Dan Sinker/blog

2025: The Exit Interview

Yoko Ono's "Painting to Hammer a Nail," on display at the MCA Chicago's "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind". One of those nails is mine.

My contract runs out with 2025 today—a terrible year after a string of bad ones—and so I requested an exit interview with HR. Here's the full transcript of our interview.

Thank you for your time with 2025 this year. We have a series of questions to better understand your experience with our year and your motivations for leaving. To begin, what was the primary factor influencing your decision to conclude this period of work?

I've spent some time over the last week reflecting back on this year, and the word I keep coming back to is "unrelenting." It has been an unrelenting year from start to finish. Unrelenting at a global level, unrelenting at a national level, unrelenting at a local level, and unrelenting at a personal level. Every single time I thought there would be a break, some new level of hell would rise up. So, under those unrelenting working conditions, it was clear that this year and I were not going to be collaborating effectively in the long term. It seemed like time to leave a long time ago, to be honest, however I had to see through the end of the contract which, thankfully, is today. My only regret is that it wasn't sooner.

Overall, how closely did your experience of this year align with your expectations at the outset?

Great question, because I felt like I came into this year with my eyes open and my expectations low. Donald Trump was going to become president for the second time so there was no part of me that expected this year to be an easy one. And yet it defied even my own low expectations.

Where to start? Probably with the surprise death of my mother, suddenly on a Sunday morning in June. We had a relationship that could charitably be described as "complicated," and let me tell you that nothing about a sudden death uncomplicates anything. Pile the exhausting work of clearing out her house on top of that and, well, it was a lot. Meanwhile, the health of our dog was on a rapid decline, my wife was struggling with a cancer scare, and we were moving our eldest kid into an apartment 2000 miles from home. And that was all in like a two month window. It was a lot. A lot a lot.

And that's not to mention the unrelenting assault on rights, on institutions, on schools, on all of us by the government itself, which was sort of a high-pitched alarm ringing out through the whole year until it came home, literally, with ICE and Border Patrol's assault on Chicago this fall. There was no part of my expectations for the year that ended with running down the side of a road relentlessly blowing a whistle as an SUV full of masked goons ran a red light to get away. Maybe it was lack of imagination, but I sure didn't envision that.

I'm sorry to hear all that. To change the subject to perhaps a more positive aspect of our year, which projects, initiatives, or efforts did you find most meaningful or satisfying?

I think probably the main thing that kept me even slightly sane this year was the writing I did here. As I mentioned a few days ago, I set out a goal of 36 posts this year, originally planned for three a month. As things spiraled out of control this summer, that felt like a completely impossible goal. But goals are good, because they force you to try and meet them, so once I got my feet back under me a little, I forced myself to try and meet it. And, as of this post, I did. It meant writing five times a month for a few months, but that discipline helped my brain a lot. I'm not sure how I would have made it through the ICE attacks this fall without being able to turn to this space and write it all down.

Beyond this site, there were two projects that were really satisfying and a lot of fun:

What achievements from this year do you view as your most significant?

I'm still pretty stunned that I've got a book deal with the legendary radical publisher Haymarket Books to write about newspaperman George Dale's unrelenting war against the Ku Klux Klan in Muncie, Indiana in the 1920s. But what's more amazing about it is the way it all unfolded:

Sometime last year, I was approached by Chicago's great Andrew Huff to do a reading in early January at a series he runs called 20x2, where twenty people give two minute talks on a topic of their choice. Last year I'd set a goal for myself to say yes to more things like that (not at all my default setting), so I agreed and then immediately forgot about it. Flash forward to a week or two before the date and I was stressing about what to talk about. I'd been reading George Dale's papers ever since election day, and so I thought I'd give a brief talk about him. Of course, I put myself through it in prepping for the talk, but despite a lot of self-doubt, I went up and gave the talk. It went over really huge, including a couple other readers coming up and telling me that it should be a book. Instead, I adapted it into a blog post that came out about a month later and that also went over huge, like significantly huger than anything I'd written here before, and at that point I approached my pal Sarah Weinman for advice on an agent. She connected me with David Patterson who had great thoughts on how to turn the blog post into a book proposal and then he went out and turned it into a deal.

That the latter part, the actually-getting-a-deal part, unfolded at pretty much the apex of every shitty thing happening in my life this summer made it feel a little less special, but the reality is that it's a huge achievement and getting a book deal is something I've hoped for for years. That it came from a short talk and a blog post and all happened in about six months from start to finish is really stunning. Now I have to actually write it, which yikes, but also, wow. I can not understate how much this wouldn't have happened had I not made a goal for myself last year to say yes to more things. Once again: goals are good.

Additionally, I would be remiss to not mention Rebel Spirit winning both a Webby Award and a Signal Award this year. I'm hard-wired to declare awards as meaningless but man it felt good to see Akilah's and my work get the recognition it, frankly, deserves.

What systems, routines, or outside influences, such as books, films, music, or other media, contributed positively to your work?

