Happy New Year

USA provides the fireworks for a joyous 2026 New Years celebration in Caracas, Venezuela

“...No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future. But know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul…”          - Omar El Akkad

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Every New Year my wife and daughter and I each write out personal goals for the year and then we discuss them. It’s kind of a celebration ritual of all the important things we each accomplished, and a simultaneous sharpening of intention for the upcoming months. We’ve been doing it ever since Sydney was little. 

This past year I’d been tracking my 2025 list regularly. Checkmarks next to several important financial and experiential to-dos provide mild satisfaction. But as this year’s exercise unfolded, I couldn’t shake this overwhelming feeling: 2025 was kind of a shitty year.

Mom passed away. Cancer (not unexpectedly) returned; I’ve been heavily medicated since last May. We experienced several unplanned financial setbacks. I came to the conclusion that my current job will be my last, as I lack the energy to work for as long as I’d always assumed I could. And while money’s tight, managing cancer is a pain in the ass, and I miss my mom way more than I ever imagined, none of these things, individually or collectively explain my profound emotional retreat.

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Our country rang in this new year by bombing Venezuela. I suppose hijacking oil tankers and obliterating small boats on dubious intel was just the pre-party. This week, hooded henchmen are dragging people out of homes and shooting them in their cars. Hyperbolic lies stream from feckless leaders threatening other countries who don’t “play ball”. Europe braces for the sobering reality that NATO may be no more, while trying to figure out how to defend itself not from Russia or China, but from us. Meanwhile, Russia will undoubtedly bomb Ukraine into inevitable submission, and a decimated Palestinian people are doomed to languish in ruins.

America lost interest and changed the channel. Just another Monday here on the Death Star.

All of this was foreseeable; they made no secret what was to come. After losing an election then nearly succeeding at insurrection, conservatives published a master plan for how they would eventually govern. And America voted for it. We voted for this. It wasn’t even close.

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I spend more time reading and writing and thinking about all of this than I should. But this isn’t just a gripping series of novels you can’t put down, this is real life; I feel compelled to pay attention. To care. To perhaps do something. Long before that fateful 6th of January, I had those difficult conversations with friends and family, peacefully but passionately talking about how we envisioned things should go. I engaged our local politicians. I wrote op-eds. I even occasionally found the humor in it all, an albeit dark, foreboding sort of absurdity.

Our last Presidential election was the turning point. I prayed this all wouldn’t come to pass, but it has. And now I must finally meet all of this on its terms, not mine. As I begin what I presume is the fourth quarter of my life, I must pick myself out of this emotional abyss. I need to keep loving hard on my wife and daughter as they have dutifully loved very hard on me through my depression. I need to be there for everything big and small that the next maybe twenty years will bring.  

In 2026, I resolve to recondition my mind, body and spirit to being a good and loving human being again, but I will do so with far fewer people in my life than before. I resolve to forgive humanity for everything that humanity has let happen, and that includes forgiving myself. Forgiving allows me to move forward, but on a new path. To move very intentionally toward what truly serves me and my family, and away from what does not. 

I will move very intentionally away from all those that wanted this.

I will reclaim my soul.

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        ”...I know now there are people, some of them once very dear to me, to whom I will never speak again so long as I can help it. It’s the people who said nothing, who knew full well what was happening and said nothing because there was a personal risk to it, a chance of getting yelled at, or God forbid, a chance of professional ramifications. It’s the people who dug deeply into the paramount importance of their own safety, their own convenience. I feel no anger toward these people, not even frustration or disappointment, simply a kind of psychological leavetaking. An unspoken goodbye…” - Omar El Akkad