My "Year" In "review" that's not really a full year in review!
[*DISCLAIMER*: This is a deeply personal year-end reflection written from my lived experience. It is candid, emotional, and intentionally honest. Not everyone will agree with what is shared here, and that is okay. This post is not written to persuade, debate, or soften its edges for comfort. It exists to document my year, in my voice, from my perspective.
This is not a statement on anyone else’s life, choices, or beliefs. It is simply mine. If this kind of writing is not for you, you are free to close the tab with my full blessing.
Comments are welcome if they are respectful. Personal attacks, bad-faith arguments, tone-policing, or attempts to debate my lived experience will be ignored.]
OK everyone. Listen up cause I know your not as deaf as I am.
I did not start the year of 2025 Angry, pissed off and swinging with a big stick of “pissed off”. I Started It with mighty fluffy capybara vibes, gentle hope, and the absolute audacity to think the world wouldn’t light itself on fire.
That was my first mistake and wow was I so freaking wrong.
It actually started hopeful. Cautiously hopeful. The unhinged kind. Like a raccoon stress-testing reality with one paw, three escape routes, and a fully rehearsed fake death. Hopeful anyway. For reasons that now feel legally questionable.
January arrived carrying something genuinely good, which absolutely should have tipped me off that the universe was smiling because it had already calculated the credit and interest I had borrowed from it.
Even though my newly published book “Light of Winter’s Heart” technically entered the world in late December 2024, but January is when it stuck. The launch energy landed. The story moved. People read it, talked about it, and didn’t immediately forget it, which in this economy is saying something.
I watched something that had lived inside me for years step out into the world and survive without me hovering over it like an anxious goblin parent.
That is not a small thing.
Anyone who says it is has never built something from their own nervous system.
Then it became an audiobook. And listen. Accessibility is not a bonus feature. It is not optional DLC. It is not a cute add-on for good behaviour. It matters. Stories should be reachable. Especially stories about survival. Especially when the world keeps trying to quietly erase the people who need them most.
Around the same time, I hit my lowest recorded weight at 189 lbs. That part did not last long, because politics apparently has beef with my pancreas. Losing access to diabetic medication that AISH covered is one hell of a plot twist. But for a brief, suspicious window of time, my body and I were not actively at war.
That ceasefire mattered more than the number. It felt like a ceasefire.
Not joy.
Relief.
The kind that lets you exhale without doing a background threat assessment first. The kind where your body loosens its grip just long enough to remember what neutral feels like.
I was writing steadily. Creating. Planning. Making spreadsheets in my head that assumed the universe might, for once, mind its business. I genuinely believed that if I kept doing the things I loved, things would stabilize.
That belief did not make it out alive.
This was how the year started off, then it became…
“The Year the Volume Knob Snapped Off“
As winter dragged on, the world did not just get louder. It got sharper. Meaner. Dumb and then Dumber in a very specific, weaponized way that always hits marginalized people first.
Politics stopped whispering and started yelling. Costs climbed like they were racing for sport. Support systems began that slow, ominous wobble, the one where you know something is about to collapse but everyone in charge keeps smiling, shrugging, and insisting this is all very normal and definitely sustainable.
*Spoiler*. It was not.
What had once sounded a paranoid delusional fantasy sooner then started sounding planned and scheduled.
Disabled people were not being “supported less.” We were being redesigned into deeper poverty and quietly pushed off the board like a bad line item. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just efficiently, “systematically”.
Then the money pressure hit.
Global Tariffs from a deranged madman drove inflation exactly the way they always do. Downward. Which then affected…well everyone. Rent went up. Food went up. Utilities went up. Everything climbed except supports and the actual ability to survive without juggling knives and reality.
At the same time, I was job hunting. Not because I wanted to. Because AISH and AB Works said I had to.
From January through June, I sent out resume after resume. Over six hundred of them. Six. Hundred.
Not one real response, one conversation, or even a courtesy rejection.
Just silence. Quieter then the absence of the vacuum of space, and the lack of intelligence that exists in this world now.
The kind of silence that tells you the system heard you perfectly and then made a conscious, well-documented decision to stare straight through you.
Not “oops, we missed your email” silence.
Not “we’re reviewing applications” silence.
