We have our pick of years that felt like the most awful year of the decade that Donald Trump has been president or a candidate for president. Some would take 2016, the year our innocence was lost and we realized Americans were willing to not only nominate but actually elect this monster. Some would take 2020, the first year of COVID and the year of the George Floyd protests, which at least had the brilliant capper, Trump-wise, of him losing the election. Some would take last year, when it was even more unfathomable that we would elect this monster a second time.
But none of those years really drained me of my will to watch movies like 2025 did ... and most of the reason for that is not even related to Donald Trump.
Oh, statistically, the year will look like most others. I'm only coming up a few short of my total number of movies watched in 2024, which includes both movies released this year and movies I hadn't seen from other years, and the actual number of movies I rank in a few weeks will be in the same neighborhood as last year's record-setting year.
But for the past few weeks in particular, I finally feel like I am going through the motions in this march to statistical normalcy. This year has just really taken it out of me.
The biggest factor is likely my work. I don't talk about my work on this blog, and that's because I use my real name. I don't see any reason to trash a work that people could look up and figure out what I'm talking about, but also, I don't actually want to trash my work because this is the happiest I've ever been in a job ... even in a nightmare year like this one.
Let's just say that there was a big new program rolled out at the end of 2024 that has dominated my work like never before, due to the multiple issues in the way it was conceived and executed, then the natural issues involved in the customers I support learning a new system and inevitably making mistakes ... mistakes that tended to snowball because of the so many other issues involved, which prevented us from getting in touch with them in a timely manner.
Suffice it to say that my team and I have been burning the candle at both ends for the entire year, and more than 13 months out from the start of the program, it may actually be getting worse rather than better, even though the program is now finished and we should just be cleaning up all the loose ends. That may be what we're doing, but the loose ends continue to present themselves and in some cases multiply, meaning that I've been logging hours outside work just to try to stay on top of it all.
Then in the last month or so we've been dealing with an issue in the family about which I will also be vague. I will reveal the same level of detail that I've revealed previously, which is that it involves health but not the health of myself, my wife or my two children. That has left me particularly time and energy poor during the month of December.
And very lastly, we do get to Donald Trump, whose steady erosion of our belief in the possibility of good triumphing over evil has made 2025 an increasing nightmare with every further month that has passed. Sometimes you just feel like giving up.
So while I am usually feeling especially activated at this time of year, as Golden Globe nominations and actual victories get revealed, as ten best lists reach us, as I start to realize my own ten best is really taking shape, this year I just feel tired. It's been a lot this year.
I will be doing my usual end-of-year posts in a couple weeks like I always do, but the difference is, I have barely started on those time-consuming posts. I have only written half of a blurb for one of the movies I have reasonably calculated will be in my top ten. I have only come up with a few candidates for my top and bottom performers of the year. And I think I have come up with exactly one portmanteau, though I'm not really happy with it.
I can point to many external stimuli that have left me in my current state, including spending a full eight weeks of the year traveling, if you want to round up from the first few days of 2025 spent in Los Angeles, and then include our week in Georgia and six weeks in Europe. Those happy occasions have also, certainly, contributed to it being a "weird year."
But whatever the case may be, I reach the end of 2025 just not really "feeling it." I'm low on energy. And I assume I'll get it back, but for now, I'm stumbling a bit.
Then again, the new year is always about new beginnings. Maybe it'll be good to wipe the slate clean in 2026, and maybe that will also be a year of resounding mid-term election wins for Democrats.
Though really, as I've said, my 2025 was not mostly about Trump. I'm not going to give him that credit. It was about work and family and just general exhaustion. And so when I find it time to recap the year, I'm not really focusing on some aspect of moviegoing that defined the year in one way or another. Heck I'm not even including a poster for this post.
But don't worry, I'll be back in 2026.
I always am.
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