2025? Jive! 2026? Persist!

Yeah, Meh, Blecch & Eh?

For whatever reason, I no longer feel compelled to sit down and document my life on a daily—or even weekly—basis. I’m lucky if I manage an update once a month now. Why? Am I no longer interested in myself or what goes on in my life? Is something else happening? Am I no longer able—or willing—to crawl up my own ass the way I once did? Is that growth, exhaustion, or just gravity finally winning?

I don’t fucking know.

What I do know is that I still feel the urge to check in and take inventory periodically. Not in a “Dear Diary” way. More in a clipboard-under-flickering-fluorescents way, troubled by a sense that something might be condemned soon. What moved. What didn’t. What broke. What’s still sitting there quietly, costing me psychic rent. So this is an attempt to pin down what’s going on now, what 2025 actually felt like, and what I might be bold enough to try in 2026.

Right now, I’m glad to be alive and simultaneously apprehensive about what comes next — for me, for the country, for the world. My mental and physical health are about what you’d expect for a 63-year-old male who’s been alive long enough to know better and apparently hasn’t always taken the hint to look after himself. Mentally, I still wrestle with depression rooted in childhood trauma and a truly world-class ability to get in my own way. There’s the digitizing I should be doing. The culling I should accelerate. The book I thought I’d be writing. I am very good at keeping a running list of unfinished business and then staring at it like it personally betrayed me.

But let’s not wallow just yet. Let’s talk about what actually happened.

The Yeah!

The biggest one is obvious: I finally got to Europe. Central Europe, specifically. Sweet T. and I went to Kraków in late November. It was beautiful, humane, walkable — all the things America increasingly feels allergic to. I also managed to stub my toe badly enough to lift the toenail and bleed all over the hotel bathroom floor, which led to a pretty serious fight (in anger, I blamed Sweet T. for my stupidity) that we somehow squelched without ruining the trip. The fact that the vacation survived blood loss and emotional turbulence feels like a win.

We’re already talking about where to go next. Malta, via Rome, keeps surfacing — partly because it looks incredible and partly because it’s my maternal ancestral homeland and I apparently enjoy emotional archaeology. I could beat myself up for not valuing travel more when I was younger and more ambulatory or I could make sure to go see some of the world before I croak.

Another win: in June I bought a used 2023 Mini Cooper EV. Is the range great? No. About 100 miles on a full charge is not exactly freedom. But the price was unbeatable. Between the Used Clean Vehicle Credit and what I got for my Mercedes, I ended up with an almost-new car for roughly ten grand out of pocket. That kind of math feels illegal now. If Mini ever gets the new electric Mini Cooper (with more than twice the range) over here (thanks, Trump Administration Tariffs for ruining THAT idea), I’ll look at trading up. Until then, this thing works, which is more than I can say for a lot of shit.

Then there’s the Weehawken Elks. This turned out to be one of the few genuinely life-improving developments of the year. I’ve been hosting karaoke steadily since June — bi-weekly, no less — and even tried out a Trivia Night. Karaoke, to my surprise, brings me actual joy. It taps the same part of my brain that radio always did: running a room, managing chaos, reading people before they derail themselves. I like getting to know my neighbors. I like having a place to go where I’m useful. And I’ve been told (by people I trust) I’ve become kinder since joining. In my never-ending search for a community, the Elks scratch that itch, even with all the frustrations involved in dealing with people who aren’t me.

I created some things this year. Not enough. Never enough. But real things entered the world via my efforts: this Substack, new Aerial View episodes, Elks flyers for events that were successful. In a year where motivation was often hiding under the couch, that counts.

And I fixed shit. LOTS of shit. Real shit. Household shit. Audio shit. Tech shit. Systems that were half-broken and quietly ruining my mood every day. None of it glamorous. All of it effective. Fewer things actively piss me off now, which is honestly one of my main goals in life. A recurring lesson: maintenance beats replacement more often than not. Fixing things instead of buying new ones made me feel useful and reduced friction in ways no upgrade ever has. Some problems weren’t solved so much as downgraded — from crisis to nuisance, from nuisance to background hum. That’s still a win.

In my grand scheme to Swedish Death Clean I managed to unload a bunch of stuff this year — sold some, gave some away. I’ll probably regret selling the ’62 Les Paul Junior and the ’76 Les Paul Custom too soon, but regret is the admission fee. When I check my FOR SALE 2025 spreadsheet I’m honestly impressed by how much went out the door. Even so, I still feel like the walls are closing in.

The Meh.

Politically, the year felt like living with a low-grade fever that never quite breaks. The current administration ran in the background like malware you can’t uninstall. Not something you can argue with — just something you endure. Fatigue is at an all-time high. Memes occasionally helped, acting as compression algorithms for despair, but mostly it was noise, agitation, and the sense that we’re all being gaslit by people who failed civics and somehow run everything. I follow too many mostly eloquent people on Facebook and Substack who tend to write LONG, well-argued, reasonable rants about WHAT’S HE DONE NOW?! when it might be better if they all recorded themselves SCREAMING INTO THE VOID for ten minutes and posted THAT.

I also spent too much time — again — in tech rabbit holes, chasing elegance, optimization, and the fantasy that the next device or workflow would simplify my life. It never does. Research remains an extremely convincing way to avoid doing the one thing that actually matters.

