2026

About nine and a half years ago, amid all the jokes about how awful 2016 was, in the middle of a Within the Wires meeting, Jeffrey said Meg says this will be the best year for ages.

I've seen a lot of people talking about their terrible 2025. I feel like most people I know had a brutal year – I know I had a brutal year – and we're all glad to see the back of it.

But maybe it's worth taking a moment that this has been a really difficult decade. We are in the middle of difficult times. It's been ten years of learning that the rough stuff doesn't happen in a montage. We keep feeling like surely something has to change soon and then it just continues to get worse.

I don't have a lot of optimism for the year ahead. Recession looms, the fascist ascendence continues. History goes in seasons and this season will end – I just have grown tired of looking for the end only to be disappointed.

But there's also no point in being a downer about things. Life is hard but it's full of joy as well; there are dumplings and crispy sunny days and good books and stupid in-jokes, and we continue to hold those things sacred against the absolutely unhinged evil we're bearing witness to right now, and against the dull tedium of a life with more struggle than is fair.

So what the hell, here are some ins and outs.

Out:

• Spotify. Look, I took way too long to cancel Spotify but I finally did it and now I have Qobuz instead and god, it's so much better? Good things are possible?
• Generative AI. Obviously this was never in for me, but please god, kill it, kill it with fire.
• Feeling insane all the time. I don't know how to achieve this, but we must. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of living in a world made ridiculous by the rich idiots we've allowed to dominate it. They are insane, not me, they have made the world insane and it is time for that to end.

In:

• Nice smells in the house. We've been burning these little cone incense things from time to time and it's delightful.
• Pop music that is not in English. I know everyone's excited about Rosalía's Lux, and that's correct, but I've also been enjoying Zaho de Sagazan's La symphonie des éclairs. Sometimes it's nice to not know what a song is about, you know?
• Leaving your phone in the other room. Sorry I didn't reply to your text immediately. My phone was in the other room. No I didn't see that viral tiktok. My phone was in the other room. What other room? Don't care, whichever, not this room.

That's it, that's all. Happy new year.