Strategic silence. [watches a tumbleweed of neurons vanish]
The kind that seeps under your skin and rewires your nervous system like a bad firmware update. It teaches your brain that effort no longer connects to outcome. That input does not guarantee response. That doing everything “right” still gets you nothing but an automated void.
Once that lesson lands, you do not just feel discouraged.
You feel unsafe.
Because when effort stops mattering, the world stops feeling predictable. And when the world stops feeling predictable, your body goes into permanent DEFCON WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL mode.
People with safety nets do not understand this. They cannot. Their brains have never had to run twelve contingency plans just to exist. They have never had to calculate survival like a math problem with missing variables. They get to be disappointed. We get to be terrified.
…Anyway. I need a glass of wine.
Pinot Grigio. The emotional support kind.
Do not judge me. Or do. I genuinely do not care. It was $16 a bottle. The “cheap” wine that I can afford.
Now. Important footnote before someone gets cute in the comments and tries to “well actually” their way into my mentions.
Yes. I did return to my favourite seasonal “part-time” sheltered part-time job at Birch Bay Ranch, as I normally do from May through October. I love that place. I love it with my whole heart. It is one of the few environments where my brain, mental state of health, vast neurons and body agree that we are allowed to exist.
I only wish it were permanent. Year-round. Because if it were, I would stay there until the end of time and haunt the archery range in a cardigan like some kind of benevolent woodland cryptid.
Bright Spots Still Count. Even When the Sky Is on Fire.
March brought a bright spot. An actual one. A real, tangible, “oh right, this is why I do this” moment.
I held a book signing for “Light of Winter’s Heart.”
Readers showed up. Real humans. Face to face. I signed copies. We talked. I listened to what the story meant to them. Where it landed. What it stirred. That mattered. Deeply. I keep that moment tucked away for when the rest of the year dissolves into a noise-soup of forms, stress, and bureaucratic nonsense.
By June, “Beyond Where Lanterns Rise“, the first book in the “Lightkeeper” series, launched into the world.
Watching that series begin felt like laying a foundation. Not flashy. Not trendy. Not chasing algorithms like a raccoon on Red Bull. Steady. Intentional. Built to last.
Stories about faith, resilience, and growing up without pretending the world is gentle or fair or particularly interested in your comfort.
Stories that tell the truth and trust readers to handle it.
July and August. Aka: SUMMER CAMP IS MY THANG!.
July and August were my summer camp months.
My working vacation.
My seasonal DLC.
The only two months of the year where my nervous system loosens its death grip on reality and goes, “oh right. We are allowed to exist OUTSIDE.”
This is my season.
This is where I breathe again. Where I live outside. Move my body. Shine a little. Absorb trees, dirt, sunsets, and fresh air like a solar-powered goblin. Nature. Actual nature. The good stuff.
We do not speak of mosquitoes or wasps.
They are demons.
They know what they did.
They are not invited into this narrative.
This year was eight full weeks of archery.
Eight weeks of teaching.
Eight weeks of doing the thing I am legitimately excellent at without having to justify my existence every five minutes or translate my brain into corporate English.
I ran games.
So many games.
Angry Birds archery.
Poker with arrows, which sounds illegal, unethical, and possibly banned by several international treaties, but is actually just math, probability, and an alarming amount of trash talk from children with terrifying aim.
Balloon rounds.
Team chaos.
Skill drills disguised as nonsense so no one realises they are learning.
And of course. The camp “Hunger Games” equivalent.
Archery tag.
Last camper standing.
May the odds be ever in your favour, and may you not trip over your own enthusiasm.
Also. Candy.
So much candy.
An amount of candy that would concern a dentist, a nutritionist, and possibly a small regulatory agency. The kids got to shoot candy. A frankly irresponsible amount of candy. Which, honestly, might be the purest form of joy left on this planet.
I taught every single day.
I showed up, held space, kept kids safe, watched confidence bloom in real time.
I watched focus snap into place, watched nervous kids pick up a bow and realise, “oh. I can do hard things with pointy objects.”
That part mattered. A lot.
What I did not do much of was… everything else.
I did not attend many chapels, sit at many campfires, not do cabin time.
I missed most shared meals.
Not because I did not want to be there.
But because I was… simply adjacent.
I am the oldest activity program leader by more than double, even three times the age of most of the staff. Fifth oldest overall unless you count admin. I do not orbit in the high-school social galaxy. I am not part of the late-night giggles, the inside jokes, or the group dynamics that happen when everyone else is young, caffeinated, and running on shared memes.