A major valley this year was my lack of progress on the book NIHILISTIC. I thought I’d be further along. I thought I’d have more pages, more shape, more forward motion. Instead, it mostly sat there like a judgmental object. Part of that is fear. Part of it is distraction. And part of it is knowing that once you really start writing a memoir, you don’t get to control which truths stay politely offstage. It turns out avoidance is easier than honesty. Who knew?

Money anxiety never left the room either, though it felt less personal than ambient. The broader economic picture, the endless talk of instability and looming crashes, the sense that everything is balanced on a rickety card table — it all made it hard to feel secure even when nothing was actively on fire. The vibe was: This is fine, but said through clenched teeth.

The Blecch.

Family relationships continued to fade without the courtesy of a big blow-up. We’re down to a late-in-the day one-line text back-and-forth once or twice a year (birthday, Christmas) with my sister and absolute radio silence from my brother. No phone calls. No invites. The contagion extends to nieces and nephews. One cousin I regularly spoke with ghosted me entirely (but I’m grateful for the cousin who’s still in touch). There’s no dramatic confrontations to write about. Just absence. Silence. A slow, awkward shrug. I shouldn’t be that surprised. Our parents didn’t quite set us up for success on the “staying close” front. My brothers and sisters and I were mostly at each other’s throats growing up, fighting for whatever love, affection or resources existed. My mother had five children in five or six years and none of us got enough time alone on top of the parental hill to feel spotlighted, special. Things were especially bad between me and the brother closest in age, who must’ve felt pushed aside when I trundled along. But my position as “the baby” didn’t lead to me feeling sheltered so much as resented for being a usurper, which led to ongoing conflict and confrontation. In terms of my status as Uncle, past is prologue: my father didn’t seem to care if he ever saw his brothers and sisters, treating it as obligatory and a pain in the ass. My mother enjoyed having one brother around but the other was the black sheep and chaos reigned when he appeared. So we didn’t grow up exactly valuing those extended relationships. Cue today, when despite my best efforts to remain in the loop, I’ve been moved into ever-further orbits. It’s deeply frustrating to know I didn’t choose this and there’s nothing I can do about any of it.

If our family dynamic was a topless joint out by the airport it’d be called BARE MINIMUM.

Friendships, too, are much diminished. I’m disappointed by the near-total lack of contact with a long-time friend who lives maybe 45 minutes away and never seems to have time. There’s always a reason. There’s always been a reason. At some point you stop calling it bad timing and start calling it data. Other friends fall off the map for reasons never known. It becomes more and more difficult to keep people around as you age.

Here’s the darkly useful part: as painful as this all is, it also removes a certain kind of restraint. There’s less to protect, to manage. And less incentive to soften the edges. In that sense, the fading relationships may be exactly what finally gives me permission to write NIHILISTIC the way it actually needs to be written — without worrying who’s going to be uncomfortable.

It’s not like the people not talking to me or going to stop talking to me, right?

The Eh?

I’m not big on resolutions, but I do have intentions, which feel marginally less embarrassing.

I want to do more international travel. Not just “nice places,” but meaningful ones. Places where friends reside. Where family is. Malta isn’t just a destination — it’s a chance to stand somewhere my people stood and see if anything clicks.

I’d like a deeper connection with the Elks — not just karaoke, but building things that last. We need to raise our visibility. Signage would help. More community-centered events would. too. One idea I’m serious about revisiting is a regular flea market I’m calling FLEAHAWKEN. I like the idea of turning the Lodge parking lot into a place where stuff changes hands, neighbors mingle, and entropy briefly takes a day off. Next year needs to be a REAL cull and FLEAHAWKEN would help. Not just to make a few bucks, though that wouldn’t hurt. The deeper reason is simple and bleak: I want Sweet T. to have far less to deal with if something happens to me. Less stuff. Fewer decisions. Less forensic sorting of a life lived sideways.

I’m sure I said this at the end of 2024 but I also want to fall back in love with the guitar. Not as an investment, not as clutter, not as an object to catalog — but as the thing it was before all that. An instrument. A companion. A way out of my head that doesn’t require a subscription.

I want to figure out how to regularly release a podcast again — or, better yet, get back into live radio. That format still feels like home in a way almost nothing else does.

I need to revamp my moribund website and do something with all the audio I’ve digitized (and will).

And I want to stop circling NIHILISTIC and actually write the fucking thing. Not perfectly. Not heroically. Just honestly.

As for our boys, Marty and Baby Billy, I’d like to be less “Cat’s In The Cradle” and more “World’s Best Cat Dad” in 2026.

Finally, I want to deepen my relationship with Sweet T., the person who accepts and loves me despite my flaws.

Closing Inventory

So that was 2025. I’m glad to be alive. I’m uneasy about what’s coming. More things work now than they did in January. Some things broke and stayed broken. Some people drifted away. Some unexpected structures — like karaoke nights at a fraternal lodge — ended up mattering more than they had any right to.

No resolutions. No forced optimism.

Just an honest accounting of what moved, what didn’t, and what I’m dragging with me into whatever comes next — hopefully with fewer boxes and a better grip on the guitar.

Happy Fucking New Year.