It’s New Year’s Eve, I usually do this on New Year’s Day.

I have a carefully curated structure for evaluating and updating my aspirations for the coming year that I really like, and I’m throwing it out the window this year.

I’m in bed wearing fuzzy footie pajamas with coffee and lavender quick bread to nibble on my nightstand. I thought about photographing it and posting it to my foodie channels when I made it last night. I didn’t, nor the delightful banana mini muffins or banana fritters I made from a large block of frozen bananas I had. Social media is a black hole where I spend way too much of my precious personal spoons, let alone feeding the content creator monster.

I usually spend New Year’s Eve with my bestie and her family, and I’m not doing that this year, either. I’m choosing the calm sanctuary of my own home and probably won’t stay up until midnight, either.

I usually write down things I want to leave in the year gone by and burn them just ahead of midnight, and I’m just not feeling that ritual, either.

I the Person

It’s been a highly irregular year and challenging to say the least. There have been high highs and some low lows, and I’m just left with a “is that all there is?” Feeling about much of life, the universe, and everything. In the better news department, nearly 6 years after their passing, the estates of my mother and step-father are effectively closed. Except they’re not, not really. I’m still tying up loose ends, still fighting cryptic, unresponsive bureaucracies to resolve some lingering issues. I can’t tell you how many hours, nay days, I’ve likely spent on hold for and talking to customer service reps at various governmental and financial institutions over the last 6 years, or how many times we’ve had to repeatedly submit the same paperwork because they don’t have it. It’s often been like shouting into a void. On the work front, I survived a very tumultuous start to a new job that I nearly quit several times because I genuinely didn’t believe it could get any better. It has, mostly, enough to feel like a win, though the work is still fairly grueling and we still don’t have a fair contract, which means I’m officially losing count of how many times I’ve been on strike in my 15 months at this job and there will be more to come. Working on an academic calendar meant that I was able to take the summer off, albeit uncompensated, though there’s no question that my physical, mental, and emotional well-being demanded it, and I’m likely to take this coming summer off, too, just because I can. I applied to, was accepted, and subsequently lost my spot in the 2026 Master Gardeners program due to a shameful bureaucratic oversight. While I was gutted, this gives me the opportunity to continue practicing earthcraft, which I’m frankly a novice at, and get deeper into the details of how to work around some of this work as a blind person. Food preservation, something I am much more practiced at, is what I will be doing more of in 2026, since I’ve just been accepted to the 2026 class of Master Food Preservers. In the meantime, I’ll continue squeezing in work at my constellation of farms and gardens with an eye toward joining the Master Gardeners program in the future. Mostly, though, my full time job just seems to suck all the life I have to give and when I’m not working, I mostly just need deep rest. It leaves little room for the tedium of personal life administration, let alone tending important personal relationships or participating fully in my community. If there’s one lesson I’m taking from 2025, it’s the urgency of strengthening personal relationships and building community in whatever ways you are able. The world, and America in particular, is on fire. It always has been, and Billy Joel tried to tell us that back in 1989. The devastation is, however, taking a hockey stick turn, and personal relationships and our community networks are our most vital tools for survival. The positive externality to this post-apocalyptic hellscape is that it is clarifying my values and boundaries and helping me dig my heels deeper into the side of history where I know this meaningless speck of a tiny human stands. I can better recognize the many privileges I have and use them to offer a hands up to those struggling behind me, not pull the ladder up as I see so often around me now.In a society that is rapidly becoming more and more precarious for increasing numbers of people, I find myself reasonably secure. I’ve got two hands–I can extend one to someone in need while I continue to hold my own oxygen mask in place.

We the People

Yes, nurture local networks and communities, never losing sight of the fact that our government is our collective community as a nation. Without it, we are not American, just splintered little fiefdoms bickering over a linear political spectrum while greedy billionaires loot our treasury, buy our politicians, and erode justice by pressing their fat thumbs on its scales. We are right where they want us to be–strapped, struggling, fighting, and bleeding out in an economy designed to endlessly extract every resource regardless of consequences to both human and environmental well-being, privatize profits and socialize costs. When they’ve extracted all the time, labor, and money they can from you, they will not think twice about casually discarding your lifeless husk. They don’t care who you voted for, as long as you’re too busy fighting with someone about it or otherwise distracted by the culture wars to notice that the real war is the class war, and billionaires are winning. But go ahead, tell me again about all the other subgroups of Americans that don’t deserve to be here, let alone be treated with dignity and respect because that somehow takes some of your pie. There’s way more of us, all of us, than there are billionaires. Without some class solidarity that rises above other demographic labels, we will all continue to struggle and lose. We need you, too, professional class, you’ve also been fed a lie. You’re much closer in characteristics to poor and working class folks than you are to billionaires, and we need you at our side on these frontlines, too. America has always been unique among developed nations, and for reasons I’ve struggled with and some I’m even proud of. It has, however, become glaringly obvious that we are unique among. Developed nations for all the wrong reasons, and the list just keeps getting longer. How anyone can truly see who we are as a nation and not just be okay with it, but fiercely defend it, simply blows my mind and erodes my faith in humanity.

Then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is. Or just have some quiet reflection time with my SO and cats and just go to bed like it’s Wednesday night. On a personal level, I’m doing OKAY, neither flourishing and thriving, nor struggling or on the brink of collapse. And as 2025 goes, it feels like a win.

Another List

Though I’ve developed a template for this annual reflection and list crafting for future guidance that I really like, I’m not gonna lie, it feels overly complicated at times and there’s always a nagging voice in the back of my head asking me if I really want a list of to-dos that grows longer as I age? How can I retain the spirit of this practice yet simplify over time? So instead of a traditional #26For2026, I’ve been instead inspired by the quantity of 26 and its correspondence to the number of letters in our alphabet, which creates a perfect opportunity to pay homage to the best burger joint ever, in my little hometown of Lompoc, CA, Tom’s, the Home of the Educated Hamburger, which is known for it’s alphabetized menu of 26 burgers. I’ve translated my existing #25For2025 onto this list, editing as I do for shifting interests and priorities, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it:

Asset inventory

Body care

Community engagement

Debt management

Emergence

Friends

Garage reclamation

Hire housekeeping help.

Injustice to one is injustice to all.

Just keep swimming!

Kindness is free., avoid those who are excited that punches are, too.

Love by default.

Mindfulness

New home

Organize & declutter

Professional Development looks like becoming a Master Food Preserver and more.

Question everything

Rest is Resistance, and recommended reading.

Solidarity

Tattoos

Union Power!

Verdent & vibrant

Write your will

X is a placeholder for a special project

Yarn crafting

Zhuzh it up whenever possible.

Happy New Year, y’all, may the odds be ever in our favor.

Lavender Quick Bread with Lemon Glaze, recipe courtesy of Kneady Girl