These are the books, tools, music, and resources that show up throughout Camera Dark. Not sponsored. Not curated for clicks. The things I keep returning to and pressing into people’s hands.
Books
The Sober Diaries — Clare Pooley
Clare Pooley named the Wine Witch for me. I couldn’t stop laughing and crying at the same time, sometimes on the same page. This is the book I hand to every woman who is quietly wondering if it’s time. It is funny and honest and it will crack something open. Also available on Audible, which is how I recommend most people start it – I did, with her lilting british accent pulling me in and letting me know that I wasn’t alone. This book was a huge first step for me of acceptance for my sober minded journey.
The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
I read this during one of those 4am sessions when the muse was finally roaring and the resistance was louder. Pressfield named the thing I had been fighting for years. Every creative who keeps burying their work needs to read this. I return to this book more times than I can count.
Turning Pro — Steven Pressfield
If The War of Art names the enemy, Turning Pro is the decision to stop playing games with your own life. It is a very short book but full of fuel and motivation. Read it after The War of Art. Repeat.
Do the Work — Steven Pressfield
The third book in the Pressfield trilogy. It is not philosophy. It is a manual. Open it when you are stuck and it will tell you exactly what to do next. The title is the whole message. Inspiration is fleeting, act on it. NOW.
Mind Magic — Dr. James Doty
The neuroscience of imagination, compassion, and what happens in the brain when you choose to see yourself differently. Doty writes with the warmth of someone who has been lost and found himself, which makes the science land differently. This one changed how I talk to myself starting with my very first breath in bed, every morning.
The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
Everything I had felt in my body for years and never had language for. Van der Kolk explains why the physical practice, running, Pilates, diving, movement of any kind, is not separate from the emotional work. It IS the emotional work. One of the most important books I have ever read.
The Practicing Stoic — Ward Farnsworth
My grandfather Papa gave me OCRO, Our Cup Runneth Over, without ever calling it Stoicism. I discovered it wasn’t just about a bunch of old grumpy guys in togas. Thankfully. Farnsworth shares a starting manual for what I had already been living. This is the Fight Club I didn’t know I had joined. If you want the philosophical backbone behind sober-minded living, this will definitely help to open doors of knowledge.
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
The most powerful man in the world writing private notes to himself about how to be better. He never intended these to be published. That is what makes them so powerful. I open this book at random when I need a reset and somehow always manage to land on exactly the right page.
The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday took Stoicism off the dusty shelf and put it in your running pack. The premise is simple and it will rewire how you walk toward every SNAG: the obstacle is not in the way. The obstacle IS the way. I have tested this in deserts on four continents. It is true.
Daily Rituals — Mason Currey
One of my most favorites – leave it laying around for random inspiration and ah-has. How 161 writers, composers, painters, and thinkers organized their days. I read this looking for permission and alignment and found structure instead. Every creative life finds a daily practice. This book shows you how the greats built theirs, morning by morning, cup of coffee by cup of coffee, sleep by sleep. Fascinating.
Nightbitch — Rachel Yoder
The most honest book about the feral, buried, unmapped part of a woman’s interior life that I have read in years. It was the film with Amy Adams that first pulled me in. But, read the book first so the story remains your own, your own perspective. It will explain something about the face you put on every day that nobody talks about.
The Alchemist / Manual of the Warrior of Light — Paulo Coelho
Two books, one conversation: follow the signs, trust the journey, the treasure is never where you think it is. I return to these when I have lost the thread. Coelho writes like he already knows the ending of your story and wants you to stop being afraid of it.
Godwink Stories — SQuire Rushnell
A Godwink is what happens when something so perfectly timed and improbable lands in your life that coincidence doesn’t quite cover it. I started noticing them everywhere once I had a word for them. Rushnell gives you the word. The rest of the noticing is yours to do.
5-Minute Gratitude Journal
Five minutes. Morning and night. It sounds too simple to matter and it has completely changed my daily practice. This is one of the unsexy daily implements I write about in Camera Dark, the small portable tools that actually keep the machinery running. I was skeptical as my daughter gifted me this one but I was wrong.
Becoming Supernatural — Dr. Joe Dispenza
This is the brain science that explained why I could actually rewire after fifty. Dispenza made neuroplasticity real for me, not as a concept but as a daily practice with a how-to. You can change the wiring. This book shows you the mechanism and the strength of your own power.
Slow Productivity — Cal Newport
The antidote to the Hoover Dam crack in my wall. Newport argues that the frantic, pile-it-on approach to work is not productivity at all, it is performance anxiety with a calendar, a demon we are all well too familiar with. This book gave me permission to go deep on fewer things. I am still learning how to take that permission seriously. Work-in-progress.
