I hate the winter, but I love New Year’s Day. It’s a time when we at least consider what we can do differently in the future, while remembering the things we have done in the past. If you, like me, have the twin addictions of hope and nostalgia, it can be a wonderful time.
It can also be a time of depression and anxiety if you are not careful, especially if when you look back you see pain, and if you look forward, you see anxiety and scarcity.
Although I am addicted to hope and nostalgia, I live with anxiety and depression. And 2025 has been rough, y’all.
The back story:
In 2024, I was hired to build a nonprofit to connect living wage employers to formerly incarcerated folks. They had some funding commitments, and a general plan, so most of what I needed to do was to bring about implementation. In late fall of 24, those funding commitments disappeared, so we pivoted to getting federal money commitments to fund it. We reached terms in the first full week of 2025—the future looked amazing.
And then the inauguration happened. Federal money disappeared. People who had been eager to talk to me suddenly quit returning calls. Some of our best relationships lost their jobs. We came up with alternative plans to downscale, but couldn’t downscale enough, fast enough. By April, we didn’t have any money left to pay me. I lost my health insurance at the end of May.
I went into organizer mode and began having lots of one-on-one conversations with folks—here’s what I’ve been up to, here’s what I would like to do. Ideas coalesced, and people got excited, and some folks who were trying to reboot a failing nonprofit with an amazing legacy hired me to bring this vision to their org. They had some money, not much, but had funding commitments, and a rich legacy they were under-utilizing.
Friends, four months later the funding commitments fell through, and the philanthropic world had changed, and what would have been easy to fund in 2024 became a nightmare in 2025.
So, in early November, I found myself back to beating the streets. Right before the holidays is always a good time to look for your next career move (that was sarcasm). But more than that, I began to have some pretty severe doubts about the future, this country, and my role in it.
The navel gazing:
I have spent almost all the last 20 years doing “social justice work”, broadly defined. Most of my money has come from the nonprofit sector, but I don’t think of myself as a nonprofit professional. I just wanted to do good work, and that was the easiest, most legible way to get paid for it. And it has always been relatively easy to find work that needs doing, and that I am interested in doing, and that there were enough people willing to pay me to do it.
But the world has changed. I spent this whole damn year talking to philanthropy, and they are scared out of their gourds, y’all. It’s always hard to raise money for things in Mississippi—nationally, only 3% of philanthropic dollars come to the South. But the left-leaning folks who have always been eager to try new things are now holding onto every dollar, because the work they have funded until now is in danger. And they are scared of the IRS being weaponized against them for funding “woke” causes.
Individual philanthropists (read: rich folks of good will) are scared, too. Don’t attract too much attention, don’t take risks, don’t draw the ire of the administration.
As a straight white Christian male, I’ve never really been afraid of drawing attention—but that is when you can count on due process, and a stable federal government. But I am the sole income earner in our household. My spouse is disabled and dependent on insurance provided by the federal government to stay alive. Her meds alone would cost 36,000 out of pocket. My wife and five cats depend on my earning money to keep them all alive, and there is zero hyperbole in that sentence.
So, do I really want to invest in, and depend on, a future where I derive my income by being someone who gets paid to be a high-visibility, active combatant of the government?
It does not feel safe to do so. Or wise.
I dislike saying that. I dislike feeling afraid for my family and the people I love. And I dislike making money decisions based on fear.
So here we are at the end of this horrible year, and our country is in chaos, and our elected officials are untrustworthy, and I worked full time only eight of the last 12 months, and am really not sure I want to keep working in the nonprofit sector. And I’m 53, and God help my algorithm, which is filled with articles telling me how scary the job market is for folks over 50.
To be clear—I earn income from several places. I do some contract work for a local nonprofit—I earn about 20% of my annual income from there. I have a newsletter I publish, and other writing, and that is all supported by a team of patrons—that is another 25% or so. And I occasionally sell something I made, or a commission piece, and that is maybe 8-10%.
So, right now, bills are being paid, but losing half your income and all your health insurance leaves a mark. Emotionally, having started this year on a high note and leaving it in a severe deficit has messed with my head in all the ways you might expect it would for a 53-year-old male with depression and anxiety and ADHD.
Some conclusions:
In 2026, I will have to focus on making money. That is pretty much the filter for taking on new things next year: do they make money?
I’ve removed myself from some boards, and shucked myself from some other commitments. I’ve formed a new company to hold my creative work, and it will have a store where I sell the things I make and write (expect several big announcements on January 5th!).
Related to that, expect me to make and to write more things to sell. I’m working like a madman to revamp and improve my membership program, so it provides even more value to the members who support my work. (Expect an announcement on February 2nd.)
I’ll be writing more, and Facebook monetized me earlier this year, so I’ll have to figure out how to actually work that. God bless my heart and your feed.
And yes, while I love the idea of making a living from just the things I make and the words I write, I know I will have to find at least a half-time job to fill in the edges. So, if you know of work you think I would be good at, please let me know.
Over 2025, I’ve felt at various times hopeful, fearful, optimistic, and betrayed. I’m tired and yet know the fight in front of us is long and hard.
One thing I love about social media is the opportunity to share in your joy, even when my supply of joy is in severe deficit. I love seeing your kids’ Halloween costumes, that perfect view from your window, the crumpled wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the excitement that is evident when you post the cover of the book you just finished.
I see you, and am thankful for you. And thanks for sharing your joy.
Wishing you every good thing in the new year.
HH
PS: This is the sort of thing I used to write regularly, and which got me a reputation for being vulnerable. There are lots of people who are close to me who haven’t known about all the financial chaos of this year because I have been reluctant to write about it. I mean, “a straight white man is afraid—news at 11”.
And honestly, being vulnerable about your fears and doubts gets you clicks, but also takes a toll on your mental health.
But I still hold to the wise words of Mr. Rogers, who said that anything human is mentionable, and by talking about it, it becomes more manageable. Thanks for being the people to give me a place to talk about it.