Today I (finally!) emerged from a post-flu fog and began the arduous task of trying to find the floor. With two little kids, the house is often messy, but this week, with everyone down for the count and survival mode activated, the place was thoroughly trashed. As is often the case after a long illness for me, coming out of that post-sick has always afforded a level of clarity about what is and isn’t important, and when applied to cleaning, I deployed somewhat of a scorched earth policy to what was getting put back versus thrown or given away.

Missing the holiday festivities as the illness ripped through our family was an absolute bummer, though in some ways a fitting end to a true mess of a year. But this process of reclaiming our bodies and spaces made me think more broadly about what it might mean to “clean house” for the new year, beyond the physical. Here are a few things I’m leaving behind.

No more debating the merits of AI: AI is terrible for the planet. It is bad for brains. It is egging people on into psychosis and death by suicide. It is stealing folks’ work. It is making shit up. Any one of these reasons is more than enough reason to stop using AI. All of them together make it an imperative.

I will not be sucked into a “conversation” about how it’s actually my own failing as a teacher if I can’t somehow trick or coerce my college students out of cheating via AI and into doing the assignments they have signed up and are paying for. I will not entertain an argument about how I don’t actually deserve to be paid for my writing because some rich guy stole it and fed it to a machine before anyone noticed it had happened. I will certainly not feed my photos into said machine to make myself look like a Norman Rockwell painting or South Park character. I will not listen to absolute nonsense about how an anti-AI stance is ableist. I will not accept the inevitability of this technology, at least not in this actively destructive iteration.

I will use my own brain. I will disconnect, ignore, and block every plugin foisted upon us. I will resist the proliferation of data centers in my area. I will continue to yell the words of John Oliver into the abyss: “fuck you—make me.”

No to being precious about “genre”: By now we all know that the literary elite (or those who wish to become them) have a hobby of making sweeping declarations on the value and subsequent deaths of various writing styles and trends. Literary fiction is dead. The braided memoir is dead. Hell, all books are dead. The implication is often that we should see folks who deign to work in whatever style the tastemakers have decided to hate this week as uncool, or as the kids were saying at least one point this year, cringe.

I’ve been stewing on it lately since I’ve got a book coming out next year, and that necessitates a certain kind of engagement with the publishing/marketing mechanisms that can perpetuate these kinds of takes in service of SEO and other algorithms. Ultimately, though, I think this is just the book version of Mean Girlism that eventually eats all those who buy in alive.

What if, instead, more folks cheered each other’s work on? Opted out of trends, or categorizations like genre entirely—in books, yes, but also in clothes, in generational warfare, in whatever degree to which the wellness industry believes we should be starving ourselves this month. Read books that make us laugh and cry and think. Wore clothes that are comfortable. Ate things that taste good and nourish the body. Who is best-served by an ongoing cycle of mocking one another for our hobbies and hair parts as the world burns?

In 2026, I’m going for less cynicism. And I hope more people will be able to dispel the fear of being perceived as uncool. Bring back really loving shit and nerding out about it; bring back being earnest.

No to panic loops: Alright, I admit this one is aspirational. Because while I’ve long made my peace with others thinking I’m uncool, I am by NO means a chill person. I am anxious. I can often see the consequences of a given action far out ahead, and to be honest, that can be an unpleasant skillset, particularly in the last few years with respect to the state of our union.

Nevertheless, I think it’s prudent to admit that we have come to a point where we may no longer be able to affect change in our increasingly nondemocratic government, at least until a critical mass of people are ready for a general strike (LFG!). I hope that’s soon, and I’m certainly not suggesting “tuning out” in the interim, but I am going to try to give less of my concern to the firehose of stories pouring out of the federal clown car and focus my energy on the communities where I know I can actually make a difference. For me, that’s within the deaf/disabled community, and locally in the Philly area. What does it mean for you?

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You’re probably all “Best of 2025-ed” out by now, but if you’re still looking for book recommendations, here are some of my favorites over the past year:

• Book recommendations as holiday gifts

• Summer reading recommendations

• Updated list of #DeafShelf recommendations (books by D/HH authors)

• Books for reading slump busting