So This is the Thing...

Umm, I’m just throwing this out there, but is anyone else done with 2026? I mean, I’m done. What new tortures do we have waiting for us? 2026 is only a month-old baby, and it already needs therapy.

If you live in my parts, there’s an Arctic Blast, and the weather is so cold that I wish I were a bear and could hibernate for the rest of the winter, possibly the rest of my life. I’m not even going to mention what is going on in America these days; I feel like I just want to speak in metaphors about it from now on.

I mean, maybe this is all because we just got over January, and we all know that January contains nothing good but holiday weight, frigid cold, and a wake-up call that we are unable to keep so-called resolutions for more than five minutes. By the end of January, we are so tired we can’t remember what we were looking for when we walked into the room, and now we can’t get out of it. It’s just one extremely long Monday.  We are poorer from the holidays, fatter, and we usually get sick. Am I dying, or is it just viral?

My sister is comparing this time in America to The Handmaid’s Tale. And I keep thinking about that. If you haven’t seen that show, now is not the time to watch it. There were small things in that show, signs before all hell broke loose.

I wish I were more into puppies. I have a friend who can’t stop watching videos about puppies in yoga class.

Image courtesy of Billy Pinig via Scopio

I need to find my distraction from all this mayhem. I should have like an obsession, you know, how some people are obsessed with cows, and they have cow paraphernalia everywhere? Yeah, I need something like that. 

Maybe a new hobby, I hear pickleball is all the rage. I haven’t played a sport since— what am I saying? I’ve never played a sport. Not once in my life. I might be the only person with such a…background. Sports are definitely not my thing, but wow, never, ever. I’m interesting.

I like to read, but that is becoming a problem these days with all the news out there. Music is great, but you can doomscroll while listening to it. And if I continue to scroll through Facebook and hear about one more bad thing happening, I will chop my head off. 

My house, which you can’t really see through all the snow!!!

I could like walk in nature, but it’s blisteringly, frighteningly cold around these parts. I live in Michigan, and it is brutal. People tell me they go for walks, and I just look at them, dumbfounded. Like, why would you do that to yourself?

I can’t even take a god-forsaken drive anymore because the roads are snowy and icy and slippery and kill me now. Until I get a job, how can I ignore all this madness? It’s everywhere; it permeates everything in our culture. 

I want to shoot the shit and not have to think about how the world could be ending. If these are the last days, then I want to party like it’s 1999! I don’t remember the last time I ‘partyied.’ I’m middle-aged. I get tired at ten o’clock. We used to go out at 11 pm in college. Who was that person?

I got to come up with something, like I was thinking baking, but I’m on a goddamn diet! Life is absurd, admit it. You have no idea what you are doing on earth anymore than I do. So baking or knitting makes sense in a world that makes less and less sense every moment of every day.  

Why am I always hungry? Why am I always tired? These are the real questions about 2026 and life in general. This new shit show of a year didn’t pop out of nowhere; it came from a long line of shitty years. Didn’t it start in like 2020 or something, maybe?

There was a pivot; life suddenly changed during the pandemic, and it never went back to normal again. I mean, 2026 has been around for only a month, but we are all waiting in line for the return policy to cancel the free trial of the subscription to this madness before we actually have to pay for it.  

I didn’t sign up for this, did you? What are we all doing here, waiting patiently for the second fall of Rome? Yes, we are experiencing the fall of the United States, unfortunately that’s the hard truth. Where will we go from here?

I mean, what was the highlight of 2025 for me? I discovered Dubai chocolate.

I ate an entire huge block of it in the course of a week and probably gained five pounds. For those of you who don’t know what all the rage is about, it’s this pistachio-filled chocolate. I don’t know why or how it’s so good, but alas, I have to stay away from it if I want to continue losing weight in 2026.

So what’s the new thing we know will take over in 2026? Artificial Intelligence, of course. I mean, it doesn’t even make sense. It’s some kind of magic trick that the computer can know so much in less than a second. In the time it takes me to inhale, the answer to all my questions arrives. 

How do we feel about AI? Probably the same way we feel about 2026. What is it capable of, and will it eventually take my job? Anxiety, that’s about the general feeling it seems around town. We are scared of the present, the future, and the past repeating itself. 

I’ve recently started spending a lot of time in my car; it’s my space. It’s where I sing, cry, scream, crack jokes on the phone, and drive around aimlessly because I need to go somewhere where things are different, so I feel like if I move around enough, I won’t notice that nowhere is different. 

OK, this is all getting kind of too tragic. Again, I’m trying to look away from the horrid accident we call this year; I’m trying to find a way to not see it. I would like to see other things, but I don’t know what those things are. I know I need something new to do, to be, and to think about. 

OK, this all came out wrong. I was trying to be positive. See how well that went? 

What is going on here, people? I need to binge on a show and shut up and mind my own business. I can’t do anymore meditations on the state of things. The state of things is unacceptable, and that is what it is. 

Now moving on, what’s for dessert? I keep forgetting I’m on a diet. I guess it won’t be chocolate for me again this year. I guess I’ll eat a freaking fruit and bide my time.

What are you up to?

nina

P.S. Just to give you a preview, I will be starring in a new podcast called 2 Curries and a Ranch. Here’s a short description: Imagine two loud, dramatic, hilarious Indian women explaining to a white man what it’s like to grow up and live in America. Join us for the laughter, deep thoughts, and witty banter about life, love, and culture. We tell it like it is, with honest, bold, and funny stories, discussions, and arguments. We explore boundaries and challenge norms. Join us for a good talk.

It will be available soon, and I will post it on this blog, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.