Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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Back in college, in what would eventually become the breakdown year, there was a person who closed out the fall semester by decorating her dorm room door with wrapping paper. It was rather plain paper, so she had written on it, “A long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.” Hopefully you get the song reference. Even then, it felt rather… teen-angsty, and come spring & the breakdown, it felt downright mocking.
But damn if it hasn’t become a MOOD in adulthood. And somehow, it’s become more mocking than it was when I was scream-crying in a dorm room corner.
I genuinely can’t think of a time when I’ve looked back on a year and thought that it had been a good year. But 2025 has been an exceptionally bad year. It was a year where people were endlessly disappointing, and every bit of brightness that could possibly bring me a shred of joy was dimmed by overwhelming forces around it. This was the year of finally going cold turkey on social media, of losing therapists through no fault of my own, and of feeling like I can never just do my job & always have to be on alert. This was the year where, as much as I want to share my original fiction, I realized that no one really wants to bother with it, so there’s zero real point in sharing it. The year where moral hypocrisy & self-diagnosis combined to reach a breaking point. The year where everything cost more while offering less, often without giving you a heads-up first. The year where MY FAVORITE FUCKING STORE CLOSED, and absolutely nothing has been able to fill that void, only making the absence hurt more.
