January 2026—The Occasion for an LOTRW Reset

Going forward, LOTRW will stay true to its focus. It will continue to address the human relationship with the real world, that is, the solid Earth, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the plant and animal life that enable all human affairs—a real world that we merely live on (as on that outermost skin of 197 million square miles), not in (as in that 260 billion cubic miles of crust, mantle, and core). But the transition requires we review some historical context and tie up some loose ends, even as we identify and spin up new topics.

With that in mind, here’s my plan/overview for Living on the Real World posts for the coming month.

I offer this hesitantly. I’ve found over the course of 15 years of blogging that my plans tend to be aspirational forecasts, which haven’t always fully verified. 

Here’s how bad it gets. In 2019 I lamented, 

In the future, instead of promising or even hinting in a given LOTRW post that in the next post or sometime soon I’ll revisit a topic or theme – I’ll just waterboard myself, or lie in a bed of scorpions, or ask readers to inflict their preferred forms of torture. No matter how copious or obvious the raw material looks for future posts, no sooner do I commit, than any shred of insight vanishes; every bit of enthusiasm flees, every last vestige of the joy of writing is sucked out of me. I experience the dreaded writer’s block.

But AMS Headlines is a new reality. It calls for greater structure and deeper responsibility. I’m comforted (probably way too much) by three quotes, that permeate the 15 years of posts. The first comes from John Lennon: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” This appears in his song “Beautiful Boy,” though “Lennon’s” version of this line has some history¹. The second we owe to Dwight Eisenhower: “Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable.” This too has a bit of a backstory. Will Durant provided the third, which puts the first two closer to the LOTRW home: “Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” This lattermost quote apparently first appeared in a 1946 issue of that famous technical publication, Ladies’ Home Journal² (prominent in my household growing up, but probably not in yours), under the title “What is Civilization?”

So (fighting against my better judgment), here’s the notional January calendar for LOTRW; what I hope to do, rather than promise to do.

This week. quick overview. This is the text that you have on your screen, the one that you’re currently reading. A new start for LOTRW? AMS Headlines? What’s all that all about? Why does it matter? Why should I care? You’ll find a few answers to these questions at the end.

Week 2. A perspective on why the year 2026 could be a year that brings hope to our community and to the world—not simply fresh dollops of despair. That’s the first order of business facing all of us. There’s reason to be positive. In case you’re interested, since 2011, when two turn-of-the-year posts were offered (here and here), LOTRW has yielded a number of such reflections. You can find other samples here.

Week 3. A refresher on the background and the basic purposes of LOTRW; what have been the enduring themes? Some thoughts on possible new extensions and directions. These are big subjects. I won’t attempt to accomplish this in a single post, or even an uninterrupted sequence. Instead, I will intersperse these as fillers between other, more timely topics over the coming months. Speaking of new extensions and timely topics, one reality of real-world living is that we needn’t tackle tomorrow’s problems using only yesterday’s tools. Science and technology are rapidly bringing tomorrow’s new tools online. In that light, the future looks more manageable—filled with possibility, not just problems. I hope to touch on some of these during the coming year.

Speaking of possibility, that brings us to  

Week 4. The 2026 AMS Annual Meeting. I’m unable to be there in person this year but will be participating remotely (from my perspective, a poor second, but far better than nothing). A Martian, new to Earth, might question: Why should a meeting of a few thousand people for a few days matter much to a world of eight billion? To answer: the AMS Annual Meeting “punches above its weight.” It’s an incubator for the new ideas that tomorrow will be shaping the future of that much larger real world. The theme for this year’s meeting, Fast and Slow Thinking: The Human Factor in a Rapidly-Changing World nicely captures that potential, and, coincidentally, carries a living-on-the-real-world vibe. It merits a careful read³. 

In closing, a few words on AMS Headlines. (Better you get most of this from the horse’s mouth; click here to access About.) Greatly oversimplified, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has historically been a blend of scientific papers on the one hand plus additional material that might better be characterized as news (upcoming meetings, chapter activities, updates from AMS Headquarters, etc.). Those latter bits matter in their own right but are different in nature; they don’t reside comfortably in a technical journal. They can also often be perishable; they’re most valuable when available on time frames short compared with the BAMS time-to-publication of two or three months.  

AMS Headlines will provide that news a greater reach and the much-needed timeliness. In both regards that represents a significant upgrade for LOTRW. The month BAMS started publishing one of my posts in each issue was a happy day—I will always remain grateful. But in this new AMS Headlines format, the posts will receive greater exposure, and more quickly. 

But LOTRW is only the tiniest speck of the bigger AMS story. AMS Headlines will offer all of the larger community, not just AMS membership, additional means and opportunity to reflect, to celebrate, and to build upon the far-reaching implications of our existential work. 

AMS Headlines—a reason to look forward to 2026.

1. You know you want to give it a listen; here you go. 
2. The link provides Ladies’ Home Journal’s fascinating history, including the fact that in 1903 it became the first American magazine to reach one million subscribers.
3.  For those interested, here’s a sampling of LOTRW Annual-Meeting posts from prior years.