2026 Has Been a Lot—and It’s Only September

I would like to speak to the manager of 2026.

I don’t know who approved this year’s itinerary, but I have notes. There have been too many plot twists, too many urgent phone calls, too many problems requiring “immediate attention,” and not nearly enough scenes involving me peacefully drinking coffee somewhere beautiful while other people solve their own damn problems.

Instead, 2026 has been one long stress test conducted without my informed consent.

Work has been its usual circus—except the circus is regulated by multiple government agencies, every clown has an attorney, and someone is always asking why a form wasn’t completed three Tuesdays ago. Running a nursing facility means beginning each morning with a reasonable plan and watching it die before the coffee cools. An employee calls off. A resident is upset. A family member wants answers immediately. A vendor sends an invoice that looks like it was calculated by organized crime. Someone needs a policy. Someone else violated the policy. And somewhere in the building, a printer has decided it no longer believes in technology.

Meanwhile, I am expected to remain calm, professional and approachable.

So naturally, I walk around looking composed while internally screaming in several languages.

Then came my father’s accident in the Philippines.

That was not ordinary stress. That was the kind that enters your body, rearranges the furniture and refuses to leave. One moment I was in California dealing with the usual madness; the next, my 88-year-old father was lying in a hospital thousands of miles away after falling from a jeepney and being struck and dragged by a van.

There are phone calls that divide your life into before and after. That was one of them.

Suddenly, every workplace crisis became embarrassingly small. The emails could wait. The meetings could wait. The people treating minor inconveniences like violations of the Geneva Conventions could definitely wait. My father was hurt. He had fractures, crushed bones, amputated fingers, facial injuries and wounds that no 88-year-old man should ever have to endure. All I wanted was to get on a plane, reach him and somehow make the whole thing unhappen.

But life does not have an undo button. It barely has customer service.

So I did what I always do when I feel helpless: I became aggressively useful. I gathered records. I asked questions. I reviewed bills. I contacted people. I wrote letters. I followed up with lawyers, police officers, government agencies, drivers, operators and anyone else who might be persuaded—or sufficiently annoyed—into doing the right thing.

And, of course, I overthought everything.

Overthinking is one of my most developed professional skills. Give me one unanswered text message and I can produce a complete psychological profile, three possible betrayals, two lawsuits and a documentary narrated by Keith Morrison. If someone writes “Can we talk?” I immediately assume I am being fired, sued, audited or informed that an asteroid has been named after me for tax purposes.

My brain does not merely consider possibilities. It opens branch offices.

At night, when normal people are sleeping, mine conducts hearings. Did I say the wrong thing? Did I forget something? Should I send another email? Was the first email too direct? Not direct enough? Should I have used “however” instead of “but”? Did that period at the end of their text seem hostile? Is my father really improving? Is work falling apart? Is the country falling apart? Am I falling apart—or am I just bloated?

The answer, frequently, is yes.

Still, I have been dealing with it. Not elegantly, perhaps, but effectively enough to remain employed, married and mostly house-trained.

I write. Writing gives my anxiety somewhere else to live. I take all the fear, anger, absurdity and emotional debris rattling around in my head and put them into sentences. Sometimes those sentences become essays. Sometimes they become letters. Sometimes they become a book. Sometimes they remain an angry paragraph in my Notes app that wisely never sees daylight.

I also use humor, because the alternative is walking into the woods and becoming folklore. Humor does not erase pain, but it loosens pain’s grip. It gives me a few inches of breathing room. If I can laugh at the ridiculousness of my own catastrophizing, then anxiety does not get to be the only voice in the room.

And I keep moving.

That may be the most honest description of how I have survived 2026: I keep moving. I go to work. I answer the calls. I check on my father. I worry about him some more. I deal with the next crisis. I drink far too much coffee. I occasionally stare into space like a Windows computer installing updates. Then I return to whatever needs me.

I am learning—slowly and against my natural instincts—that not every problem must be solved tonight. Some things can wait until morning. Some people can remain disappointed. Some questions do not yet have answers. And some situations will unfold exactly as they will, no matter how many imaginary conversations I conduct in the shower.

I am also learning that strength is rarely cinematic. It does not always look like standing triumphantly on a mountain while inspirational music plays. Sometimes strength looks like getting through a meeting after crying in the car. Sometimes it is boarding a plane because your father needs you. Sometimes it is changing a wound dressing, reviewing another hospital bill or answering one more goddamn email without telling the sender precisely where to insert it.

Sometimes strength is simply continuing while frightened.

So yes, 2026 has been marred by difficulty, stress, anxiety, anger and enough overthinking to power a medium-sized city. It has tested my patience, my faith, my blood pressure and my ability to use professional language under deeply unprofessional circumstances.

But it has not defeated me.

I am still here. My father is still here. He is healing, stubbornly and magnificently. My book is becoming real. My life, despite everything, continues to contain love, laughter, purpose and people worth crossing an ocean for.

I do not know what the rest of 2026 has planned, and frankly, I would prefer that it keep its remaining ideas to itself. I have had enough character development for one year.

But whatever the fuck comes next, I will deal with it the same way I have dealt with everything else: I will worry excessively, research obsessively, write furiously, make an inappropriate joke—and somehow keep going.