Last night I read an essay by a student at Georgia Tech titled Turning 20 while the world turns upside down. Confronting the existential risk of artificial intelligence, it reads like a letter to a friend in the final moments before the detonation of an atomic bomb. Hopeless. Urgent. Desperate and poetic.

This student is smarter and better educated than I am. If they’re afraid, I should be afraid.

If the bright scholars at Georgia Tech are panicking about entering a “permanent underclass,” I have to accept I’m already in it.

In one breath, I accept the advancement of AI could be the doom of the world. In my next breath, I’m smashing the thumbsdown icon in ChatGippity because the Google Drive integration won’t stay connected. 800 million weekly active users. A parent company worth $500 billion. Still, my $20 / month can’t buy me a product that works consistently as expected.

In this absurd year, under the threat of barreling change, I sought to reorient myself toward joy. I focused inward, optimizing my personal and domestic systems.

I can’t prevent a 31-acre data center from being constructed 8 miles north of my house, but I can report the cost per wear of my favorite turtleneck sweater.

I can’t know whether my niece will be forced to survive on flea soup in the future, but I can count the hours I spent on my mat in the yoga studio.

In watercolor paintings and floral arrangements, in buttermilk biscuits and budget apps, I fought for signs of personal improvement.

When one Monday morning wasn’t going precisely as planned, I declared, “I need a win.” I pulled 10 cloudy, odd-shaped and mismatched glasses from the cabinet. I wrapped each one in tissue paper, lined them up in a long cardboard box and deposited them at Goodwill. “I ordered us new glassware. It’s stackable.”

I cannot know whether I’ll continue to have marketable skills for an income, but I can make the kitchen cabinet more ergonomic today.

Optimization improves life but it’s not a path to joy.

Joyfulness is not easily measured in dollars or pixels or extra space in the cabinets.

In 2025, joy found me in the embarrassing moments.

Two weeks ago I went to a cookie swap party and I wore a pair of red silk thrifted cigarette pants. When we transitioned to playing White Elephant, I decided to plop down on the floor. I like to sit on the floor whenever I can.

As I slid onto the rug next to the Christmas tree, I heard the gripping sound of taffeta tearing. For the next 20 minutes, I tried to sit still. While we each took turns opening gifts and admiring the contributions (“Ooooh, a cheese dome!”) my imagination was locked in, considering just how gaping the open hole of fabric might be along my backside.

At last, the final players opened up the last gift from the hearth. It was a large package. When they tore apart the wrapping paper, they revealed a giant wooden charcuterie board carved in the shape of the great State of Georgia.

“Perfect. My brother got me the same gift, so now we’ll have two!” they laughed.

Seeing no more steals, I announced that I’d make my way in front of this crowd of semi-strangers toward the bathroom to assess the ripped pants situation.

“Here! We’ll cover for you!” The gracious-party goers offered to cover my ass with their giant Georgia cheese board while I shuffled across the house.

THAT embarrassing moment stands out in my mind as one of the most joyful of the year. Humility and improv and human kindness. I laughed so hard I melted my mascara.

This is how joy found me this year. Every time I saw a large bird on a nature walk. Every time a new client said, “yes.” Sitting quiet by a man-made lake in a state park. Watching my youngest niece go from crawling to walking, grinning with her long cheeks and plump legs, stomping from one side of the room to the other.

In the student’s essay, they wrote:

There were many months where I would look at a leaf, or a building, or a light, and cry because I did not want the world with these things to end, and it seems like it may end.

I did not cry over any leaves this year. But I recognize this as foreboding joy. It happens when you can see the future and your grief becomes a pane of glass that colors your impression of the world.

If there’s one accomplishment that stands out to me from this past year, it wasn’t the product launches or the 150 yoga classes or the work we got done to our house.

It was finding the strength to take that thick lens of grief and flip it aside.

To be closer to the leaf or the building or the light.

Not to ignore all the horrible events on repeat forever around us until infinity. Not to abandon the pursuit of a world that’s more just and fair and good.

Only to be in a clearer communion with each simple, beautiful thing.