An End-of-Year Reflection on Hope, Work, and Perspective
- Ellie K
- Dec 5, 2025
- 2 min read
“Madame, madame, excusez-moi?”
I turned to see one of my students from last year—perfectly put together, cigarette in hand. She does PR for a fashion designer so famous they avoid the press entirely. If you know, you know.
She smiled and said, “I just wanted you to know I really enjoyed your class. I learned so much.”
I was…gobsmacked. I had been convinced they all thought I was the cringe Millennial preaching multi-channel communications instead of worshipping at the altar of social media.
And yet—someone learned something.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. As I wrote a few weeks ago: why are we so hard on ourselves? No one benefits from it.
Thanksgiving is behind us. Now Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s are barreling toward us. Meanwhile: end-of-year reporting, taxes, gift lists, cookies, menorah wax, and the reality that the cost of living keeps rising while the job market tightens.
Then we open social media or turn on the news and are told that, depending on your preferences, either Zohran Mamdani will kidnap your kids from the JCC or Donald Trump will personally show up at a kindergarten to deport brown children.
The screens insist everything is on fire. Real life usually isn’t.
So as we close out 2025 and head toward the 250th year of American existence, it’s worth remembering: things aren’t always as bad as The Discourse®️ insists—professionally or personally.
This isn’t naïve optimism. As Yuval Levin once put it, “ ... optimism is a vice, it’s this idea that good things are just going to happen. In the history of the world, good things have never just happened. I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful, and hope is the virtue that sits between the vices of optimism and pessimism. Hope is the idea that good things are going to happen because we can make them so.”
In that spirit, a few wins from my year—large and small:
Started working with several new clients doing truly meaningful work.
Taught media relations at a French business school.
Joined the board of a local association.
Organized the pantry and under-sink cabinet; lentils no longer slump over like Jabba the Hutt.
Consolidated my business and personal blogs into this one—voilà.
Took a multi-state road trip with my husband.
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