There's something ritualistic about writing this sentence, isn't there? Every year, we find ourselves at this precipice – looking back at the mess we've just crawled through and squinting hopefully at the horizon. "Next year will be better." We say it like a prayer, or maybe like a defensive charm against whatever fresh chaos the universe has queued up for us.

And yet, here I am, typing those exact words. I hope 2026 will be better.

(The fact that I'm even writing this shows I haven't learnt my lesson about public vulnerability, but that's beside the point.)

The Exhaustion of Perpetual Hope

Here's the thing about hope – it's exhausting when it becomes the only tool in your kit. I spent a good chunk of 2025 hoping things would improve. Hoping my health would stabilise. Hoping the projects I was working on would finally click into place. Hoping that the general state of, well, everything would feel less like we're all collectively treading water in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight.

Some of that hope paid off. Some of it didn't. And that's fine, I suppose – that's just how time works. You throw your intentions at the wall and see what sticks.

But there's a difference between passive hope and active intent, isn't there? The former is just wishful thinking with extra steps. The latter requires you to actually do something about it. And maybe that's where I've been getting it wrong.

What "Better" Even Means

I've been thinking a lot about what "better" actually looks like. Not in the grand, sweeping sense of world peace and universal prosperity (though, gods, wouldn't that be nice), but in the small, tangible ways that make up a life.

For me, "better" might mean:

Writing more consistently, not because I feel obligated to monetise every creative impulse (I don't, and won't), but because it helps me process the sheer noise of existing. Getting my AT Protocol projects to a point where they're not just functional, but genuinely useful – both for me and for the handful of people who've somehow found themselves using them. Actually being present with friends – properly present, not just the performative "I'm here" whilst my brain is elsewhere or I'm too exhausted to properly engage.

But also – and this feels important to say – "better" doesn't have to mean perfect. It doesn't have to mean I've got everything figured out. It just means I'm moving forward, even if that movement is messy and inconsistent and sometimes involves stumbling face-first into my own limitations.

The Small Wins Matter

I keep coming back to this idea that we undervalue the small wins. The mundane victories that don't make for good stories but which, cumulatively, are what keep us afloat.

Like: successfully recovering my PDS after I crashed it through my own stupidity. Realising that, despite everything, I've managed to write poetry that helps me process my feelings rather than bottling them up. Finally understanding why I give off "Kinger energy" (and, honestly, that does explain a lot).

These aren't the sort of things you put on a highlights reel. But they're real, and they matter, and they're the building blocks of a year that might actually feel "better" when I look back on it twelve months from now.

On Virality and the Metrics That Don't Matter

Here's something I hope we collectively wake up to in 2026: the realisation that virality and online vanity metrics are dark patterns dressed up as success.

I say this as someone who's watched my follower count on Bluesky grow to over 2,000 (for some reason that still baffles me), whilst on Twitter I barely scraped 30 followers before I left. And you know what? Neither number means anything substantial about the quality of what I'm putting out there or the genuine connections I'm making.

We've been conditioned – and I mean properly conditioned, like lab rats pressing a lever for dopamine hits – to measure our worth by numbers that are fundamentally meaningless. Likes. Shares. Retweets. Followers. As if the arbitrary algorithmic promotion of a post or the performative engagement of strangers scrolling through their feeds at 02:00 somehow validates our existence.

(And I'm not exempt from this. I've caught myself refreshing notifications more times than I'd like to admit, looking for that little hit of validation. It's insidious precisely because it works.)

The thing is, virality isn't a measure of quality or truth or importance. It's a measure of how well something exploits the attention economy. How effectively it triggers engagement patterns. How optimally it feeds the machine that profits from keeping us all scrolling, comparing, performing our lives for an audience that's simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.

I hope 2026 is the year we – as a generation, as a society – start properly questioning this. Start recognising that the platforms we use are designed to keep us hooked, not to make us happy or fulfilled or genuinely connected. Start building alternatives that prioritise authentic interaction over manufactured virality.

(This is partly why I'm so invested in the AT Protocol, if I'm honest. The potential for something different, something less extractive, something more human-scale. But that's a tangent for another post.)

