"So This is the New Year"

And other neutral thoughts about 2025

Dear Friends,

First of all, before I get into my neutral thoughts about the new year, I do want to include a non-neutral—dare I say positive—note about 2024. That positive note is gratitude. Of course I’m grateful for my family and friends and my IRL community. But also, I’m grateful for YOU! (some of whom are my IRL community). I’m grateful to you for reading Cramming for the Apocalypse and for engaging with the content I create.

This is a lonely business and can often feel one-sided without a true sense of who is reading what I write and what they think about it. The comments and likes and frankly just the analytics that show me that people are actually reading what I’m writing fills my cup.

And I just realized that in the past few weeks, I surpassed the 2,000 subscriber mark and, while this isn’t necessarily a number that peaks the interest of publishers, it is hugely significant personally. I appreciate all your support, your likes, your comments, and every single share.

On that positive note, I move into the realm of the neutral.

Your friend,

Elizabeth

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With the new year approaching, there’s that innately human temptation to put way more stock into the fresh start than is probably realistic. I mean, who has actually kept their New Years’ resolution? I have yet to keep any resolution I have ever made (even the No Buy Year from 2023 — which I actually didn’t do that bad on).

And perhaps 43 years of experience has finally led me to just accept the new year as just another day. Not that I don’t think of the new year as a fresh start, but my feelings about this oncoming year feel much more neutral than they ever have been before. In that vein, I’ve had the lyrics from Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year” cycling through my mind that seems to describe where I’m at:

So this is the new year
And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance
In the distance

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
Or self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

A song just observing the fact that another day is happening and pretty much nothing has changed just because we crossed over into a new year. Seems like a song of neutrality to me.

In fact, I’ve felt pretty neutral all this holiday season. I usually love the coziness and joy and lights during the winter holidays. But this year, the whole joy of the season has kind of gone right through me. I’ll say that I don’t believe it’s depression and I know this time of year is a huge negative trigger for so many people and acknowledge that completely. That is not necessarily what I’m experiencing. But it is a surprise that it hasn’t felt the same as it has in years past.

I trace this numbness back to the election honestly. It feels like I’ve been treating these last couple months as a last chance to zone out before shit gets real. And that, I suppose, brought up more neutral thoughts.

I do hope in the new year that the numbness wears off. It’s a nice temporary coping mechanism, but there’s beauty in the spectrum of feelings we all experience. The sadness and grief we feel—for this planet, for the displaced and killed Palestinians in Gaza, for the houseless people we meet on the street—are essential to keep going because they mean we care. And I do care. A whole lot. And I suppose my body just needed a moment to zone out.

So I’m hoping that in this new year that this numbness recedes. And while I know that making any promises to myself aren’t going to keep for the entire year, I do have goals for the beginning of the new year that give me a sense of agency over both this numbness and of our fate on this planet. Those include:

• Starting off like last year with

  Wendy MacNaughton
  ’s 30-Day Drawing Challenge which was a huge joy for me at the start last year and a great way to move myself out of this numb state.

• Finish stocking our Go-Bags (I have a decent start, but just need to make sure they’re in tip-top shape).

• Make emergency car and bike kits.

• Convene my neighbors again for a neighborhood emergency planning discussion (we held one meeting last year and people were excited, but then we all got so busy and never got another one on the calendar).

• Take my kid on more hikes (aka scavenger hunts).

• Go on a deep dive about the things in nature my kid is curious about (lately it’s been rocks).

• Talk more directly with my kid about climate change.

• Tone down on the alcohol — I’ve realized my 43 year-old body, while likes the taste of alcohol takes a lot more time to recover from it, so definitely for my body’s sake will scale back.

What are your thoughts going into the new year? Are you optimistic, worried, neutral like me? Curious to hear where everyone is at.

And despite my neutrality, I really do wish you all a happy entrance to 2025 and I hope for things to not be as bad in this next Administration as I think they might get. Because we all need something to hold onto to keep moving forward.