices mean, as Sassaman writes, “[saying] no to almost everything so we can say yes to what we truly need to do to win.” That means being realistic about our limitations, as well as our strengths. If you’re a single working parent of small kids, you probably can’t commit to regular actions that place you at increased risk of arrest, or that require a consistent in-person presence at events during peak dinner-and-bedtime hours. If you’re a person with chronic illnesses that can flare up unexpectedly, it’s probably not a great idea to sign up for regular shifts driving others to appointments or picking up urgently-needed supplies.

But when we’re not spending time stretching ourselves thin trying to do everything or struggling to fit our strengths and schedules into incompatible actions, we can invest more heavily into the areas where we can have the most impact. If your issue is voting rights, maybe that looks like a weekly phone banking shift or a weekly voter registration tabling event, rather than both. If your issue is immigration, maybe that looks like volunteering for an ICE-spotting hotline, rather than trying to trying to fit being a court observer into your schedule.

It’s not that the choices aren’t difficult to make — it’s about understanding that strategy comes before ego. Saying “yes” to everything might feel good in the moment, but if it leads to burnout within three months, those good feelings won’t help anyone.

We’re in this for the long haul. Let’s do our best to stay in the game.

What hard choices have you had to make in order to feel less powerless in the ways you’re showing up in this current moment? What are you saying “no” to, so that you can make a bigger difference when you’re actually able to say “yes”? How do you feel when you have to turn something down? What helps you in those moments? When you think about the movement(s) you’re involved in, how do you feel about the way they function, strategize, and move towards change? What, if anything, would you do differently?

Prompt: Think back to a moment when you had to choose how to invest your time or energy into one particular movement, issue, or action. How did you feel about the choice you made in the moment? How do you feel about it now? What might be different in your life today if you had chosen differently? Create about it.

I’ve written before about how much I love it when people use technology to create something fun and interactive for no other reason than the love of the game. The newest example I’ve found? Reading Maps, an interactive database where visitors can explore and recreate fictional journeys from literature.

Leo Tolstoy famously said, “All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” If that’s the case, then mapping tools like this are a new way to look at half the great stories ever written — and engage with, if you decide to play some mapping games or fill out your own little journey passport. Readers can also submit requests to the site with new books for Loutsaris and Moreira to adapt into maps.

Because what they’ve figured out with this project is one of my favorite aspects of creativity in general: That creative works are always so much more fun when they’re shared.

Is there a fictional journey that stands out in your memory? What is it about that journey that made it memorable? What did the creators of that journey do to make it feel real? Was there anything you learned from that as a creator yourself? How does that fictional journey relate to the most memorable journey you’ve ever taken in real life? What makes them similar? What makes them different? What did the characters in the fictional journey learn that echoed in your own experience as a real-life journeyer? How do you feel about the phrase, “It’s about the journey, not the destination?”

Prompt: Draw a visual map of your own most meaningful journey, drawing specifically from your sensory memories. What do you remember seeing? Hearing? Smelling? Feeling? (Tasting?) What emotions come up for you when you recall those experiences? Create about it.

My dad introduced me to Star Wars when I was about five years old, after I saw him watching Star Trek and grumpily asked why there were no princesses in space. That first viewing of A New Hope was probably baby’s first bi awakening (because obviously I wasn’t going to choose between Han Solo and Princess Leia) but also my first exposure to fictional languages — also called “constructed languages” or simply “conglangs.”

Part of what makes the creation of a conlang so interesting is that there’s always a philosophy behind it. Language development, like every other kind of creative work, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s always (no pun intended here) in conversation with other works, whether that’s with “real” languages or other conlangs — or both:

The languages we create, Hewitz says, whether for fiction or computer coding or just for fun, always tell us something about their creators — just like any other form of creative work.

What role does language play in your life, both creatively and otherwise? In what ways is language (whether written, spoken, or experienced) something you’re consciously aware of? How much time in a given day or week do you spend thinking about the way you use and experience language, and when do those conscious moments occur? Are there ways that you experiment, play, or get creative with language, either in your creative work or just in everyday life? What does that look like?

Prompt: Choose a favorite book and pull out a particularly well-loved paragraph (or stanza, if it’s poetry). Spend some time experiencing it on a linguistic level. Read it out loud, paying attention to the flow of vowel sounds, the sensation of consonants. Experiment with different types of inflection and intonation. Look for places where language is used literally versus figuratively. Look for idioms. See if there are places where words or phrases have been borrowed from other languages. What do you notice? What changes in your experience or interpretation of the text? Create about it.