A personal post to close out the year — I hope 2025 has been good to everyone. For me, it has been clarifying although difficult, and it’s come at the expense of my output. The first half of this year was a wash.
Still, this blog now has over 3,200 (!!) subscribers and I’m very appreciative of that.
I promised myself 2026 will be much different. The plan is writing, writing, and more writing. And I’ll be making some changes to get there. If you have any suggestions or general comments on my work, feel free to leave a comment.
I’ll still be publishing my usual essays, but you should know I also have two special sections. One is my history-writing series Past as Prologue and the other is Readings & Reviews which I recently added for commentary on books and (often forgotten) essays.
They’re accessible on the top bar of my homepage.
Past Year Review
My most popular essay this year was The New Vertigo Years where I explore in detail how the start of the 20th century had many of the same anxieties as today. It was picked up by a few blogs and I’ve gotten great feedback on it.
Here are all my 2025 essays, ranked by popularity:
I’ll try to do more of these in 2026, but I went on the podcast Rabble Report in October to talk about my Welcome to the Technocracy essay. If interested, check it out:
Other Plans
For 2026, I have a few other things I’m working on aside from this substack.
I have a few magazine essays pending publication that I’ll be sharing soon. I’ve also been obsessed with a real-life story I discovered, so I have been collecting material for a non-fiction novel. It is daunting, but I think next year is the time to finally start!
Lastly, this is a place mainly for longer essays but while researching, I often find photos, songs, art, and texts that I save. My idea is to make a companion blog for archival sharing. Given the way the internet is nowadays, I think people would value some good non-slop curation. I have the domain already, so I’ll try to get that going soon but it depends on time constraints.
If you like what I do, consider being a paid subscriber. I can’t promise anything for paid subs now, but it’s a huge bump to know I’m doing something worthwhile.
Thanks for subscribing and Happy New Year!
— Anton
Anton, I just wanted to drop in here and say I think you're doing great work. I only just discovered you this past year, and I'm glad to hear you've got a lot more writing planned for 2026. Looking forward to what comes of it.