A new year, Instagram vs Reality. So far, the new year has brought the invitation to speak and share my story + debut picture book, Yumi and Monster, at Pixar in the spring AND at LA Children’s Hospital during Rare Disease Week. Normally, I don’t share before they happen, but the excitement of Pixar + Children’s Hospital is too much. This and Yumi and Monster winning an award are my big 2026 news, but the reality is I’ve not been well, and this year has already been a challenge.
This photo is from New Year’s Day 2 years ago. How I look and feel since December is more like the second photo.
Reality is I’ve been a slug for much of this year, living in food-encrusted PJ’s like it’s my uniform since 2025 ended. I’ve been trying to muster New Year vibes but falling short, squirreling myself away like it’s hibernation season—only recently trying to bring myself back to life. Quietly falling off Instagram after Christmas, I didn’t reenter with exuberance, claiming “New Year, new me” rhetoric nor armed with New Year’s resolutions that will never be. I’ve never been a resolution junkie; I know better.
Beginning 2026 without Pippi was hard. I knew Christmas without her would be sad, but I didn’t realize the changing of a year minus a furry one would affect me, forcing me to feel her permanent absence. Oddly, losing Pippi has been more difficult recently than it was returning home to an empty house after her passing. I miss her. Till now, I’ve been in constant expectation of her tiny sweet face appearing around the hallway corner from the vantage of my bed, as if she never passed. In my heart, I haven’t really said goodbye to her, but I know I need to. They never tell you that love is pain, but it is. A privileged pain.
I’ve been down, sluggish, and have mostly been bedridden this year. In a couple of weeks, it’s the 4th anniversary of my dad‘s passing, so typically January can feel off, but the melancholy vibes are mostly from not being well and in a lot of pain. Pain is always a background soundtrack to my daily life that eventually becomes a baseline I get used to, but this has been worse.
Since Christmas, I’ve developed nagging back pain that’s gotten worse. Whenever there is new or heightened weakness or pain, it’s a game of wondering if it’s temporary or my new baseline resulting from a rare progressive muscular dystrophy. But it’s been over a month, and the doctors and I aren’t sure where this new pain is coming from. It could be a pulled muscle or muscle spasms; oddly, I’ve never experienced it till now, but medication and treatment have not been working. As a result, I’ve barely slept for a month, a torture chamber for someone who is already an insomniac. I’ve been trying to baby the pain so I can heal, but it’s been weeks. It doesn’t help that getting into bed or going to the bathroom means that I have to be lifted, causing strain and pain.
Another new year melancholy contributor is starting another year with the progressive milestones of my body, with thoughts focused on how much time I have with the little (finger) mobility I have left compared to all the things I still have yet to do, creatively and experientially. I have an obsession with time. I try not to dwell on these things, but I can’t tell you how much you’re made aware of your body when it is constantly screaming at you. I’m trying to stay positive, but my concern is this is a new baseline.
The final melancholy arm is the state of affairs. There’s so much sadness, anger, despair, fear, and chaos. It’s disheartening. I’m not unaware of history or hyperbolic; for decades I’ve spent a lot of time researching history, especially foreign policy, and the sociopolitical and religious underbelly that boiled underneath. If you know human history, including modern times, nothing is new, and every generation in every world region since the beginning of time has its stories of war, oppression, suppression, and great divide orchestrated by power, including today, last year, the year before, 5, 10, 15 years ago, and on and on. Every second someone somewhere in the world is being strangled by oppression, has no rights, no access to basic food or life, or is being bombed. But these facts do not diminish or devalue what and when horrible things happen in your time, are the uniqueness of these times.
I wish a new year meant an individual reset to our morality and a deeper contemplation of what progress means, why we're here, and more importantly, how much time we humans waste on destruction and tormenting each other, often over nothing or our own insecure and self-righteous ideas of how others should be and live. It's all sad. The natural cycle of life already brings so much grief, so for humans to inflict and deepen wounds onto their neighbors, how sad we are. The world has always been heavy throughout human history, but we just don't seem to learn, and we predictably fall for the same traps and tactics wielded by power.
My New Year thoughts for here and across lands are with those who are alone, in fear of their life and rights, those fighting for freedom, those in Revolution living under theocracies like Iranians. I have many Iranian Jewish friends who are worrying for their family and friends in their homeland. My thoughts are with immigrants, what’s been happening and continues to happen in Gaza, Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Congo, Syria, Mali, Myanmar, Haiti, Ethiopia, Sudan… my thoughts are with anyone, and everyone under the reign of bombs and fighting oppression; compassion should hold no borders for innocent lives and children. I don’t care what identity you are. To me, an innocent human trumps all identities. If we could just remember this, and that people are not their governments, and that no one’s life, especially children, deserves to live and die the way we’ve been witnessing, how much darkness we could snuff out before it infiltrates lives.
Remember, the international dissent for crimes against humanity is because citizens have often been kept from the reality of the visuals of war, and now people are finally seeing it because everybody has cameras. At the core, people no matter where they live or what race or religion, they just want basic stability and access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At the end of the day, no matter the identity, all humans really want is to make sure their families and kids are safe and fed and connection, but somehow we forget all of this and consent to atrocities.
Everything feels heavy, and finding hope seems futile, but don’t let it create permanent despair and compassion paralysis. While searching for kindness seems hard, it’s always all around. There’s still lots of kindness and many helpers. Look for them, as Mr. Rogers would say. When it feels overwhelming, I try to remind myself to keep looking towards the light. It’s important not to lose your light because that’s what they want. Create opportunities for kindness and community. Create stories and elevate creativity as protest, demonstrating that creating is far more powerful than destruction. During tragedy, creativity and art are even more essential because it keeps us human during inhumane times.
To close this New Year rant, I share with you my 2026 quote: “Tenderness is the new punk.” by Joachim Trier.
After the drunk clock hands turned 2026 at midnight, one of the first things I happened to watch was an interview by Norwegian filmmaker, director, and writer, Joachim Trier, who was speaking about his 2025 Cannes film, Sentimental Value.
“We come from a punk background, Eskil and I. We were counter-culture; we didn’t want to make soppy movies. But we realised through the films we’ve made that we’ve grown older, and that world is a place where we can be vulnerable. [Tenderness] is what I need right now,” said Trier. “I need to believe that we can see the other. Polarization, anger, and machismo aren’t the way forward…Tenderness is the new punk.”
I love that. We could use a little more tenderness. Let’s make 2026 about defining “progress” beyond the typical capitalists’ measurement of profits and tech convenience held together by shallow market markers, and look at progress in terms of a collective humanity as we humans continue this endless greedy cycle of reprisal, and the ends justifying the means, no matter who it cuts, in the quest for power…for “more”.
