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Everyone on the internet has been making these fun little graphics of their favorite things in 2025 and I was like, “Oh, fun!” and tried to do my own but between the horror that we’ve all accepted into our lives at the intersection of I-Guess-I-Have-to-Use-Canva and fuck-Adobe-I’m-not-paying-for-it-monthly and also feeling insanely fidgety and overstimulated I went, “Ah, fuck this,” and tapped out. Then I saw twelve people I think are actually kind of annoying do it, so also felt righteous in deciding to tap out. And then I was like, what the fuck am I doing, why don’t I just do this the way I used to? Words! That’s what I’m about! Thank god!
I watched a lot more stuff than I have in recent years in 2025 and I liked a lot of it, even though not all that much was super new to me. I liked the first episode of The Pitt but haven’t watched anymore because I don’t want to see All That while I’m eating which is when we’re usually watching something. We watched the first season of The Peacemaker which I was really shocked to enjoy as much as I did. We’ve watched five of six episodes of Heated Rivalry, which I’ve already mentioned enjoying. I liked the new Superman (enough to re-watch about half of it on cable when I ran into it at my parents’) and loved Biosphere and What’s Up, Doc? and felt very fondly toward the entire trilogy when I finally watched Lord of the Rings.
I read a decent amount — sixty books, seventeen of which were DNFs — and I really liked to flat out loved Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere (the only book of hers I’ve read, likely to be the last because her plots don’t usually interest me) and Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea and Natalie Sue’s I Hope This Finds You Well and Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, the last of which I listened to as an audiobook because I finally taught myself how to listen to them this year! Which also meant I was able to listen to and love the Beastie Boys Boook and to also reread both Heated Rivalry (for the third time) and A Deadly Education (for the second) which is particularly lovely because I’m not very good (or generally interested) in rereading things!
I did NOT listen to very much music this year which really pains me. I did make another year of monthly mixtapes (Every month since January 2020! Even amidst all the everything!) and so heard some new stuff in the process and I listened to a lot of the Beastie Boys as and after I read the book, which I do highly recommend, but the only albums I think I listened to in full more than once or twice were Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal, Dev Lemons’ Surface Tension, and Dinosaur Pile-Up’s I’ve Felt Better, which I listened to a lot a lot.
As I have probably already detailed more than enough 2025 was one of the most stressful years of my life, but so far it’s also had the biggest payoff. I’ve never just picked up my life and moved to a new place on nothing but my own volition before and it was really, really hard and tiring and stressful and I had the worst indigestion of my life for basically six months, but I also got to realize how lucky I am to be able to do it at all and now I get to live in probably the second most beautiful place I’ve ever been (I’m sorry, nothing is ever beating California) where I keep meeting nice people and there are interesting things to do and I get to keep doing a job that I like and feel fulfilled doing.
  
In 2026 I want to keep taking care of myself and connect with more people and the world around me. I want to go to a museum a month! And go out in public! And see live music! And maybe even go outdoors where there are bugs and creatures and plants and water! I want to write! I want to partake of many wonderful things other people have created! I want to keep donating money and helping out where I can and in the grand tradition of picking a word of the year, I want to outlast. I want to outlast all my bad thoughts and ill health, mental and otherwise, I want to outlast the people who wish I were dead, I want to outlast my own suffering. I want to outlast my short attention span and my bad attitude. I want to stick it out!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I hope your 2026 is full of hope and positive change and comfort and joy and laughter. I hope you have your needs met and exceeded. I hope you find ways to share your wonderful self with other people and to make things. I know you’re a good one and we need you around.
In a bout of homesickness and youthful nostalgia, I got super into dousing my cut up fruit (mostly pineapple, but also cantaloupe) with chamoy (Forritos Pulpa at this time because it’s what the Mexican grocery had) and Tajin and it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. A lot of the chamoy and Tajin and Lucas type candies and stuff were too spicy for baby me (though I would absolutely house one of those Lucas spaghetti things when passed to me or the watermelon suckers covered in chamoy and Tajin on occasion even tho they killed me afterward) but my college commons had the kind of classic fruit salad mix pre-condiment-ed and ready to eat so the nostalgia has been pleasant anyway. You really gotta get the ratio just right but even when it’s wrong it’s sooooooooooooooooooooooo good.
We watched Fallout on Amazon like everyone else (in line with the zeitgeist for once!) and I really liked it a lot. I don’t play video games, so my entire experience of Fallout prior to the show was guys in college hearing the old-ass music I was listening to and going, “Is this from Fallout?” and me going, “What the fuck is Fallout?” I thought the worldbuilding was really well done without like, totally infodumping everything all at once the Ghoul is EXACTLY the kind of character I love (and is so hot lmao) and I think Lucy is such a good character to follow through the story. I thought the first seven episodes were really well-paced, but I did spend the eighth screaming for them to get the fuck on with it already, so I don’t know what that’s about really, except that canon onscreen romance always A-L-W-A-Y-S slows shit down and sucks all the energy out of it, so that sucked, since both those characters had been so good and interesting and exciting up to that point. ANYWAY, I will watch season two when it comes around I think and that’s about as good as it gets recommendation wise from me.
We also watched the first three(?) episodes of Hacks which I really like but find difficult to make myself put on for some reason? The episodes are actually sitcom length, which should in fact make them very easy to put on, but here we are. We’ll get there tho, I believe.
My attention span and ability to focus are still absolutely in the toilet but I read Zan Romanoff’s Look and really and truly loved it. Maybe, emotionally, the closest I have ever felt to having my own high school experienced rendered. Great writing, an engaging narrator, and a story that just felt very real and relatable, even when it was a bit much because being a teenager is a bit much tbqh.
Okay that’s it for now! Perhaps soon my brain will step off my own neck and I’ll be able to, like, intake information again! Dream big!
