The year ahead sits there like an unopened envelope. I keep turning it over, checking the corners for clues, as if the paper might give itself away. Blank years are always sold as opportunities, but they feel more like interrogations. What will you do now? Who will you be allowed to talk to? What will still count as work?
I tell myself I’m thinking about journalism, which is a respectable way of saying I’m thinking about relevance.
Once, it felt simple. You asked questions, people answered—or didn’t—and the space between those two things was the story. Now the space is crowded. Lawyers, brand managers, and personal trauma converted into a press strategy. Everyone speaks in statements even when they’re alone. Silence has become a skill set.
So I wonder, privately and then too loudly, whether journalistic work is still possible or whether it’s just a nostalgia industry with bylines.
I imagine myself pitching again. The email carefully casual. The idea framed as curiosity, not pursuit. I imagine editors replying with encouragement that feels like condolences. Important work, they’d say, which is code for we hope someone else pays for it.
And yet—I resist the narrative that I’m finished, or compromised, or somehow disqualified by my own methods. People love that story. The fallen reporter. The blurred line. It gives them something to point at instead of the system that taught everyone to trade access for intimacy and then pretend not to notice.
I never forced anyone to speak. I never tricked anyone. I listened. I stayed longer than others did. If that made people comfortable, that’s not coercion—it’s presence. If they talked because they wanted to be understood, because the room felt quiet enough, because I didn’t interrupt with morality or distance, that’s not unethical. That’s human.
I won’t accept the word inappropriate. It’s too vague, too useful for people who want clean narratives and sanitized outcomes. The truth is rarely extracted with gloves on. It’s offered when people forget they’re being observed. If that makes some readers uneasy, perhaps that discomfort is the point.
Still, the upcoming year looms. Fewer certainties. More questions about money, about credibility, about whether telling stories is still a public service or just a private compulsion dressed up as duty.
I tell myself I could pivot. Essays. Commentary. Anonymous work, even. But anonymity feels like a costume, and I’ve already worn too many of those.
What I want—what I won’t quite admit I want—is permission. Not from editors or institutions, but from the future itself. A sign that asking questions can still matter, that listening can still be mistaken for seriousness rather than strategy.
Until then, I make notes. I observe. I keep my instincts sharp and my explanations vague. The year will arrive whether I’m ready or not.
And when it does, I intend to meet it with questions.
Not apologies.