Socially, I was nearly alone. Autism sucks when your old stuck in the mentality of a young mind. Aging body aches win.
I clocked it, felt it, packed it away neatly like emotional camping gear and kept going.
Because that is what I do.
I also wrote more this summer than I usually do. Journal entries. Diary stuff. The kind you do not post. The kind you hide like the Coca-Cola recipe or something significantly darker. Thoughts that needed somewhere safe to live before they started chewing through the walls. But I did have a “Sharon” and an “Alma“. I swear if it weren’t for those two, I probably would have gone bonkers.
I spent a lot of time writing. Engrossed in other worlds, sometimes even in Terraria, and mostly in bed by eight o’clock pm. You know the saying “Early to bed and early to rise makes a person….” wait, I’m neither healthy, wealthy OR wise….
But I did get LOTS of sleep. Even if it was more night terrors than dreams.
And then there was “The Dare”.
Because obviously there was.
I split a human hair with an arrow. No Joke.
No, no one was standing in front of the target. Safety first. Always. I am chaotic, not stupid. It only took seven arrows, which frankly feels reasonable and also very on brand.
That moment punched something important into my brain.
Even when I am socially on the outside, even when I am tired, when the rest of the year feels like a slow bureaucratic boss fight.
This is still a place where I am competent.
Trusted.
Grounded.
Fully myself.
Playing with kids.
And being weird and chaotic in my old age while thinking I am still very young.
Summer camp did not fix my life. But it does help.
It gave me air to breathe and be “me”
And sometimes air is enough to keep going.
Then August showed up like a WWE heel with a folding chair.
When Your Body Changes the Rules Mid-Boss Fight
My shoulder injury did not arrive gently.
It showed up right at the end. The final two days of summer camp. After I had already laid down all the safety rules for our “Hunger Games” chaos. After moi, the Game Maker had done her job.
And then the “Game Maker” got taken out.
It arrived decisively. No warm-up. No warning. Just a hard “oh, we’re doing this now.”
I tripped. On my own two feet. HARD!
Suddenly, things I had done on autopilot my entire life required planning. Strategy. Workarounds. Dressing. Reaching. Carrying. Gripping. Existing inside my own body without swearing.
Rehab started in early September and ran straight through Christmas.
Feelings were replaced with assessments. Instincts replaced with measurements. Grip strength became a number on a chart. Range of motion became a percentage. Functionality got translated into data points and polite clinical language.
And then came the part they say very calmly.
The damage to my right arm left me with significantly reduced mobility, reduced grip strength, and ongoing complications that now directly impact my quality of life.
Not temporarily.
Not “with rest.”
Not “if you just try harder.”
This is the new ruleset.
That injury did not just take movement. It took confidence. It took independence. It took the illusion that if I pushed through, my body would eventually cooperate out of sheer spite.
Instead, it added another layer to my disability.
Surprise.
Bonus content.
Unlocked without consent.
Welcome to Old Age.
At the same time, my body decided it also wanted a vote.
My seizures ramped up, like my nervous system had looked around, assessed the chaos, and gone, “yeah, no, we’re participating now.” Photosensitivity tightened its grip. Driving stopped being casual. Heights stopped being negotiable. My world didn’t collapse all at once; it narrowed. Quietly. Incrementally. Without asking permission.
The physical shrinkage came first. The social one followed right behind it, because that is how it always goes. When your radius gets smaller, everyone else’s patience does too.
This was also the moment AISH stopped feeling like support and started feeling like a carefully engineered trapdoor dressed up as policy.
The news of ADAP. De-indexing. Numbers delivered with a straight face and absolutely no concern for whether a real human could survive inside them. I ran the math more than once, because surely I had missed something. Surely there was a hidden column where this didn’t end in panic.
There wasn’t.
These changes that were coming don’t create stability. They squeeze. They apply pressure until something gives, then act shocked when desperation appears exactly where it was designed to show up.
Losing medication coverage shoved my weight back up to 229 lbs, because stress does that and bodies do not give a single damn about ideology. Biology does not negotiate. It never has. Shocking, I know.
And yeah, a lot of that riled me up.
So I did what I have always done.
I adjusted, rerouted.