The only thing I want to wear right now are the Oilers sweatshirts we’ve accumulated from their collabs with 22fresh because the quality of the sweatshirts is soooooooooo good. They’re warm without being stuffy, heavy and a little oversized, and super comfortable. I’d probably order some straight up 22fresh ~merch if they believed fat people exist. At least the Oilers do for now tho! I accidentally made an OCD rule that I couldn’t wear team gear on game days so I haven’t gotten to wear them as much as I would have wanted, but come cooler weather and the new season we’re breaking that dumbass rule real quick!
I watched Dune and liked it a lot, even though I did not think I would at all. I also watched and loved Bottoms, which reminded me of my own high school experience way more than one would imagine based on how it all plays out, lmao.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Chappell Roan like all good queers everywhere. I feel like I’ve been listening to “Pink Pony Club” for like eighty years at this point just waiting to get a full album and I wouldn’t have thought it would live up to it, but it did!
I also listened through Men I Trust’s entire discography and was not disappointed even once. I like that you almost never know what to expect from a song, jazzy Carla Bruni-esque almost jazz or low-pro garage-y chick rock and whatever it is they’re doing at any time somehow seems to work.
I, insanely, have absolutely nothing to say about any books this month. I read the first issue of Steeple which I loved, but I can’t read anymore because every library inexplicably only has the first issue and not the first volume and yes, as you can tell, I have yelled about this repeatedly.
In other things, I am hooked on Marcella Gourmet Sweet Pickled Garlic which Crystal randomly bought at Menards. Being midwestern means knowing that some of the most delicious things you can eat will be purchased at your local big box home improvement store and ain’t that grand? Also little s’more bites from Target that we demolished in like two days. I have also become a recent Scrub Daddy convert. I’m not actually big on the original sponges, but the dishwand was recommended to me by a very long time internet friend and she was right, it whips! Isn’t adulthood thrilling?!
Okay, love you, see you soon!
Some books: I’m not having good luck with books this year! But I read some alright ones! Kiel Phegley, Strikers and Stephanie Hoyt, Prove It and Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good.
Some tunes: Games We Play, “Girl Shaped Crater” which i have been listening to on repeat like an insane person. Oh and Kittie’s “We Are Shadows,” which is SO good and also it’s great that while I am experiencing a personal metal revival via this playlist for the 13yo in my heart, so many bands I liked at that age are coming back. And The Decemberists in general, but specifically I’ll Be Your Girl, this time around. 2024! The year I become a Decemberists guy! As I have already said! A lot!
Some eyeball stuff: I am still watching a movie a week and I rewatched The Social Network which is still just phenomenal. Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, absolute TITANS of film, coming together to make a movie about something as stupid as Facebook lawsuits and every second of it is perfect. Sorkin’s a prick, but that man can write dialogue, babey. And everyone’s just acting the hell out of it. Andrew Garfield’s beautiful face haunted with emotion, Jesse Eisenberg’s blank disinterest that you somehow know is because he’s too busy thinking about something else to be present… Fantastic.
I also watched Poor Things which was so much weirder (POSITIVE!) than I was expecting and while the story was fine to good, the sets and costuming are going to be what really stick for me, just absolutely beautiful and stylized and fun to look at for the whole runtime. Also, Emma Stone was GREAT. I don’t care about awards, but for sure she deserved whichever one of those things she won.
Alright, that’s it! See you next month! Love you!
I know I mentioned The Decemberists’ Hazards of Love the last time around, but I’d only listened through it once, I think, and since then I have listened to it… many more times through. I love an album that really feels like it’s MEANT to be heard as an album and is also good enough to actually bother doing it. I’ve never been a big Decemberists guy though of course like any sane person I do have some favorites including “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” and though I have given myself some shit for never bothering to investigate further and thus missing out on many years of enjoyment of this album, I also know that with all things, sometimes stuff just comes to you at exactly the right time and 2024 is my year for Hazards of Love, I guess.
And, after listening to I’ll Be Your Girl several times, the Decemberists in general!
I also spent a lot of time this first quarter of the year listening to Metric’s Formentera which is just 48 minutes of strangely danceable beats under kind of bleak lyrics, which feels appropriate for the world where we’re living in. “All Comes Crashing” kind of kicks my ass like brand new every time – When push it comes to shove / We do not fall out of love / We double down, we do not fade / For all I know / This might be my last night / If that’s how it goes, there’s no one / I would rather be lying beside – like, good god damn, folks!
I also got super into Art of Doubt, so perhaps 2024 is the year of the Decemberists and Metric? Sounds good!
One of my resolutions this year was to watch one movie a week and that’s been going pretty good! I’m ~allowed to rewatch, so I have hit some favorites, but we recently watched The Bodyguard on a whim and it ripped.
Every time I watch a Kevin Costner movie I’m just a little bit amazed that at one point he was basically like, THE biggest movie star in the world and could pretty much do anything he wanted because he’s just not really that good looking (though handsome and human in a way that I feel kind of disappeared from big movies because everything’s a comic book movie and everyone’s ripped and jawsome) and he’s really not particularly charismatic or compelling and YET! By the end of the movie you’re pretty much sold on him and it’s kind of inexplicable and wild tbh.
This one had all the pieces though: Whitney is so beautiful and the songs are so good and all the pieces work just right — hearing “I Will Always Love You” at the bar… CINEMA! — and the harrowing rescue at The Mayan Theater… what a SCENE! It wasn’t necessarily good by any real definition, but it was a MOVIE, and everyone had human looking teeth instead of bathroom tile veneers and I will take what I can get in this day and age.
Also men should always be cutting fruit with a knife in their hand and eating it from the blade. Things would be better if they did.
Okay, that’s all for now! Bye!
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