In the Field

A look back at 2025

Good fucking riddance

Mel Buer

23 Dec 2025 — 8 min read

Early morning on an Amtrak through the desert. 12/23/25.

I’ve been struggling to write for much of the last few months, but really—the last year. The shock of the layoff and the ensuing crisis of confidence has metastasized into full-blown writers’ block, among other things. For awhile there, I was working decently well in visual journalism, though a good chunk of my photos and videos were ripped from my social media and thrown up on broadcast channels without so much as a nod toward payment. My writing, however? It hasn’t been great this year. Turns out most of the best writing I did this year was during times of extreme stress and trauma, or extreme rage. Not sure if I like what that says about my ability to access my eloquence and creativity.

I’ve never been particular adept at writing on a regular schedule; there is no “writer’s regimen” for me. Try as I might to meet my self-imposed deadlines week after week, I inevitably fall off the schedule when the tenor of my life shifts in one direction or another (usually downward). My day-to-day becomes a chore; I struggle to remember to brush my teeth and do the dishes and feed the cat (in an effort to reduce these instances, I finally buckled and bought an automatic feeder). My memory isn’t great on a good day, and on days of deep depression, I feel as though I’ve finally managed to bring the worst Kafkaesque nightmares to life and transformed myself into a goldfish.

The added stress of maintaining a regular creative and informational output sorta…made things worse. I started a lot of articles and projects that I never finished. I made promises I couldn’t keep to people who trust me. I took thousands of photos and video that have festered away on SD cards and hard drives. I just haven’t really had the energy to fucking finish the things. And thus, the imposter syndrome, the internal pressure on myself, the depression all deepened with each missed deadline, each forgotten project. I suddenly find myself at the bottom of another pit, staring up at walls of clay and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to dig myself out.

You know for awhile there, I was feeling better—I was sober (I still am), and the meds were working (maybe a little too well), I had a steady paycheck, my cat was healthy and I was healthy. Then, at the end of 2024, my engagement fell apart and my life fell back into chaos, and I felt if I could just make it to 2025 and really throw myself into work that I would be able to right the capsizing ship. Turns out that’s not really the way to solve a deep and persistent burnout, nor will it solve clinical depression and PTSD. Whodathunk it.

It really wasn’t until these last few months that I’ve really begun to take stock of the damage that this year has done to me, and the damage I’ve done to myself by trying to just…work through it. The scope of it is frankly breathtaking. Here I sit, in December 2025, telling myself the same thing I say every year— all you gotta do is make it to 2026, Melanie, and then things will start looking up. Beginning to wonder if there’s something else I should be saying to myself as I look ahead to another circuit around on this weird ass planet.

You know, I’m sitting here writing this post on the Amtrak to New Mexico. As with all long distance train trips, I never seem to get a full night’s sleep sitting in coach, so of course I’ve been awake since 3:30am scrolling Bluesky and waiting for the cafe car to open. Now I’m sitting in the lounge car with a cup of coffee that I put way too much sugar into, watching a blood-red dawn begin to surface on the horizon. As I sit here ruminating on the year and struggling to write, the color at the vanishing point is widening and turning a deep gold, staining the rippling, steel-grey clouds in orange and yellow and red. Cormac McCarthy eat your heart out.

I feel...stretched thin at the edges. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, but it doesn't take the sting out of it. From the beginning of January to just this last weekend I have spent a good amount of my working hours talking to people who are deeply, utterly traumatized by wildfires, by this administration, by the ICE raids, by LAPD while I myself am deeply, utterly traumatized by the wildfires, the ICE raids, LAPD, my financial instability, and so on and so on. Just two broken people trying to be understood and to understand each other. The vicarious trauma tacked onto the personally-experienced trauma coupled with the professional trauma has compounded into a giant soup of bullshit and I'm feeling a bit frayed. I'm exhausted. I think most of us are.

We’ve been riding through Big Country for awhile now, and I’ve got 10 hours left on the train to enjoy it. I put this trip on one of those payday flex loans so that I could get out of Los Angeles for awhile and visit my aunts, who very conveniently live in the absolute middle of nowhere and are very excited to see me. I’m looking forward to turning off my phone for a few days and actually resting, and maybe making friends with a herd of cattle they’ve got grazing on the edge of their property.

Anyway, I’m doing my best to sum up 2025 without launching into a bitterly cynical tirade. There was some good, there was some really good, and there was some extremely fucked up, no good bullshit, which unfortunately has taken over my memory of the year and turned it into rotten sludge. I'm sorry this isn't the usual righteous writing; we'll be back to our regularly scheduled solidarity posting as soon as I remember to brush my teeth again.

Here’s to 2026; may the fascists finally fall back into their pit, and may I crawl my way back out of mine.

What about the work, you ask? There’s some decent shit there. I’ve included a list of some favorites and such. Explore at your leisure, subscribe to the newsletter, look out for the podcast, a paid sub literally pays my bills, so on and so on yadda yadda.

Happy Holidays, friends.

-Mel