The week between Christmas and the new year is frequently quiet, but this one felt particularly still. Like you could go outside and shout and all you’d hear was an echo. It’s an ironic ending to a year that has been relentless in its noise: a constant drumbeat of rage, anxiety and terror thumped in our brains all while trying to manage everyday life as if any of this was normal. Mental health meds worked overtime, supplemented by healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms. The one thing we can say about 2024 is we got through it.
Ordinarily I find the countdown to a new year anxiety-inducing. I’m acutely aware of the minutes ticking by until we hoot and holler and blow noisemakers marking the passage of time, only to be subsumed by the quiet of early January and the long slog ‘til spring. But this year it feels inauspicious to celebrate a fresh start when so much remains unresolved. How does writing a different date on a check give us the right to wipe clean such a dirty slate?
In Judaism we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, followed a week later by Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I always found it strange, celebrating first and reflecting on our moral failures after, but it’s starting to make more sense. We get our Spotify Wrapped summaries in early December along with Best Of lists and Year in Reviews, never stopping to wonder how we could possibly examine the totality of a year we haven’t yet finished experiencing. It’s convenient to say something is last year’s problem when you haven’t been forced to reckon with it after the ball drops. But this coming year more than ever, our previous problems will be coming with us.
Part of what, in the past, has made the prospect of a new year so exciting is the ability to be more aspirational and less shackled by cynicism. A certain level of amnesia takes over, and you might even be able to convince yourself that this year really could be different. But the past year has exposed far too much of the dark underbelly of our culture to dream of some fantastical future. We’re acutely aware of the nightmares en route because we’ve lived them before. In some ways, the new year has never felt more concrete.
I hate framing the world by electoral politics when everyday struggles and tragedies eclipse any singular election. Homelessness and hunger and gun violence and war remain constants no matter whose portrait hangs at your local DMV. But the nearly two months since this past Election Day have felt like us collectively bracing for a punch. For people who hoped we could begin to realize a future with national abortion access, universal health care, well-funded schools, expanded LGBTQ+ rights, continued free and fair elections, billionaires paying their taxes, protections for a burning planet and so forth, that day felt like a death. Perhaps not of possibility, but of hope.
The death of hope doesn’t mean it has no chance of being reborn. But in order for that to happen, we must be given things for which it doesn’t feel audacious to hope. Take for example the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the shock of the rich and powerful when regular people celebrated Luigi Mangione’s [alleged] act of violence. Instead of examining why so many felt it was a justified retaliation for the millions of deaths directly or indirectly caused by for profit health insurance companies, they clutched their pearls and declared our society morally deficient. But from my view the real deficiency is in moral leadership: People do not cheer death unless justice has eluded them in every other venue. A society starved of hope will feast on the next best thing.
I don’t pretend to know, as others have, the One Big Reason we find ourselves in this position–that we must endure another four years of a despicable despot at the helm, with merciless technocrats nipping at his heels. This country is about to become a national cock fight with us in the ring and the guys outside betting we’ll turn on each other before we realize they’re the ones who orchestrated it. If there’s one thing I learned in 2024 and plan to cling to in 2025, it’s that the ultra-wealthy and powerful will not be the ones to save us. Solidarity is my only hope for taming this dystopian hellscape.
I know I’ve been quiet the past week or so. Part of it was taking a break for the holidays. Working for yourself can be a double-edged sword because you don’t have set working hours, but you don’t have set vacation time either. So I consciously stepped away from my laptop to spend time with family and to spend time with myself.
I’ve also taken this time to recharge for what is undoubtedly going to be a hellish year for journalists. While the news never sleeps, I’ve found myself being particularly prudent of late as to which stories I let consume me, which stories can be ignored, and which stories can be saved for later. In the coming days, months, and years, there will be too many stories and not enough journalists to cover them as news jobs continue to dwindle and large news organizations cower in fear. So in this small window of relative quiet, I’ve taken advantage of the luxury of silence. But rest-assured I won’t be shutting up in the new year, no matter the clownish attempts to silence me and others who speak truth to power.
One hopeful thing I can take from 2024 is the knowledge that I’m able to earn a living as an independent journalist. When I decided to bet on myself, it’s not one Polymarket would’ve recommended. I started the year with a small but dedicated group of paid and free subscribers and no indicators of significant growth to come. All I had was the will to tell stories that interested me in ways I thought readers would find interesting, and by some miracle it worked. I passed 8,000 total subscribers, gained more than 500 new paid subscribers, and published 72 newsletters. Best of all, I was able to do it all at my own pace. And so I start 2025 with hope for myself.
I’ll close with a humble plea to help make it so my hope is not in vain. If you like what I do and want me to keep doing it, a paid subscription will help me to continue growing. Right now I’m offering 25% of an annual subscription through the end of the week in honor of 2025. You can also gift a paid subscription to someone you love. In the coming year I plan to put money towards paying guest writers to publish on The Handbasket, hiring an editor for longer investigative stories and traveling more often to report.
Even though I’m the sole producer of this site, I’m acutely aware that this work would be impossible without a supportive community. To everyone who read, shared and cheered The Handbasket this year, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Writing is my way of processing the world, and I’m deeply honored to know that my writing helps some of you process it, too. There’s so much coming our way, but I promise we’ll face it together.