What would it look like if we collectively decided that a conversation with three people who actually get what you're trying to say is worth more than 10,000 likes from strangers who'll forget your post in five minutes? If we stopped treating follower counts as social credit scores? If we built platforms and communities around depth rather than reach?

I don't have answers, but I hope we start asking the questions. Properly asking them, not just performatively wondering whilst still chasing the next viral moment.

Living With Limitations

There's something about chronic illness that makes the whole "next year will be better" mantra feel particularly fraught. Because what does "better" even look like when your baseline is constantly shifting beneath your feet?

I spent most of Yule being sick. Not in the dramatic, cinematic way where there's a clear diagnosis and a neat recovery arc, but in that grinding, exhausting way where your body just decides it's not cooperating today. Or this week. Or, apparently, the entire festive period.

And here's the thing that nobody really tells you about being chronically ill (or chronically anything, really): you have to recalibrate your expectations constantly. What counts as a "good day" becomes relative. Sometimes a good day is managing to get through your tasks. Sometimes it's just managing to get out of bed without feeling like you've been hit by a lorry.

I don't say this for sympathy – I say it because it's part of the equation when I'm talking about hoping 2026 will be better. It has to be a hope that's grounded in reality, not in some fantasy version of myself that doesn't exist. The version that has consistent energy levels and doesn't occasionally pass out at 22:00 and sleep through New Year's Eve.

(Yes, that happened. Yes, I'm still slightly annoyed about it.)

So when I say I hope 2026 will be better, part of what I mean is: I hope I get better at working with my limitations rather than constantly fighting against them. I hope I learn to be kinder to myself on the days when my body decides to be difficult. I hope I find ways to be productive and creative and present that don't require me to push myself into exhaustion just to feel like I'm "enough."

Because that's the other dark pattern we don't talk about enough: the idea that we have to be constantly productive, constantly achieving, constantly on. That rest is something you have to earn rather than something your body fundamentally needs.

On Making Things That Matter

I've been thinking a lot about why I build things. Not in the grand philosophical sense, but in the practical "why am I spending my evenings writing code for AT Protocol projects that maybe a handful of people will use" sense.

Part of it is the technical challenge. There's something deeply satisfying about taking a problem – like getting my PDS to work after I crashed it through my own stupidity, or figuring out how to make my website pull content dynamically from multiple sources – and actually solving it. That moment when something clicks into place and works is genuinely brilliant, even if nobody else sees it.

But I think the deeper reason is this: I want to build things that feel human-scale. Things that prioritise actual utility over engagement metrics. Things that respect people's attention and agency rather than trying to extract maximum value from them.

This is probably why I'm so invested in the AT Protocol ecosystem, despite it being relatively niche compared to the mainstream social platforms. It's not perfect (nothing is), but it at least tries to put control back in users' hands. It lets you run your own infrastructure (I used to run my own Personal Data Server at pds.ewancroft.uk, now I'm on tophhie.social – the fact that I can just move like that is the entire point), it makes your data portable, it separates the protocol layer from the application layer.

These might sound like technical details, but they're fundamentally about power and autonomy. About not being locked into a single platform's whims. About being able to move your entire social graph if you need to (I've done it four times, mostly because I'm indecisive).

I hope 2026 sees more of this. More projects that prioritise people over profit. More alternatives to the extractive platforms that currently dominate. More spaces where you can just exist without being constantly surveilled and optimised and fed into someone else's algorithm.

And if I can contribute to that in some small way – even if it's just building tools that help a few people or writing blog posts on WhiteWind that make someone feel less alone in their frustrations – then that's worth doing.

Finding My People (Sort Of)

Something I didn't expect from 2025: becoming an actual part of the AT Protocol developer community.

I don't mean that in the sense of being some prominent figure or major contributor (I'm very much not). But over the past year, I've gone from being someone who just uses Bluesky to someone who's actually building things in the ecosystem. Someone who understands the technical side of it. Someone who can help others figure out their PDS issues or explain how the protocol works.

And that's... genuinely lovely? It's rare to find a community of people who are building things for the right reasons. Not for venture capital or user growth metrics or the next big exit, but because they actually care about making something better. Something more humane.

There's this sense of shared purpose that I haven't really experienced elsewhere. We're all working on different projects – some people building clients, others working on infrastructure, some creating tools and utilities – but there's this underlying understanding that we're all trying to build something that respects users rather than exploiting them.

