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The New Year

2/1/2026

As I get older I find myself feeling happier; the existential dread is receding year over year. I never feel older around my birthday like I do in the new year, in the peak of winter, at the promise of a new spring unfolding. Ahead is a new year that will be better than the last. Maybe I'm just a relentless optimist, and 2025 was a bad year for everyone, but I think 2026 will be better. I will make 2026 good. Looking back over 2025, here is my summary of the art I enjoyed:

In 2025 I read more than I have in a long time (probably since I was a child). My fabvoiurte book of the year was Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico with honourable mentions for Monsters by Clare Dederer, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, and Eurotrash by Christian Kracht. I also made the decision to delete goodreads this year. I found that the dopamine boost of posting about finishing a book outweighed that of actually reading the book and distracted me from the real purpose of reading books. This website took that space for little reviews in a way thats a little bit less social and more isolated while still being public. I look forward to a year of excellent books in 2026.

In 2025 I tried to listen to music more intentionally than the past, listening to whole albums and focusing on only them. My favourite new release of 2025 would have to be West End Girl by Lily Allen with honourable mentions to Crux by Djo and Halcyon by Kingfishr. I also listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan which I had never explored before. I listen to so much music that its tough to define it all without having massive lists of artists and songs but to summarise my main genres were 80's synth pop (The Psychadelic Furs, The Cure, and Depeche Mode), modern folk music (Noah Kahan, Gregory Alan Isakov, Sufjan Stevens), 2010's club music (Avici, Empire of the Sun, Fred Again..), and a genre of my own invention I like to call men and guitar wails (Djo, Prince of Eden, American Football). I'm thinking of a better way to format these collections of music I like but for now you get a list of lists.

Visual art is by far the form I look at the least but I did really enjoy some TV and movies this year. Superman was far and away my favourite movie of the year and I'm so excited for Supergirl: Woman of tomorrow in 2026. David Corinswet's earnest "woke" Superman wearing his heart on his sleeve made me reconsider how I act and behave and gave me the confidence to be more honeest and truthful with my friends and family. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3) was surpisingly great and visually stunning, though I don't think anything can compare to the original Knives Out. My favourite painting of 2025 was Safehold by Deborah Grice; the protected comfort of the tent and the luminous glow of phosporescent pigment to show a feeling within that cannot be seen but can be felt.

I hope I can enjoy as many pieces of art in 2026 as I did in 2025.

Happy Solstice!

21/12/2025

My distant friend, Pound Coin

Winter has always been tough for me. I've never been particularly good at dealing with the darkening afternoons in December. Over the last few weeks I’ve found it very comforting to remember that this is simply how things are; I can be both overwhelmed by the winter nights and better at dealing with them than I was last year. Going outside and seeing friends and family more than ever has really helped to get through the last few months of this year. It turns out speaking to other humans helps me to feel a little bit less like a meh blob.

I really like thinking about human things. By ‘human things’ I mean the stuff that’s important to us the same way as adjective order is important in English, we only notice it when its gone. I love noticing restorative things that we learn we have to make room for in order to function. I’ve included a list of my favourite human things:

As much as technology, science and advancement is humanity. Nature is also humanity, its the beautiful other side of the coin. One side contains the information needed, who or what the coin serves (ie. a monarch, a symbol, or a group), the year of minting, and the other shows the value, the rating of the thin flap of metal, and a work of art, a human thing. The more you look for human things the more they appear, and the search is the fun part so get out there and look for some human things. Today's trinket is a one pound coin, on the artistic side. The four plants, a rose, leek, thistle, and shamrock, contained in a coronet represent the four regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As much as I miss the nostalgia of the dull, chunky, pre-2016 coins I liked these coins when they first came into circulation and I still do. I will be spending this pound coin on a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

Thanks, Ren