I stopped waiting for fairness and started working with reality as it actually exists.
I got wrecked by circumstance. Hard. No warning. No consent form. My body glitched, the system pulled the floor out, and the rules changed mid-match.
So I got back up and “Tiny Tina‘d” fracked back. Not politely. Not quietly. Strategically. With teeth.
Because while everything else was on fire, there were still losses happening in the background that nobody likes to count.
My hearing kept deteriorating.
I am grateful for my hearing aids. They buy me time, and time matters. But I am not naïve about what that clock is counting down. Music has always been how I regulate, how I grieve, how I feel joy without translating it into something tidy and acceptable. Knowing that I may lose that someday is a grief I carry quietly, without spectacle or warning labels.
So I adapted. Of course I did. That part isn’t new.
I leaned harder into sign language. ASL. BSL. I buried myself in languages the way other people doom-scroll. French. Polynesian. Hawaiian. Japanese. Language gives me structure. Structure gives me safety. When the world starts yanking tools out of my hands, I build new ones and keep moving, even if it’s sideways.
Music came back in a different form. With renewed access to AVID Producer, Cakewalk, new VSTs, and my Alesis digital grand piano, I started composing again. Oxygen restored. Digital tracks now live on my site, sometimes with vocal help from a very talented human. (you can find my music on my site with the talented vocals of a good few friends of mine…sorry I don’t sing well, just the music part)
Yes. A deaf person doing music. Wild concept. I am not completely deaf. Not yet. Remove the hearing aids and the world goes silent. Sometimes silence has it’s blessings too. Until then, I work with what I have.
There were losses too.
My violin is no longer playable. I sold my cello. I loved it. I needed the money badly.
Both truths exist at once.
Quiet losses still count.
But they are not the only things that matter.
Some things are non-negotiable.
Teachers matter.
Communities matter.
Canada matters.
Autumn rolled in and the political temperature dropped straight into “authoritarian cosplay.” Listening disappeared. Empathy got benched. Teachers were shoved back into classrooms through forced legislation instead of common sense, collaboration, or respect.
Watching that happen while knowing disabled people were clearly next on the chopping block was exhausting in a very specific way. Not shocking. Not surprising. Just heavy. Systems love force. It is clean. It is fast. Compassion takes work, and this year made it very clear who was unwilling to do it.
Then October hit, and with it came Fall Camp at Birch Bay Ranch. Summer Camp 2.0.
And suddenly I was back where things made sense.
I ran the archery program. I loved it. Truly. Kids learning focus without fear. Patience without shame. Discipline without punishment. Structure without cruelty. Also, let’s be honest, pointy death sticks aimed at round circles are objectively fun and I will die on that hill.
This is why teachers matter.
This is why educators matter.
This is why persons with disabilities matter.
This is why volunteers matter.
This is why advocates matter.
This is why kids matter.
This is why our future matters.
This is why Canada matters.
This is why people matter
This is why God and Christians matter
…This is why common sense matter. Like don’t eat yellow snow and yes Pineapple goes on Pizza.
You do not gut the people holding learning spaces together and then act shocked when everything collapses. You do not undermine the ones teaching kids how to regulate, focus, and believe in themselves, then wonder why communities start cracking at the seams.
You don’t get strong communities without strong educators, foundations of faith, supports for vulnerable people, helping others and more.
And you do not get to call it “fiscal responsibility” while lighting the foundations on fire.
Ok enough of me ranting and raving like a lunatic.
November brought another decision. Not a dramatic one. A necessary one.
I shut down an old project of mine. “Dinner by the Minute“.
Eleven years. A full decade plus one. Not a failure. An ending. I officially closed it on December 31. The recipes aren’t gone. They’ll live on, folded into my personal site where they make sense instead of being propped up as a separate identity that no longer fits.
Sakura Studios is being refocused entirely on my books. The rest of who I am is being packed back into one place. One site. One centre of gravity. Social media left behind where it belongs, like clutter you finally admit you don’t need.
This was not quitting.
This was consolidation.
Narrowing my life until it becomes sustainable again instead of constantly overextended. Fewer fronts. Fewer tabs open. Less fragmentation. The same work, just finally arranged in a way that doesn’t bleed me dry.
Sometimes survival looks like subtraction.
And then Christmas showed up with something unexpected.