(And yes, there are disagreements and technical debates and all the usual community dynamics. It's not some utopian space. But the fundamental values feel aligned in a way that's increasingly rare.)

I'm grateful to the people who've helped me along the way. Who've answered my confused questions about lexicons and schemas. Who've shared their code and their knowledge without expecting anything in return. Who've made me feel like I belong in a space where, honestly, I sometimes feel like I'm still figuring out what I'm doing.

Hailey, in particular, made the AT Protocol my favourite ecosystem to watch grow and work on. Before I left Twitter, I had maybe 30 followers and felt effectively invisible. Now I'm over 2,000 followers here (still not sure why), but more importantly, I've actually met people. Made connections. Found a community.

That's not nothing. In a year that's been difficult in a lot of ways, having a space where I feel like I can contribute something meaningful – even if it's just fixing someone's PDS configuration or writing documentation that helps one person understand something – has mattered more than I probably realised at the time.

I hope 2026 sees this community continue to grow. Not just in numbers, but in diversity of perspectives and approaches. I hope we can keep building things that prioritise people over profit. I hope we can maintain that sense of shared purpose even as the ecosystem expands.

And selfishly, I hope I can keep learning from all of you. Keep building. Keep contributing in whatever small ways I can manage.

The Creative Necessity

I started writing poetry in February 2020. Not because I had grand ambitions of being a Poet (capital P), but because I needed somewhere to put all the feelings that didn't fit anywhere else.

Nearly six years and 187 poems later, none of them are on my website anymore. They're just for me. And that's intentional – they're not meant to be shared, they're meant to be catharsis. A way of processing grief and fear and joy and confusion without having to perform emotional coherence for an audience.

There's this pressure, isn't there, to monetise everything. To turn every hobby into a side hustle, every creative impulse into content. But some things need to just be. Some art is for the process, not the product. Some writing is for working through your own head, not for attracting readers or building a platform.

I hope 2026 is a year where more people give themselves permission to create without the pressure to commodify. To write badly, to make art that nobody else will see, to experiment without worrying about whether it's "good enough" to share.

Because here's what I've learnt: the poetry I write at 03:00 when I can't sleep, the stuff that's too raw and messy to show anyone – that's often the most valuable. Not in any monetary sense, but in the sense that it helps me understand myself. It gives me a way to articulate things I didn't even know I was feeling.

And maybe that's enough. Maybe that's more than enough.

On Education and Uncertainty

I'm in college with my .ac.uk email address, which means I'm technically in "education" in that formal, institutional sense. But the truth is, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing or where it's leading.

I know I'm heading into IT as a job. I know I have skills that are apparently valuable. I know how to build things, how to solve problems, how to figure out solutions when the documentation is unclear or non-existent.

But there's this gap between "knowing how to do things" and "knowing what to do with that knowledge." Between technical competency and having a clear direction. Between being good at something and knowing whether that something is actually what you want to spend your life doing.

I hope 2026 brings more clarity on this. Not in the sense of having everything mapped out (that would be boring, honestly), but in the sense of having a better feel for what actually matters to me. What kind of work feels meaningful. What projects are worth investing my limited energy in.

And maybe – hopefully – the confidence to pursue those things even when they don't fit neatly into expected career paths or conventional measures of success.

The Reality Check

Of course, there's the other side of this equation. The one where 2026 might not be better at all. Where the health issues persist, where projects stall, where the world continues its steady descent into whatever fresh hell it's currently perfecting.

I'm not being pessimistic – I'm being realistic. Hope is important, but so is honest reckoning with the fact that not everything is within our control. Some things are just going to be difficult, full stop. And that's not a failure of hope or intent; that's just life doing what life does.

The difference, I think, is in how we respond to that difficulty. Whether we let it calcify into bitterness or whether we find ways to move through it with a bit of grace (and, ideally, a decent sense of humour about the absurdity of it all).

Actually Showing Up

Here's something I need to be honest about: I haven't been great at being present with friends. Not in the way that matters.

I'm there, technically. I respond to messages (eventually). I engage in group chats. I react to things. But there's a difference between surface-level presence and actually being with someone, isn't there? Between performing availability and genuinely showing up.

