How to Keep Your Head Amidst [All This]

Some tips that have helped me.

Everyone I know is on tilt, all the time. This has obviously been the case for a while now — I’d say a decade at this point — but 2026, a year that is only 38 days old, has pushed us all to the brink. People are worried about everything — their families, their jobs, their finances, their health, their security, their safety, their country, their mental stability, their ability to make it through all this. I try to remember, constantly, that everyone I interact with my life is dealing with this in one way or another. They’re going through it right now. We all are.

Like everybody else, I’m just trying to keep my bearings: to keep myself and the people around me as sane as level as possible. I’m trying to keep my cool. I am not always successful at this — ask the poor lady who made the mistake of mentioning that she occasionally uses ChatGPT for room design within earshot a couple of weeks ago — but I am trying. If you were to run into me on the street, I hope that you would think I was being at least somewhat successful.

It is, as I suspect it is for you, a constant battle. But I’m finding little ways to keep my head above water: Strategies that I find helpful. I dunno if they will work for you. But they are (mostly) working for me. My tips, for myself, to keep my wits, to…