I went and saw people and had experiences out in the world more this year than any since everything shut down in 2020 and that was wonderfully restorative and something that I'm going to attempt to double down on in 2026. I went to a movie in the movie theater for the first time in ages and sure it was just The Minecraft Movie with my 10-year-old but I left so excited about people in places that I sort of babbled on about it to anyone that would listen for weeks. People in places! It's an amazing cure for creeping fascism, even if everyone's just yelling "chicken jockey!" at the same time. But, thankfully, The Minecraft Movie was not the most resonant piece of culture I engaged with this year. I've already written about Annalee Newitz's excellent book Automatic Noodle, about community and robots and cooking, but I haven't stopped thinking about it all year. I also already wrote about Caitlin Angelica's sad and haunting album "Now I Know," a meditation on grief that I definitely needed this year. I did not write about, but was blown away by Alex Espinoza's thick book Sons of El Ray, a multigenerational saga about lucha libre wrestling, the immigrant experience, and living with secrets—it's a masterpiece. (The two books mentioned here are affiliate links.) On the subject of masterpieces, the newest installment of Mario Kart, Mario Kart World, is right up there—I have played it for hours with my kids this holiday break. I watched and then immediately rewatched The Studio, a love letter to Hollywood created at a moment when Hollywood is collapsing. The pace that Seth Rogan runs through every scene is incredible. Equally incredible is Wake Up Dead Man, by Rian Johnson largely because of the performance of Josh O'Connor, who anchors the movie with a quiet depth that was stunning.

But the two pieces of culture that I saw and have stuck with me the most this year were both in-person exhibits (like I said, people in places, what a concept!):

The first was "Music of the Mind" the incredible Yoko Ono retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibit, which spans the entirety of the MCA's top floor, is filled with opportunities to interact with the art and become a part of the pieces on display. From leaving notes stuck to a wall outside the start of the show, to piecing together broken plates, to hammering a nail in a canvas, and adding messages scrawled in blue paint to the final room in the show, I've never seen a museum retrospective that makes you so central to it. It's truly stunning. And since interaction and playfulness is so much a part of Yoko's work it doesn't feel like a gimmick but instead a necessary element to understand her remarkable career. Also, yes to giving someone their flowers before they've passed on. I hope she knows how much people love the show.

The other exhibit I saw this year was about as far apart from the Yoko one as I can imagine: "Let there be GWAR" the career-spanning retrospective of the shock-punk band GWAR, held at LA's Beyond The Streets gallery. More than their music, I was always amazed at the elaborate costumes and sets they built for their shows, all of which were done on DIY budgets. The gallery had dozens of their enormous foam-rubber costumes on display as well as lots of concept art, full stage sets, and videos like the one I think about a lot with the guy who mixes together hundreds of gallons of fake blood before every show. Seeing the schlock of GWAR given a loving gallery treatment was a reminder that there is a lot of incredible art in the underground that doesn't get the loving respect it deserves.

Well that doesn't sound all that bad.

Oh, sorry if you misinterpreted finding some light in an endless darkness as "not that bad." Let me be clear: your year fucking sucked.

Noted. At what point did you begin to feel that a change in years was necessary, and what contributed to that conclusion?

Probably when I was running down McCormick Boulevard in Evanston, frantically blowing a whistle while an SUV full of masked bastards in tactical gear was driving recklessly trying to shake the line of honking cars behind them. That was definitely the "You know what?? I'm fucking done with this shit" moment. But there were so many moments leading up to it. The unrelenting nature of this year made it so you could probably pick any day in any week and point to something and say yes, that. It was a year I hope to never repeat, I hope none of us ever have to, and I desperately hope for something better in 2026. Despite every counterfactual, for some reason, I cling to the idea that that is possible. I have to. We have to. It has to be, right?

2026 is out of our purview. To conclude, are there additional reflections about your experience with this year that would be helpful to document here?

Yes. There was one thing about this year, despite its unrelenting awfulness, that is worth calling out: community was everything. As the government turned against us, as jobs were lost (oh yeah, that happened to me this year too), as thugs spread out across our neighborhoods snatching people, community was all we had. And community stepped up. As much of a nightmare as ICE and Border Patrol's occupation of Chicago was, seeing them thwarted at every turn by neighbors with whistles and car horns, seeing the organizing happening in ad-hoc Signal chats, seeing regular people—you and me—stepping into the path of danger, running toward trouble, and trying in any way we all could to keep our neighbors safe was remarkable. I have lived in my small, falling-apart house for quite a while and I've never felt closer to my neighbors than after the assaults this fall. People who I've never talked with before would come up, ask for a whistle, and explain what they were doing to help. Parents would coordinate patrols around schools, every day, and turn up in real numbers. When SNAP benefits were about to run out, people donated food in a volume that was truly mind-boggling. Seeing community come alive and work together to protect each other, despite the unrelenting nature of 2025, was truly inspiring and I believe is going to be the key to not just surviving 2026, not just making it through, but to reclaim what is ours and to make the year truly better. Like I said, despite every counterfactual, I cling to hope. We are all we have. Maybe we are all we need.

Thank you for your candid responses, this concludes our questions for you. Thank you for your service in 2025, please leave your ID at the front desk. You can leave.

Fucking finally. Goodbye 2025, I hope to never see you again.

Published December 31, 2025. |

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