Part of it is the exhaustion. When you're chronically ill and trying to keep up with college and projects and just the basic maintenance of existing, social energy becomes this finite resource that you have to carefully ration. And often, the people who matter most get the dregs of that energy because they're the ones you assume will understand. Which isn't fair, but it's what happens.

Part of it is the way online communication works. You can maintain the appearance of connection without actually connecting. You can be constantly available and simultaneously completely absent. You can accumulate thousands of followers whilst feeling fundamentally isolated.

I don't want 2026 to be another year where I let important relationships atrophy because I'm too tired or too distracted or too caught up in my own head. I don't want to be the friend who's always "meaning to reach out properly" but never quite gets around to it.

So this is me committing to being more intentional about it. About actually checking in with people, not just reacting to their posts. About making time for proper conversations, not just quick exchanges between other tasks. About being genuinely present when I'm with people, rather than letting my brain spin off into a thousand different directions.

It won't be perfect. There will be times when I'm too exhausted or too overwhelmed or just too much in my own head to be good company. But I can at least try to be more aware of it. To communicate when I'm struggling rather than just quietly withdrawing. To show up as best I can, even when "best" looks different from day to day.

Because connection – real connection, not performative online engagement – is one of the things that actually matters. And I've been taking it for granted.

What I'm Bringing Forward

So what am I actually taking into 2026?

A commitment to writing more for myself and less for some imagined audience. A willingness to experiment with projects that might fail spectacularly – because the alternative is stagnation, and I've done quite enough of that already. An attempt to be kinder to myself when things don't go to plan, which is easier said than done when you're wired for anxiety and overthinking.

And, perhaps most importantly: the understanding that "better" is a process, not a destination. It's not about reaching some fixed point where everything is sorted and perfect. It's about making incremental improvements, learning from the inevitable cock-ups (there will be many), and trying to approach each day with at least a baseline level of curiosity about what might happen next.

The Closing Thought

I hope 2026 will be better. But more than that, I hope I'll be better equipped to handle whatever it throws at me. To write through the difficult bits, to celebrate the small wins, to keep building things that matter (even if they only matter to a handful of people, or just to me).

And if it's not better? Well, I'll write about that too. Because that's what I do – I process the world through words, and I'll keep doing that regardless of whether the year ahead is brilliant or bollocks.

There's something almost defiant in that, isn't there? In continuing to create and connect and build and hope even when everything feels exhausting. In refusing to let chronic illness or societal pessimism or the sheer weight of existing grind you down into apathy.

I'm not saying I'll always succeed at this. There will be days when I can barely drag myself out of bed, let alone produce anything meaningful. Days when being present for friends feels impossible. Days when the whole project of "being a person" feels like more effort than it's worth.

But those days are part of it too. They're not failures – they're just the reality of being human in a world that's simultaneously wonderful and terrible and utterly mundane, often all at once.

What I'm really hoping for in 2026 isn't perfection. It's not some idealised version of myself who has everything sorted and never struggles. It's something more modest and more achievable: the capacity to keep showing up. To keep trying. To keep being curious about what happens next.

To write poems at 03:00 that nobody will read. To fix my PDS when it crashes. To build tools that maybe three people will use. To have proper conversations with friends instead of just performatively engaging with their content. To recognise when I need to rest instead of pushing through until I collapse.

To accept that "better" is messy and non-linear and sometimes looks nothing like what I expected.

Here's to 2026, then. To small wins and messy progress. To hope tempered with realism. To the ongoing project of just... showing up, even when it's hard.

To building things that feel human-scale in a world that increasingly doesn't. To prioritising depth over reach, connection over engagement, authenticity over performance.

To being kinder to myself and to others. To asking better questions even when I don't have answers. To creating space for things that don't need to be monetised or optimised or turned into content.

To recognising that some years are about growth and others are about survival, and both are valid. That progress isn't always visible or measurable. That rest is productive even when it doesn't feel like it.

And ultimately, to accepting that I don't know what 2026 will bring. None of us do. But I can choose how I approach it. With openness rather than cynicism. With intention rather than just reactive scrolling through whatever the algorithms serve up. With a commitment to the things and people that actually matter, even when that commitment is imperfect.

Let's see what happens.

(And if it all goes sideways, well – at least I'll have plenty to write about.)