That was 2025

I got a speeding ticket the other day, my first in probably more than 25 years. After a decade and a half of not owning a car, L and I reluctantly accepted a hand-me-down Hyundai Tucson a couple years ago so we could be more nimble for the sake of our aging parents. Not coincidentally, I’ve been driving it a lot lately, making regular visits to the memory-care residence my mom now calls home, or at least she would call it home if she understood that she’ll never again set foot in the house she’s lived in since 1982. As Mom’s cognition slowly declined, my sister and I tried for years to convince her to move somewhere more manageable, but when her initial recovery from spinal surgery in October required us to scramble for weeks-long, round-the-clock coverage to keep her from getting up by herself, we knew that where she lived could no longer be her decision to make. We were lucky to get her into a good place, but the adjustment in the months since has been challenging. Knocked out of her routine, her dementia is more plainly visible than ever. Sometimes she thinks I’m her brother.

2025 was a hard year. Anyone who says it wasn’t is someone I don’t trust, like people with fond memories of high school. A ketamine-addicted billionaire dismantled large swaths of the federal government, crippling foreign aid, scientific research, regulatory agencies, and so much more. As these departments and services were hollowed out, DHS’s numbers ballooned, deploying swarms of masked thugs to snatch brown people off the street and force them out of the country. We’re on the wrong sides of two major foreign wars and angling to start a new one of our own, a fresh game of blood-for-oil, just one of the effects of our abandonment of climate science and renewable energy. Also in the crosshairs: fair trade, trans people, Somali Americans, and anyone who dares suggest Charlie Kirk was anything less than the second coming of Christ. To be clear, one thing the president and I agree on is that Kirk’s assassination was a horrifying tragedy. Where we differ is in offering that same designation to the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner at the hands of their own son. The president publicly gloated about that one. Domination and undisguised cruelty are this administration’s organizing principles, and it’s heartbreaking that tens of millions of my fellow Americans are apparently perfectly fine with that.

Some health and business neglect caught up to me and my finances took a hit. Freelance work dried up and full-time work remained elusive. Amid the dearth of client work, personal work didn’t really fill the void. The most significant projects were the book I made from L’s master’s thesis, a wraparound mural in our living room, and the launch of my website’s long-gestating redesign. They’re not nothing, but I otherwise got nowhere with making art and music. I didn’t take in all that much art, either, though music is another story. That’ll get its own post.

I enjoyed some good new films from not-so-new filmmakers (Weapons, One Battle After Another, Bugonia, Marty Supreme), but I may have spent even more time with TV series, revisiting Twin Peaks in the wake of David Lynch’s passing and turning into something of a Jeopardy! fanatic. L and I were also grateful to discover the very deep catalog of the very silly British panel show, Taskmaster, whose low-stakes absurdity has been an indispensable balm in these dystopian times. I was excited for Vince Gilligan’s return with Pluribus, but it’s impossible for me not to see it as a too-timely allegory for so-called AI, and its seemingly ambivalent stance on the subject is hard for me to stomach.

If the people running things continue to have their way, and I think they will, 2026 is going to be another rough year. But I have a partner who is the best person I know. I have a little dog who’s overjoyed to see me every time I come home. And for as sad as my mom’s situation is, her new community gives me bottomless opportunity to forget myself and show others patience and kindness. If I’m going to do anything of value in the year to come, I need to focus less on the ways I’m helpless and more on the ways I’m not.