What a long year this week has been

How I'm planning for the weeks ahead

This year technically had 52 weeks, but each week seemed to contain 52 years. Every week arrived with its own breaking news, shifting algorithms, and brand-new things we were apparently supposed to understand immediately (Hello, unwelcome iPhone update that moved all my photos to a place I don’t think exists.).

I love the line from Mary Oliver that asks, ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’
Well, lately the answer seems to be: refresh, refresh, refresh.
Not the good kind where you feel whole and nourished and restored… but more like the doomscroll-y kind. The kind where you update the browser just to see what you’re supposed to be worried about now.

It’s been the kind of year where a single week can hold a lifetime.

Birth.
Middle school.
Heartbreak.
Joy.
Despair.
Resurrection.
Dentist appointment.
Small triumph.
Humiliation.
Wedding.
Funeral.
Stepped on something wet while wearing socks.

And that was just one morning.

The news is loud.
The stories are heavy.
The hurt is real.

Meanwhile, a child in my kitchen just told a joke so ridiculous that milk came out of both our noses.

This strange braid of tragedy and hilarity … sorrow and delight … seems to be what it means to be a person right now. The whole world crashing through our phones with too much and somehow still not enough.

We’re expected to keep answering emails,
remember to floss,
and buy bananas,
but be sure to eat the bananas before they go bad
but not too soon before then when they’re green
otherwise they are not bananas yet.

It’s all confusing. And exhausting. I don’t have to tell you this. You already know this.

And yet …

Standing here at the edge of a new year, I find myself wanting to choose something simple and share it with you.

My plan for 2026.

It’s not a big resolution. I’m not optimizing or reinventing myself.
(Though, yes, I would like to become better at many things . And, yes, I do have goals. And, YES, I will finally use and complete one of the hundreds of blank Moleskine notebooks I’ve impulsively purchased over the last year.)

What I’m choosing this year….

Astonishment.

There’s a line from David Byrne I keep thinking about … how for him music is “a way of organizing sound and time.” And then there’s Brian Eno, who once said that art is a way of “slowing down the world long enough to notice it.”

Lately, those ideas have been sticking with me, because I’m starting to feel like maybe life itself is our greatest creative act.

In a world that moves this fast,
paying attention can feel almost rebellious.
And what that kind of attention creates isn’t loud or flashy.
It forms these small, odd, human things
like conversations
and jokes
and moments.

We begin to slow time, hold it, and build beautiful things with it.

So, this is the year of small things and quiet things and odd things.
Real things.
Stuff that A.I. cannot create sort of things.

I will be wowed by well-folded towels.
I will marvel at the first sip of coffee.
I will applaud the person who puts on their turn signal a full, wildly responsible 30 seconds early.
I will celebrate the wild optimism of people who buy plants.
I will notice the quiet heroism of someone canceling a Zoom meeting.
I will appreciate the click of a pen that finally works after three tries.
I will cherish the moment I wave back at someone who is definitely waving at the person behind me.
I will pay attention to people holding doors, and people holding each other together.
I will be grateful for the subtle ways hope keeps leaning back in, even when it’s constantly being shown the door.

I will sit in awe at the fact that none of us really knows what we’re doing,
yet here we are, doing it anyway.

Nobody knowing anything, but all of us knowing something.

“drawing empathy” by Brian Kershisnik

The more I notice the many ways the world is astonishing,
the more I realize…
well, so are you.
And so am I.

That’s when the little things and the big things…
the joys and the messes …
the good parts and even the heavy parts …
all start to feel a little more holdable,
a little more holy,
and a lot more wow.

So, yes. It’s been a long year this week.
It probably will be again next week.

I’m learning to not see this as a problem, but a privilege. A gift. Because, the miracle is that so much can fit into so little time. That a single week can stretch wide enough to hold it all. On days when everything feels as a certain hobbit felt “like butter scraped over too much bread," maybe our work is to remain baffled, but present.

Awake, alive, and always astonished.

If a single week can hold a whole year… imagine what a whole year might hold for those of us rebellious enough to slow down, wild enough to pay attention, and strange enough make something lovely out of it all.

Wow.

If this found you at the right moment, feel free to pass it along.