2026

Goals, Community, and Getting Better

I kind of ditched the newsletter idea back in 2025 when life got a bit hectic, which isn’t particularly unusual for me if we’re being hones.t I’ve talked at length about my consistency problems, and honestly, those are 2025 problems that we’ve been working on.

However, in 2026 my focus is on making small, incremental changes that can exist on a daily basis. ones that aren’t making me into something I’m not, but giving me the building blocks to build better, long-lasting foundations for future success.

This is always made possible by the community of folks I have in my corner. My hometown friends (who I just spent an absolutely wonderful New Years Eve trip with), my gaming friends, my Brooklyn friends, and whatever other buckets I drop my time and effort into. I’m constantly rewarded by their warm words of affirmation and positive outlooks on life.

So consider this newsletter back a warmup for things to come

The Last Moments of 2025

My Thoughts on the Stranger Things Finale

Spoilers Ahead

I’ve been watching this show for like 10 years now, and I’ve never considered it to be more than it ever was. It’s a show filled with nostalgia for an era I didn’t grow up in, but that never stopped folks from falling in love with the vibes. As it grew, I think it became much larger than the scope ever wanted to reach for.

Fandoms are a tricky thing to balance. Your strongest supporters, your ride or dies, your fans who show up time and time again for the thing they’ve intertwined with their identity. This comes with a lot of very loud public scrutiny when every minor plot point or Thing That Truly Does Not Matter is not addressed with a neatly wrapped bow.

Did I love the finale? No! Did I hate the finale? No! It was a piece of media that truly evoked very little emotional response from me either way. A very middle of the road finale that I think played it very safe. Major character deaths do not equate to stakes. You can have plenty of stakes in a show without your main characters having to be on the potential chopping block all of the time, but the writing of this season did a poor job of properly conveying and showcasing those stakes beyond multiple character death fake outs.

I ultimately like where the show decides to stab its final endpoint. After all, Stranger Things is a coming of age tale about a group of friends in a small town. I think the natural endpoint is them coming to terms with the death of their childhood and the move into adolescents. Where I think it falls apart is in how clean everything else. Growing up, moving on, mourning, are not things that happen cleanly, they aren’t without their struggles and trials. Maybe a lot of this happens off screen, but I wish we got more of this in the epilogue.

I think we get close to this in the rooftop scene with Nancy, Steve, Robin, and Johnathan where they make plans to meetup in Philly once a month. A moment that seems heartwarming, but every adult knows how hard it is to put something on the calendar, how quickly things like this can fall to the wayside if proper effort isn’t given to it. It’s a nice idea, but one I think each of the characters knows is more fantasy than reality. Trying to buy into the idea of a consistent time to see people with shared trauma is sometimes more comforting than the actual act of seeing one another. It’s a moment where I think Stranger Things shows it has the fangs but never ultimately wants to be more than that.

I’m still chewing on most of the stuff and I’ll likely keep a lot more of it to myself because the internet is annoying me about it, but I’m cool with being done with the Stranger Things era of my life, much like the kids, I’m ready to move on to something else.

The Future

I have a lot of ideas of what this can and will be in the future. I’m still working a lot of this out, but I hope you won’t unsubscribe and still get these weird little weekly emails from me time and time again. Creating is cool and more people should create something, even if it is just for yourself.

Until next time