New year, new me? Absolutely not. New year, new format for newsletters with the hope of maybe sending them out more often? Sure!

(With a lot of thanks to my BFF Jess who encouraged me, whose format I am more or less stealing, and whose newsletter you should read.)

Where I’m At

Well, it’s January. Time to look back at 2025, and look ahead at the year that’s just starting. I even have a shiny new planner.

Without getting too far into the details, it was not a particularly good year. There were bright spots — I knocked on doors for Zohran Mamdani, so seeing him get elected was extra cool — but mostly it can be summed up with this screencap:

Despite all that, let’s do a quick look back at my writing goals for 2025:

• Do another — final? — revision pass on the Decay book and start querying it
• Figure out what comes next
• Pre-write and zero draft

I am pleased to note I have accomplished all of those. It was a struggle, and 2025 was the lowest annual word count I’ve had in, uh, awhile… but that’s why I’ve been trying to for years to divorce the idea of a high word count from success. (Sometimes I fail at this, but I’m trying.)

Given all that, for 2026, let’s keep it super simple: I want to finish the year with a rough draft of my next project. I’m calling this one “Space Whump”.

There are some secret hidden goals within this: I want to rebuild good habits around writing, something I lost in 2025 due to health, work, fascism, and you know, the general 2025-ness of it all. I’d also love to use that 10,000 words per month benchmark from a few years ago for the months when I’m actively drafting, but that’s really a nice-to-have, not a necessity… Because more importantly, I really want to enjoy the process. At this point, that means not putting too much pressure on it in terms of said benchmarks and deadlines and whatnot. So we’ll see.

A Thing I Made

One of my bright spots in 2025 was being part of a ceramics studio. This is one of the few things I’ve managed to do for myself, for fun, without putting a ton of pressure on Being Good at it. I’m doing it because I like doing it. I like making things. And then those things can be used! In real life, by real humans!

Annoyingly, halfway through the year some of my joints rebelled and I was unable to sit at the wheel… but that meant I started working on hand-building instead. I was able to make gifts for friends and I’m delighted by that.

Here’s what I made for my sister:

I’m proud of this one because I am not someone with any innate talent, or practiced skill, at pretty much any visual art. Painting flowers was very intimidating but I did it anyway, and now the tray is in use on my sister’s dresser. Which is pretty cool!

Some Stuff I’m Enjoying

My last read of 2025 was The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986-1990, by Jonathan Mahler. You can get the gist from the title. It was a really fascinating, in-depth look at New York in the late 80s — how it gave rise to some people whose names I won’t say (but I hate), how attempts to dig the city out of its financial hole led to it being more unaffordable than ever, and more than anything, about racism. I’m not sure if “enjoyable” is the way I’d describe reading it, but it gave me a lot of context for the city I live in now, so I’m really glad I read it.

On the TV front, I watched and loved Heated Rivalry last month. It was a breath of fresh air to see something that was queer, full of joy, and not ashamed about sex. That’s definitely the energy I’d like to bring to 2026.

Finally, gaming-wise, I’ve spent the last four months slowly making my way through Hollow Knight: Silksong. The first Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games of all time and I waited more than six years for the sequel. Silksong is incredible, but also I’m very bad at it. I’ve put in 122 hours (that’s double the estimated time it takes to complete) and I can’t even begin to guess how many times I’ve died. But I am determined to finish it! I’m actually pretty close, I have all the prerequisites needed to fight the (true) final boss, so now I’m just mopping up… and then I suspect it’ll take me a few weeks to get through that last big fight. We’ll see!

That’s all for now. Feel free to send me recommendations for what you’ve been enjoying!