I’ve had some bad years. As I’m sure, have you.

One extremely bad one, my best friend Alli got me tickets to Serpentwithfeet for my birthday in June. I was turning 28. My year had been hellish, just hard walls all around and I had lost my sense of self. Halfway through the tender, melancholy, love-filled concert she leaned over and whispered, “this is gonna be your year, I just know it.”

The tears were immediate. I squeezed her hand. “I hope so,” I said.

This has been a year, with ICE terrorizing Chicago and everybody feeling less safe each day and uncertain about what hope there is for the future. This has also been a year personally, for better and for worse. I was doxxed by Fox News, I had three showings of Lost Boys workshops in process, I was published three times in Chicago-based zines, I ran a camp where we put on a Prescient and Important Piece of Art, and I lost someone I loved a lot. I had a housewarming party to mark one year in Chicago, I went and visited my older sister Sarah in Manchester with the whole May sibling crew, and I became a professor and teacher coach in Chicago Public Schools, a job so rewarding it’s unbelievable.

So, in ways it was my year.

But here, at the end of December, in a bit of shambles, it’s hard to remember that.

I’ve been to a lot of yoga lately (see above shambles). In one class, the teacher expertly led us in a circle on our mats. “How beautiful, just like the year turning,” I thought to myself.

“What do you want to take with you?” He asked, a refrain throughout the class. “What do you want to leave behind?” My mind whirled as my body spun. What would I take? What could I leave? At the end of one year and the start of another.

Inexplicably, in the last ten minutes of class, his hot take arrived, expertly deployed when we were at our dizziest and most vulnerable to suggestion. “And why wait for an arbitrary marker like a new year, a degree, a new hour?” he intoned. “We can do these transformations at any time, without the artificial markers of time or status.”

Like, riiiiiiggghhhtttt…? But it’s literally the last week of December? So… New Year’s? So, because this is the designated time for reflection and turning a new leaf, should we… not?

I texted Alli about this and she replied that she had encountered the same thing in a yoga class in the Northeast, where she is with her girlfriend for the holidays.

Curious. Do yoga teachers nationwide have a vendetta against New Years? Alli’s teacher kept talking about how much more important people’s birthdays are than New Years. On December 29th. Namaste. Lucky you if you’re a Capricorn I guess (I’M JOKING WHAT A CRUEL FATE).

So today, against the advice of yoga teachers who would have us BURN THE CALENDARS AND TREAT EVERY DAY LIKE NEW YEARS EXCEPT ACTUAL NEW YEARS BUT ESPECIALLY OUR BIRTHDAYS I texted Alli, eager to turn over a new (...and purely artificial) page, “Do you think 2026 is going to be my year?”

“Hell ya,” she replied, “But maybe starting on your birthday.”

So cheers to six more months of this (my birthday is in June), and then the tide turning. I want to get back into regular writing, and you guys? I’m sorry for dropping off. I know it doesn’t impact anyone really except me, but I love writing, and I love you, whoever you are who is reading this and not just deleting it.

Here’s to a beautiful 2026, whenever you may be reading, but maybe Only and Especially if it’s your birthday.