I am a glass half-full kind of girl. I acknowledge that you may see more of an empty vessel, but the part I’m focusing on is filled with a delicious, nourishing liquid — preferably diet green tea, black coffee or bourbon. That’s what can quench your thirst, give you a jolt of refreshing reality or, if necessary, get you a little joyfully tipsy. This is my philosophy for facing the worst parts of life.

And boy, am I gonna need it in 2025.

There is potential for it to be a truly disastrous year (or longer) for our country, considering the political division, misinformation, threat of deportations and possible triumphant return of polio. If the incoming presidential administration does what they say they will, we are facing a possible recession, high prices, the disruption of immigrant communities and continuing disregard for the threat of mass shootings around the country and in our backyard.

And yet.

Because of my innate half-full attitude, I refuse to enter this new year believing everything is doomed. Even if it’s true, I cannot exist with that as a certainty and be a good mother. I can’t live like that and be a good writer, or a good human, even. Accepting defeat renders you useless, and if there is indeed a conspiracy to forever ruin the country, we will not, as my favorite songwriter Neil Finn once wrote, let them win. (“Them” being The Man, of course.)

So here’s what I’m going to do.

I am going to keep my eye solidly and truthfully on the things yet to come while also focusing on what I have to look forward to, both in my professional and personal life. My kid is graduating from fifth grade, which will probably have a cute cap and gown moment and lots of pictures of the aunts and uncles. I have a novel coming out in May, and I’m excited about having a live book launch that doesn’t coincide with a global pandemic like my last one did. I also refuse to believe that I and my books are a curse.

This cautious, deliberate optimism is a challenge to be judicious with my writing and my intentions. I want to capture the world in words that are true and authentic, measuring any hope, even if things suck. I am going to be looking for topics and moments that are not terrible, people who are persisting in moving forward, in fighting back, and even in engaging in silliness as much as they can. I love silly.

I want to find, like, ’90s boy band fans who are going on cross-country trips to see their eighth-grade favorites in concert. I want to hear about long-lost loves who found their way back to each other. I want to discover authors and artists and clowns and locals who are famous for random stuff. I want to find the positive amid the negative. Even if those positives are deliberate reactions to grief and helplessness, a last-gasp fling of fancy into the harrowing winds of fate and cellulite, I’m all over it.

Long ago, I gave up trying to predict anything in my life or in anyone else’s. But I can promise you this: As long as I have this platform, I’m going to be on the ride with you. Sometimes it’s going to be chaotic. Sometimes it’ll be smooth — or smooth-ish. We might luck into the sublime when we least expect it. All I know is that we have to try to be present, because that’s the only thing we can do.

Let’s go.