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There’s a depressing sort of symmetry in the fact that our modern paradigms of privacy were developed in response to the proliferation of photography and their exploitation by tabloids. The seminal 1890 Harvard Law Review article The Right to Privacy—which every essay about data privacy is contractually obligated to cite—argued that the right of an individual to object to the publication of photographs ought to be considered part of a general ‘right to be let alone’.

Like many fundamental assumptions about The Way The Internet Works, the idea that the things you put online stay online feels both arbitrary and inviolable. Once upon a time, the lovable nerds who built the first bulletin board systems decided that anything posted to it would persist on disk until the disk hit capacity, and that (as they say) was that.

I know that human brains gobble up patterns and ritual like there’s no tomorrow, and while there is technically no difference between the December 31st of one year and the January 1st of the next it nevertheless feels like the turn of the year is when I am granted a brief reprieve from physical reality in which I get to believe that I’m the kind of person who can effect change just by wanting it a lot.

I read 104 books this year! Not including 10 books that I started and gave up on. Goodreads tells me that’s 32,886 pages, which seems like an awful lot of pages. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I averaged a steady clip of 2 books per week, but I’m also starting to suspect that I’ve been approaching these reading challenges as an end in and of itself—that is, as a metric to be tracked and gamified, not for the pure enjoyment of reading. Growth mentalities are unsustainable everywhere, even in beloved hobbies. In 2020, I’d like to make a conscious effort to read fewer books more deeply, to re-read books that have shaped my thinking, and with any luck, to write more about them.

One of my absolute favourite things to be asked is whether I have any advice for finding a therapist. This is because:

1. I’m a huge fan of mental health and people getting help and treatment.
2. I’m extremely honoured that people trust me to treat their question with care, to keep their confidence, and to provide good advice.
3. I really love telling people what to do.

I’ve been getting this question more frequently recently so I thought I’d write up a guide for easy reference. I’m located in Toronto, Canada, but most of this advice applies across the board. There’s also a list of self-guided resources at the bottom if you’re not quite ready to take that plunge.

Disclaimer: I have no professional training in health care of any variety. My credentials mainly consist of having had five therapists in four cities in two countries and interviewed many more, so I’ve done this a lot. Comments and suggestions super welcome.