I don’t think it is a secret that for many people, 2025 was a terrible year. Many of us felt like it was a nightmare we could not wake up from. As a historian, and a human being, it was a struggle from day to day to see what new awful things awaited us. It pains me to say that if anything came out of 2025, it was how cruel people can be. (As well as how many people were closeted racists until January of 2025).

That being said, a couple of good things happened for me. I published two books within six months of one another, which was no easy task. I also turned *gasp* 40. With that entrance into another decade my tolerance of people, well uneducated people, has found an all-time low. I’ve had to keep my face in check.

As we head into 2026, I am hopeful things can only get better–or at least not any worse. While I am not one for resolutions, as they are stupid and put expectations on people and then ultimately when it doesn’t happen we feel like failures…I have some goals. 1-publish my third book and my first under a pen name as I dabble into a new genre; 2- keeping my face in check if I don’t say what I’m thinking as I tend to say it with my face; 3-try to keep my coffee consumption in check, but hey, I’m an elder millennial, there are days where all I have is the four cups of coffee to keep my sarcasm and mouth in check. 🙂

Honestly, though, I hope that 2026 finds a way for us all to see some sort of sunshine in what has become a very dark time. I also hope that 2026 does not bring us any more parallels to 1930s Germany, because we all saw how that ended up…