2026, Let's Do This

New year, new ramblings.

Whew, 2025 sure was a doozy. And I know that turning the page on a metaphorical calendar isn’t actually a clean slate, but I like it as a checkpoint, a time to reset, to look backwards and forwards. And while, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t work—our country is devolving into a fascist regime this week just as fast as it was last week—but for my own personal journey, I like using it as a time of reflection and potential change.

Instead of going through my list of goals for last year and giving myself a passing or failing grade, instead I’m just going to focus on my accomplishments, big and small. (If I’m being honest, they are all small, but that’s okay.) I saw a trend on TikTok of people making accomplishment cakes that are similar to “hear me out” cakes so imagine me putting tiny signs with these accomplishments written on them onto a delicious-looking cake.

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Got a new job

I got a gig with an agency and I do proofreading projects for them semi-regularly. (I still have the capacity for more freelance work though if anyone is looking for a writer/proofreader/editor/sensitivity reader...)

Read 61 books

I covered these in Media Mayhem but still wanted to mark it here. It’s actually the most I’ve read in a year since grammar school.

Worked on my novel

Maybe someday writing that sentence won’t feel pretentious but until then, I’ll just cringe through it. I’m working on a fiction novel. I don’t know if it’s any good or if it will go anywhere beyond my Google docs, but I am enjoying working on it and even though I really need to give myself some kind of deadline since it’s been a slow-moving draft for years. I did pick it up again this past year and I hope to at least finish some sort of draft by the end of 2026. Hopefully sooner, but I make no promises.

Kept up with this newsletter!

I don’t do great with self-motivation and since there’s nothing technically holding me accountable to send this newsletter out every week, it has been an exercise of self-discipline, and I feel like it’s the longest I’ve ever kept up with something like this and I’m kind of proud of it! Especially Media Mayhem. I feel like as silly as I feel for some of the things I send in between, it’s all worth it for the joy I get from the labor of love that is Media Mayhem.

Organized boxes in my apartment

I did a Big Clean toward the end of last year, where I went through a bunch of boxes I took from the cellar of my childhood home that my parents couldn’t store at their new house, and I found a home for (or tossed) everything inside. I even went through some boxes that were under my bed that had college textbooks and other such nonsense I thought I’d definitely need someday but absolutely have not.

Got my microwave fixed

This is silly but my microwave was broken for literal years and I just kept putting off putting in a work order for them to come fix it, making excuses like “I JUST had to email them for something a few months ago” or “My apartment is way too messy to let my super see it” but after the aforementioned clean I had no more excuses so I just emailed them and it did take a few weeks and some follow-up emails but it did eventually get replaced and now I can make microwave popcorn again and don’t have to soften butter in a sunbeam like a medieval peasant anymore.

Kept up with my Book Journal

This one is similar to keeping up with my newsletter; considering how many crafty projects my ADHD brain has picked up and swiftly abandoned over the years, I was afraid my Book Journal would end up in the pile, but I was consistent with updating it all year! I don’t have a tiny printer for book covers (and my regular-sized printer doesn’t handle color very well) so I hand-drew very loose interpretations of the covers and I still have a few of those to catch up on after being in Boston the last two weeks of December, but I do plan on repurposing the journal for 2026, too (since it was built for people who read 300 books a year and I certainly did not) so there’s time for that. This project has even less external motivation/validation since hardly anyone else ever even sees it but it brings me joy and I’m glad I was able to consistently do something just for me.

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As you can see, a general theme of the goals I have for myself in life and what I consider personal wins is consistency. I’d love to stick to one plan and see it through, instead of bouncing around to a hundred different things. I’d love to develop a better routine for keeping my apartment clean so I’m not doing week-long binge cleans once a year. I’d love to keep up with my newsletter, book journal, and general reading frenzy. In fact, I have plenty of goals, big and small, for 2026. Soft ones (like being on my phone less, especially while watching media) and more finite/clear-cut ones like finishing the draft I talked about. Some are more important (I really do need to find more jobs), some less so (for example, finishing Baldur’s Gate 3), but also goals are constantly shifting and changing and I’m not going to set myself up for failure by setting anything in stone right now.

While this year had plenty of bleakness and darkness and hard times, it had some great ones too. I went to like a bajillion gay weddings that were all beautiful and wonderful. I saw some truly amazing live theater. I went to conventions with my friends where we could really let our freak flags fly. I spent time with family and friends, in person and virtually, hanging out, playing games, just enjoying each other’s company. Wicked: For Good came out, Stranger Things ended, Pluribus came into my life. Among other things.

It’s hard not to look at this coming year as a chance to “get my life together,” whatever that means. I’m turning 39 on Friday, and 40 seems like a deadline I’m not ready for. I have that kind of dread like a final paper is due tomorrow and I haven’t started it yet. I know this isn’t real, I know that timelines are fake and age is just a number and it’s not even like I know specifically what I want to have done by 40, so I’m doing my best to shake it. I know it’s imaginary pressure from an imaginary source, it’s just a lifetime of being exposed to societal norms made up by straight, white, cis, rich people and it doesn’t apply to me. I’m battling the mid-life crisis feelings by reminding myself that even though Covid put us all in a bit of a state of arrested development for five years, things are still moving, still changing. Let’s say I only have 20 years left to live (gods willing it’s longer, but just run with me on this); my life is so completely and utterly different than it was 20 years ago. I’ve accomplished things my 19-year-old-self could never have even DREAMED of wanting to do. So many things that were going to change my life for the better hadn’t happened yet. I wasn’t even out yet! I hadn’t met most of my very best friends yet. I wasn’t being paid for my writing yet. I had never played D&D, or lived in a non-dorm apartment in NYC, or gone to a New York Comic Con, or left the country, or seen Wynonna Earp. All things that fundamentally improved my life—improved ME—in ways I never could have foreseen. I guess we’ll see how I feel when I actually turn 40, but for now, instead of the feeling of dread, I’m going to focus on the feeling of hope; just imagine all the things that are going to change my life for the better that haven’t happened yet.

Happy 2026! I hope this year treats us all a little gentler than last year did, and that we treat ourselves a little gentler, too.

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