Mercy.
Not the loud, performative kind. A quieter version. The kind that slips in sideways when you are too tired to argue with it.
Jasper. Mountains. Snow. Actual quiet. Jasper Park Lodge. Sensory supports that worked instead of pretending to. A piece of art that followed me home and now lives with me like a small, stubborn reminder that beauty still exists.
For three days, my nervous system remembered what calm feels like. Not happiness. Not joy. Calm. The kind where your shoulders drop without being told to. The kind where your brain stops scanning for threats long enough to breathe.
Yes, the six-hour drive home through a blizzard was hell. Life does that. You take the good, grip the steering wheel until your hands cramp, and keep going anyway.
Looking back, I can still count blessings. I have to. Not because everything worked out, but because if I don’t stop and name the moments that held me up, this whole thing turns into a feral scream only my walls hear.
And I’ve screamed enough this year.
As I said before, my biggest accomplishment this year was my books.
My books reached real humans.
Not algorithms. Not vibes. Not “engagement.”
Actual people. Thousands of them.
“Light of Winter’s Heart“, the one that ripped a piece of my soul out and left it on the page, blew past two thousand copies and became a bestseller. That still feels fake when I say it out loud, so I say it louder just to make sure it sticks.
“Beyond Where Lanterns Rise“, the first book in a brand new series, cracked eight hundred and kept climbing like it had something to prove.
“The Destiny Theory“, a short story that took over a decade to finish because apparently I enjoy suffering, refused to die and just kept crawling forward like a spite-powered goblin engine fueled entirely by stubbornness and bad timing.
And then there’s “The Shards“…ooooohhhhh, lol
A brand new series born out of equal parts respect, challenge, and people looking at me and going, “okay, but what if you went even harder?” A dystopian future where universes collide like Comic-Con went feral and someone forgot to enforce the multiverse psychopathic chaos speed limit.
Apparently, chaos is my genre now.
I kept writing when my body said absolutely not. I kept creating when my brain was mush. I learned new languages just to change the pace and mildly terrorize people who weren’t expecting it. I adapted. I pivoted. I did not disappear, despite several systems acting like that would be more convenient.
I “drank” less *hic hic* stuff. Like, actually less. [I need more wine]
I read my Bible more. Some days I’m pretty sure I’m Job reincarnated with worse Wi-Fi.
I let go of half my stuffed animal collection, which sounds ridiculous until you understand how much safety lives in softness, and how much I need my fluffy things to stay human.
I survived this year on hard mode.
No tutorial.
No safety net.
No pause button.
No reset either.
That counts, right?
Because I’m counting it.
And Now. 2026. Sit Down. Shut the fuck up. We Need to Talk.
I am not entering 2026 looking to be fixed.
I am so profoundly, deeply, cosmically sick of people trying to fix me. Unless your my psychologist or therapist.
I am well aware that my health needs care. That part is true. I am not completely delusional.
But I am not that broken, just relatively broken.
And I am done being treated like a problem to be optimized, minimized, managed, micro-managed, macro-managed or quietly nudged into something more convenient for everyone else.
2026 is not about a fresh start.
Fresh starts are for people who get to wipe the board clean. That was never on the menu.
This is about a different path.
My path.
Not the world’s, or society’s, and definitely, not yours.
But Mine.
That means I am done carrying other people’s expectations like unpaid emotional debt. Done believing every crisis is somehow my responsibility to fix. Done chasing belonging in places that made it very clear I was only tolerated, never wanted.
I am protecting me now.
My energy.
My limits.
My right to stop without explaining myself like I’m on trial.
I am moving slower on purpose. Fewer relationships. Better ones. The kind that don’t require constant translation or performance. I am finishing grief chapters that nearly swallowed me whole instead of pretending they didn’t happen. No more hiding my autism. No more sanding my voice down to make it easier to digest.
No vows or promises.
Just a hard pivot.
A recalibration.
A decision to stop sacrificing myself to prove I deserve space. I ran out of swords.
And since we’re being extremely clear.
I AM Canadian. Loudly. Intentionally. With my whole chest.
Public healthcare matters. Community matters. Mutual responsibility matters. Full stop. No footnotes.
And Alberta separation can go kick rocks directly into the sun. I am not interested. I did not consent. Take that nonsense elsewhere.
God and I are tag-teaming 2026.