Apps & Tools
DayCount
Simple sobriety tracking. One number on your screen every morning. Some days that number is all the reminder you need that you are doing the thing.
Marco Polo
Asynchronous video messaging for your people. My sober sisters and I use this daily, and it is where some of the most honest conversations of my life have happened. It is not a social media platform. It is a private room for the people who actually know you.
Oura Ring
Sleep and HRV tracking that actually changed how I respect recovery. The data does not lie and it does not care about your excuses. If your readiness score is low, rest. I have learned more about my body from this ring than from years of ignoring it.
Garmin
My race companion across four continents. Fitness and recovery metrics that travel as well as I do. When your watch knows how many miles you have run in the Gobi Desert, it earns a certain loyalty.
Peloton
I came for the spin and stayed for the meditation. The instructors who make space for stillness inside movement are doing something important. This is the daily practice that bridges the physical and the sober-minded.
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The Pattern / Rising App
Daily intention through an astrology lens. I use this not as fortune-telling but as a prompt for reflection. Some mornings the framing it offers is exactly what I needed to hear and I have no rational explanation for that.
Zeel
On-demand massage that comes to you. After 155 miles through the Atacama Desert and a long career of showing up for everyone else, I have learned that the body needs tending. This is one of the ways I do that now without guilt.
Music
These recordings are woven throughout Camera Dark. Each one earned its place at a specific moment. The context is part of the recommendation.
Paul Horn — Inside the Taj Mahal
Mood music for deep reflection. Horn played his flute inside the Taj Mahal and recorded the natural reverb of the chamber. The result is something between music and silence. Put this on when you need to think about something you have been avoiding.
Miles Davis — Kind of Blue
Grief, presence, and blues as language. There is a reason this is the best-selling jazz album ever recorded. It is not happy music and it is not sad music. It is honest music. Put it on when you are sitting with something you can’t quite name yet.
Barber — Adagio for Strings
Mile 60 of the Atacama Desert. Out of gas, no voice, ready to quit. My phone shuffled to this. I started laughing at the dark comedy of it and then I started running. It is the stripping away, the piece that plays when everything else falls off and what is left is just you. I can never hear it without being back on that road.
Keith Jarrett — piano recordings
Dream music. The abyss. Jarrett improvises for hours at a time and finds something in the space between notes that I cannot explain and cannot stop listening to. The Cologne Concert is where I start people. Then you follow your own thread from there.
Aretha Franklin
The musician who channels everything. When Aretha sings she is not performing, she is transmitting. I put her on when I need to remember what it sounds like when someone gives everything they have to a room. Then I go try to do the same.
Jethro Tull
Flute rock. The return of the musician in me. Ian Anderson played the flute like it was a lead electric guitar and nobody told him he couldn’t. That permission is contagious. I rediscovered this on a morning when I needed to remember I was still a flutist.
Bill Evans — piano recordings
Grief music. Evans plays like he is mourning something beautiful, which he always was. There is a tenderness in his touch that I find essential when I am processing something I cannot speak yet. Waltz for Debby first. Then you will know where to go.
Simple Gifts — Shaker hymn / Copland arrangement
This hymn is about Papa. About OCRO. About the idea that the gifts were always there and that simplicity is the portal to finding them. Copland’s arrangement in Appalachian Spring is the version I return to. It will open something in your chest if you let it.
Bollywood playlist
The unexpected joy playlist. There is a particular kind of happiness that Bollywood music produces that I cannot explain and do not want explained. Put it on when you need to remember that joy is also a valid destination.
Outkast — Hold On, Be Strong
The title is the message. I don’t need to say more than that.
Healing African Music — Soothing Zulu Voices & Tribal Rhythms
There is something in this music that bypasses the thinking brain entirely and lands somewhere older. I use it for meditation, for writing, and for the mornings when I need to feel connected to something larger than the to-do list.
Jhene Aiko — Alive & Well / I Am Not Afraid
The titles say everything. These are the songs I put on when I need to remind myself of where I am now versus where I was. Aiko writes from her own uncovering and you can hear it.
Beautiful Chorus — Faith’s Hymn
Pure opening. I play this on mornings when I need to start from a place of trust rather than resistance. It works every time.
Brian Eno — A Clearing
Ambient music as a state of mind. Eno built a room out of sound and called it A Clearing. That is exactly what it is. Background music for writing, for thinking, for the kind of quiet that makes the muse feel welcome.
Podcasts
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Mel Robbins is the person at the end of the bench who grabs your arm and says you are not done yet. Start with the Stacy Sims episode on menopause and training, which is one of the most practically useful hours I have spent listening to anything. Then stay for the rest.
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Iris DERKE 