Crazy things at the start of 2026

2026 opened like a magician pulling surprises out of a hat — except the hat was international politics and my keyboard.

First trick: news alerts lit up faster than my phone could vibrate. The headlines declared that the US had captured Maduro in Venezuela — a plot twist that made every conspiracy board and group chat combust into a thousand takes. Coffee shops suddenly felt like UN assemblies; everyone had an opinion, a tin-foil theory, and a very specific timeline. If 2026 was auditioning for a spy thriller, it nailed the opening scene.

Second trick: starring me, stage left, with a prod database and what I can only call a combination of bravado and bad luck. One fateful keystroke (call it fate, call it butterfingers) and I watched the production DB slide into the digital abyss. For approximately 4.3 heartbeats I was certain my career would become a cautionary tale.

Then reality remembered to be kind. Backup procedures — the very ones I pretended to understand during onboarding — worked. Restore completed. The prod site blinked back to life like nothing had happened, and I sat there, palms sweaty, thinking, “That was close. Also, did anyone get that on camera?”

The juxtaposition of global geopolitics and my personal near-catastrophe felt oddly poetic. On one side of the news feed: a state-level, high-stakes capture; on the other: my tiny domestic meltdown and triumphant rollback. Both were chaotic. Both involved people frantically pressing buttons. The main difference is the scale of the press conference.

Lessons learned:

• Keep backups and respect them like elder relatives — they may scold you, but they’ll save you.
• Never underestimate how swiftly a social timeline can turn a surprising news item into performance art.
• And finally, when the world throws you a headline — or you throw the world a deleted database — try to laugh. The alternative involves a lot of explanatory emails.

So here’s to 2026: already dramatic, mildly terrifying, and surprisingly forgiving. May the rest of the year come with fewer emergency restores and only cinematic-level plot twists.