I bring the grit.
He brings the timing.
Table flipped.
Glitter bomb deployed.
Controller unplugged mid-cutscene.
I lived.
You do not get to delete me.
SO what was 2025 like?
It was The Year I Stopped Playing Nice With Reality
Somewhere between July heat, arrow dust, and dragging myself back to my room after 6-hour camp days, it clicked.
Not gently.
Not in a “breakthrough” way.
More like the moment you realize the floor has been tilting for a long time and everyone else just kept walking like that was normal.
I have been living permanently braced for impact.
That is not resilience.
That is a long-term emergency posture.
It looks impressive from the outside. It is hell on the inside.
And I am done pretending that white-knuckling existence is a moral virtue.
Let’s Stop Pretending This Was Random
This year did not “happen to me.”
It was built.
This did not happen all at once.
It came policy by policy. Cut by cut. Decision by decision. Quiet enough that you were supposed to miss it. Polite enough that you were supposed to thank them for it.
Persons with disabilities did not suddenly become less capable in 2025. Nothing about our bodies or brains changed overnight. What changed was our convenience. We became harder to ignore, harder to fund, harder to justify in a spreadsheet. That is a very different thing, and it matters.
ADAP will not feel like reform. It fells like a warning label slapped directly onto my life.
De-indexing AISH did not feel like budgeting. It felt like a slow eviction notice written in friendly government fonts so no one had to feel bad about it.
When medication coverage turns into a political football, your body pays the price. When employment systems only function for full-time bodies, everyone else gets treated like a rounding error. Not wrong enough to fix. Not valuable enough to protect.
And I am not interested in pretending any of this was neutral.
Neutral is a myth people use when they do not want to name who is getting crushed and who is doing the crushing.
Socially Speaking: This Was a Ghost Town
Let’s talk about the part people love to skip.
Disability is isolating even when you are technically “around people.” Especially then. Especially when you are present, visible, and still somehow not accounted for.
This year made it painfully clear who was there when things were smooth and who vanished the moment things became inconvenient, complicated, or not fun anymore.
I am not bad at friendships.
I am exhausted by asymmetrical ones.
I am done explaining my limits to people who hear them as suggestions. Done translating myself into smaller, softer, easier shapes. Done carrying relationships that collapse the second I stop compensating and overfunctioning.
That is not bitterness.
That is accounting.
Something Has to Be Cut Loose
There is a version of me that does not get to come forward into 2026.
The one who stayed too long, one who bled quietly to avoid conflict, who confused being useful with being valued.
That version kept me alive when survival was the only objective. I am not ungrateful for her.
But she is no longer in charge.
This is not a glow-up.
Glow-ups are cosmetic. Temporary. Designed to look good under fluorescent lighting and collapse under pressure.
This is a controlled burn.
The kind you set on purpose so the whole damn forest doesn’t go up later.
What 2026 Actually Needs to Look Like
I am not interested in “thriving.”
Thriving is what people say when they’ve never had to recover from their own life on a weekly basis.
What I want is simpler than that. Harder, too.
I want a life that doesn’t require constant recovery.
2026 needs to be quieter. Narrower. Sharper around the edges. Less impressive to outsiders. More functional for the person actually living it.
That means fewer projects that drain me dry just to prove I can still do them. More work that actually fits my capacity instead of fighting it. Fewer people in my orbit, but better ones. The kind that don’t require performance, translation, or emotional overcompensation to stay.
The books that matter will get finished. Not all of them. Not at once. The real ones. The ones with weight. The rest can wait, be shelved, or die quietly on the cutting room floor without ceremony.
My body doesn’t need to be punished into compliance. It needs to work with me, not against me. My home doesn’t need more things piled into it. It needs space to breathe. And my joy doesn’t need a reason, a price tag, or an explanation. It just needs room to exist.
No Promises. Just a Direction Change.
I don’t make promises to myself. Promises assume stable ground, and I’ve lived long enough to know the ground moves.
What I am doing instead is changing the rules.
I am done measuring my worth by output, endurance, or how much I can absorb before I finally collapse. I am done volunteering my nervous system as public infrastructure for broken systems and other people’s convenience.
I am choosing a version of myself that survives without disappearing.
Not softer, or quieter. And I’m not sanding myself down to fit into someone else’s comfort zone.
