Put this year down gently

Some years don’t want to be summarized. Some years just want to be put down gently and left alone.

(Frankly, with the year we’ve all had, discretion feels like love)

And yet here I am, writing, because daggone it, I missed you.

One silver lining of (1) losing my entire neighborhood in the Eaton Fire (2) trying to hold a shaky remission through all that (3) rebuilding my entire life thanks to your help this year is that I stayed largely off social media.

(And then nearly fully exited this past month)

It just wasn’t compatible with trying to stay alive. These days, I am happy to report, I spend almost no time on my phone. It makes me a less reliable person, but a much happier one. I still run my business and pay my bills. Here in the forest I also have a desktop computer and a desk chair and girllll last night I finally lived out my true dream of buying a landline.

(I will hear none of your criticisms about the cost/practicality and only the words of you real supportive riders)
(I spotted it in Japan a few years back and have coveted it ever since)
(It has not been made since 2018, so I had to buy it through their version of Marketplace and also acquire an adapter, it was a production)

In any event, when I was searching for it online Google auto-translated some of the Japanese buttons, and I felt the faulty result was prescient/hilarious enough to warrant a purchase. Behold.

So yes. I bought a Japanese landline that apologizes like the rest of us.

(Where was I?!)

Right. Phones, social media, the dying beast that won't die.

(Is social media not dead yet?! If not, why not?!)

I don’t know if it is dead, because I have been trying to stay alive/away from it as we’ve discussed. So I don’t know if it’s still customary to reflect on the year as I did while billionaires had their claws in my frontal lobe. I do think there is some merit to taking stock of a rough year, though, so in honor of the beast that keeps beasting, today I will do whatever version of my own here on th’ol Substack, which you and I have been plugging away at for five (!) years (and which increasingly feels like social media, but that’s for another time).

It will be for the chronic illness girlies, the girlies who learned how to stand up to toxic positivity, the girlies who finally, finally, stopped trying to save everyone on earth and maybe bought themselves a fountain pen this year.

(But first we tongue in cheek talk shit)

My own beloved husband is writing one of these as we speak, so I am legally obligated to pull my punches a bit. Regardless, here are some examples of the year end post from my perspective.

1. A Fine One: You woke up and went to bed every day of 2025. Things happened. You are not trying to alchemize meaning out of it, you are simply marking time. This writing is brief, factual, unembellished. It does not ask me to clap, cry, or reflect on my own mortality. You write it because it seems to be what people do these days.

2. A Good One: You had a year that threw you sideways, upside down, inside out. Something cracked. Something reassembled. You learned lessons you didn’t ask for and would not recommend. You speak to your community about those lessons not to prove growth, but because you genuinely wish someone had said this to you earlier.

3. A Well-Adjusted One: You understand that the internet is not your therapist, your diary, or your redemption arc. You say what’s true about this year without trying to make it impressive.

4. The Worst One: You’ve had a year that had some good stuff, maybe fantastic stuff. Maybe stuff you’ve dreamed of your whole life, I don’t know, I don’t know your life. You also had a year like the rest of us. Some days you woke up hating yourself, some days you dissociated in the shower. Instead of doing the above three, you:

   1. create a shiny carousel with the best moments

   2. (Arguably worse): Create a shiny carousel with the best moments + a performatively vulnerable caption about learning experiences and life’s challenges and the sweet ends of life and such. The implication is that the suffering has already been processed. That pain has been efficiently converted into insight. That nothing unresolved remains. That if our year is still messy, we are somehow flawed and/or behind. You write it because other people make you feel insecure and you need to participate in the phantom race.

(I don’t distrust joy, and I don’t distrust vulnerability)

I distrust packaging. I distrust the idea that we owe coherence on a schedule, or that December 31st requires a lesson plan.

I also heartily miss holiday cards.

(Shout out to those of you keeping the pony express alive and lighting up my fridge)
(I want photos of your family and five to fifteen sentences summing up your year!)
(Tell me about the new dog! Please!!!!!!)

I myself made no such holiday card because this year was a lot of flaming garbage.

(Can you imagine?! Five to fifteen sentences?! I cackle!)

But now that I’ve set myself up for failure with all that shit talking, here are some year end facts I like from this hellscape of a year. These are not highlights. They are things I genuinely wish someone had said to me earlier. They were largely achieved with the help of every single one of you (and I will never, ever stop saying thank you for that). Without further ado…

Things That Counted in 2025 (even if it was the last week of 2025)

1. I called Anna more. There is no way to quantify her in words, she’s too good, so I won’t try. I hope you have an Anna. I hope you call her more.

2. I stopped mindlessly consuming (There is a difference, it turns out [blergh] between resting and numbing out)

   1. I’ve been doing The Artist’s Way with Anna, Jason, and Molly. Week 4 asks you to stop reading. I took “no reading” to also mean no social media or streaming TV. It was disturbingly difficult.

   2. I have spent approximately 17 years watching the same four comedy shows on repeated rotation. In their absence, I had an unbelievable amount of time. I organized our label vinyl closet. I took a 40-minute bath. In doing these seemingly non-art-related things, I realized how much my favorite numbing activities had been drowning out. My body has been talking to me for years, I just never sat still long enough to hear it. The resulting space has been delightful and astounding, albeit excruciating at first.

3. I got a crossword puzzle book like the 84 year old lady I really am. (This sounds small.) (It is not.) Exclusively New York Times Tuesdays. Just easy enough. Keeps me off devices and gets me closer to my dream of being my darling grandmother in Oakland. Delightful.

4. I asked for help. Not once, not bravely. Repeatedly, awkwardly, and without a plan. I learned that independence is not a virtue, and that when I don’t ask for help, I am denying people the chance to do the very service I love doing so much.

5. I got deeply into fountain pens and ink. Two rounds of shows in Japan this year did not help my wallet re: this habit and I have zero regrets.

6. I learned how to set a boundary and then hold the gaze of idiots.

   1. (The gaze is the hard part, the boundary is just words)

   2. (The only way to accomplish this is practice, but it is such delightfully worthwhile practice)

7. I learned how to stop masking and then hold the gaze of idiots.

   1. (I am so much weirder and so much less social than the people who’ve known me my whole life think)

   2. (At a recent holiday party I answered a callous question with exactly the right amount of words and then watched a man look back at me terrified while chewing three and a half macadamia nuts)

   3. (He eventually about faced and tottered away)

   4. (Best gift of 2025, by a long shot)

8. I stopped saving people. This was 8 years in the making, but it took the breaking of my body and the literal burning down of my home to finally make it stick. (Thanks, unpredictable / sometimes cruel universe!)

9. I learned the balance between advocacy and humility in the medical world. In 2024, for example, I had a nephrologist who was making critical and terrifying mistakes. In 2025 I took the trauma from that first doctor and way overcrowded the genius who fixed that guy’s mistakes. Sometimes you have to just admit that you write songs and are not a doctor. This is an act of trust, and the boundaries shift. It can, unfortunately, only be learned with time and experience.

I held a remission.

This week José and I had some of our first days off in literally five years. We did crosswords and hugged each other and watched Do The Right Thing. I baked his beloved Grandma Bev’s chocolate cookies.

I don’t know what next year holds and for the first time in a while I really don’t care that much. I finally, finally understand that I have very little to do with what will be in the next 365 days. Regardless, I thank you for being here for the last 365 of them. I hope you have a crossword, an Anna, a 40-minute bath. I hope you hold the gaze of whoever your idiot is, or, even better, get rid of that person in the first place.

But most importantly, I hope you put this year down gently and leave it alone.

Love
t