Twenty-Twenty-Six

Happy New Year, dwellers of the Internet. I think we can all agree that, at least on the macro scale, 2025 was largely terrible and we won't miss it.

Largely. I mean, the baseball season was kind of great, all things considered. And there was some great TV—Strange New Worlds might have laid a big fat egg, but Plur1bus, Andor, Severance, and Paradise were all pretty awesome. But, critical and important as entertainments can be, those things are ultimately just entertainments, while the macro-scale stuff actually matters to everyone's well-being. Or lack thereof.

On that front, I feel some optimism for this, the year of our standard measure 2026. I mean, in a weird dark-before-the-dawn kind of way. The MAGA cult is cracking, Felon47 is on his way to being revealed to all as at the very least a pedophile-adjacent-and-friendly sleaze that is no longer useful to his cadre of enablers, and the pain inflicted on the country at large by the Republican party will be a hell of a lot harder for even the most die-hard sycophants to ignore. There will be political chaos and a midterm reckoning—with lots of attempts at election-rigging shenanigans by those same Republicans that will need to be fought and circumvented. It's going to be ugly.

Yet, my sense is that when we reach New Year's 2027 we'll have made it through the worst of it. Wishful thinking? Maybe. Nevertheless, it feels like this is the critical turning point year, the time when we either reclaim the concepts of free democratic governance of, by, and for the people or chuck it all away and usher in the new dark ages. I'm betting we end up choosing the former.

Personally, on the micro scale, I have no expectations. I don't really make resolutions because when I've done so before they are quickly forgotten. But I have ... inclinations, if not outright goals for the year to come. I had thought I might take a trip to Japan in 2026, perhaps even for the opening rounds of the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo, but the financial reality of living in Felon47’s fuck-you economy has made that pretty unlikely. So my not-quite-goals will be more homebound, or at least hometown-bound.

I want to add several new items to this website's sketchbook section. Very few additions made it in the last couple of years.

I want to write more stuff. Be that blog posts, political essays, ruminations, whatever, writing is a good processing tool for my screwy brain. I may even write some fiction—I have an idea for a sci-fi story, but it needs fleshing out; I have a concept but no characters yet, I need to populate it if it's going to ever be something.

I want to enjoy my umpiring gig more this year than last. Not that last year was a bad experience on the whole, some of it was pretty sweet, but I let some stuff get into my head that damaged my calm, to paraphrase Firefly. I want to be more zen about things on the field this year, specifically things that involve players being combative. Also to be better at shrugging off calls I have to guess at. (Unsurprisingly, those things sometime go together.)

I also want to be in better physical shape. Problem with that is, I don't really want to do the stuff required to make that happen. So the almost-goal will be to strike a balance between lazy and fit that feels acceptable. Making better use of the bicycle when the weather warms up should be in the mix.

At some point I want to clear some of the crap out of my garage.

I want to add some more variety to the things I cook. I've started this already, learning some winter soup recipes, but I should try some other things too.

I want to be better about checking in with certain people. Like, right now I'm realizing that I haven't seen or spoken to Stacey and Alicia since August, which is suboptimal to say the least.

And I want to be open minded when Starfleet Academy drops later this month and not simply assume it's going to suck because of how SNW season three and Disco season five went.

Anyone else have thoughts on what's coming this year?

Posted on January 2, 2026 at 5:34PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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