Just mine.
And One More Thing. Because This Matters.
And I love broken records…
Being a Canadian and an Albertan. I stand in both without shrinking myself.
Not as a slogan. Not as a vibe. As a set of values I actually live by.
I stand with Public healthcare, because care should not depend on wealth or luck.
Disability and social supports need and should exist, because disabled lives are not optional or expendable.
Teachers need to be acknowledged and treated with fairness, because communities do not survive without people holding learning spaces together.
Community with faith on both sides need to be accepting regardless of opinions and ideologies, because none of us were built to do this alone.
This country works when we take care of each other. Not perfectly. Not effortlessly. But deliberately.
I believe in responsibility that flows both ways. In helping when it’s needed. In building systems that catch people before they fall through the cracks. In neighbours looking out for neighbours, not drawing tighter circles and shutting others out and calling it strength.
This is God’s country in the sense that faith calls us toward care, not cruelty. Toward service, not barriers. Toward compassion that actually shows up in practice, not just words.
And for the record, fracturing ourselves, pulling inward, or pretending separation solves anything has never been the answer. This country is stronger together, even when it’s messy, even when it’s hard, even when we disagree.
Especially then.
This is a keep-calm-and-Canada-on moment.
No theatrics, rage spiralling, just a firm refusal to abandon each other.
That’s the line I’m holding.
Where This Leaves Me
I’m not optimistic. I’m not calm. I’m not pretending.
I’m still standing, and that seems to be the problem.
And that seems to bother some people more than if I had quietly vanished into the background like a convenient footnote.
Which tells me everything I need to know.
So let’s be very clear about how this ends.
I am rage-quitting 2025 with confetti, a glitter bomb, and a capybara wearing a party hat. This year tried to chew me up, spit me out, and then ask if I had considered being more “resilient” about it.
Hard pass.
I am ringing in 2026 fully aware that it will probably try to mess with me too. I’m not that naïve. I know how this game works. I know the “bosses” respawn. I know the terrain is unstable and the loot is inconsistent.
So to 2026 I say, cheerfully, loudly with my whole autistic, unmasked voice unfiltered and with my whole chest;
Bring it on, bitches!.
Because here’s the thing. I already know I’ll get knocked around, politically and socially curb-stomped, ghosted by people and those I connect with, work with, game with, talk with, breathe with, exist with. I already know things will break. Plans will wobble. Systems will disappoint. Life will absolutely attempt a cheap shot from behind a shrub with backstabbing words and stares and financial instabilities.
And God still has my back.
Always has. I just need to recognize it more.
So my goals are not cute and wrapped up in frilly bows. They are practical, feral, and deeply mine.
I’m writing more books. The real ones. The weird ones. The ones that matter.
I’m changing my relationships. Fewer masks. Fewer performances. More truth.
I’m fixing my home. New energy. New flow. Better feng shui. Less clutter. More breathing room.
I’m praying my car doesn’t break down like a dragon with diabetes, because honestly that’s one boss fight I do not need.
I’m stepping away from the archery community peacefully and without getting metaphorically shot, which feels like a reasonable ask.
I’m painting new worlds like Clair Obscur at a Kegger, messy and luminous and unapologetically strange and demented.
I’m going to enjoy life more by fighting for what’s right instead of shrinking to keep the peace.
I’m learning how to swear in other languages purely to confuse people and bring myself joy.
And I’m working very deliberately on being more me.
No masks. No apologies. No dam given. I’ve hired every beaver in Canada, they’re unionized, paid in maple syrup, and working in shifts. One’s got a toque. One’s running logistics. One’s judging me silently, which feels accurate.
This isn’t a glow-up or a redemption arc. This is a woman who survived hard mode, accidentally flipped the map upside down somewhere near Moose Jaw, and is loading into the next level with snacks from Canadian Tire, Christian faith, and a deeply suspicious amount of unearned confidence. There’s a Tim Hortons cup in the console, a Clair Obscure playlist that makes no sense, and a polite but firm refusal to apologize for taking up space.
If 2026 wants a fight, it can take a number and wait its turn. The beavers are busy, the kettle’s on, and I’m still here.
Controller in hand.
Glitter bomb primed.
Capybara calm engaged.
See you in 2026.
God and I are not finished yet.
Peace Out!
PS: Happy New Year!
