Hi darlings,
Welcome to 2026!
It's time to continue reflecting on the past year to set some intentions for the next. First, let's recap the goals I set for 2025 and assess my success in accomplishing them:
1. Do sustainable, consistent, values-congruent things with my free time.
I think I did a pretty good job of accomplishing this goal, although that required making some adjustments and compromises I'm still having feelings about. I continued to build local community, read (including one of the most gorgeous books I've read in a while), write, take photos and (FINALLY) print books of my photos, bake and cook, and care for plants and animals (inside and outside my home), each of which have brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction. I would really like to get back into a routine of taking walks in my beautiful neighborhood, which would necessitate using the occasional free mornings I have for that purpose. I also *still* miss my sweet little VR minigolf game and have not figured out how to fit that back into my life.
I got more involved with an additional recovery program and joined a small working group within that program, and I started a group chat for parents of young children who are in my original program. I've kept doing readings, listening to recovery-focused podcasts, and going to meetings. I also completed a healing-focused somatic and breathwork seminar that was really intense and helpful. I'm still tentative about building more 1-on-1 relationships within those programs, but I'm also trying to respect my own process and not rush myself.
I participated in activism and mutual aid-related work throughout most of 2025, but by the last few months of the year I found that activism specifically was simply not compatible with the realities of my life as a parent with young children. It became more and more impossible to attend regular meetings, even by Zoom, as they perfectly overlap with bedtime for my kids--a transition that is very much all-hands-on-deck and can't sustainably be done without both parents. It's frustrating and demoralizing finding yet another aspect of life in America in which there is fundamentally not space made for parents. It is especially anxiety-inducing that this is yet another place where it feels like I have no choice but to sit on the sidelines and hope that there's still work I can contribute in a few years when parenting isn't so full on.
I feel extremely conflicted about my decision to scale back my participation in activist work, while also acknowledging that even characterizing it as a decision isn't totally accurate or fair to me. Ideally these spaces would be accessible for everyone who wants to contribute, and they simply aren't for parents. I'm hoping there are still ways for me to keep my hand in the game, so to speak, and it does look like that's possible if I can accept taking a much smaller role than I want to. I'm hoping I can come to some degree of peace with that and also not have to totally forfeit this facet of myself for now.
2. Watch at least 30 movies, and write at least 15 posts.
I succeeded, just barely, in exceeding my 2025 movie-watching goal before the end of the year, thanks in no small part to some delightfully terrible Christmas movies I squeezed in as I was packing for my family for the holidays. As you can see, I fell quite short of my writing goal, going so far as to skip writing in September entirely. While I'm frustrated about that, the reality of my struggle to meet even these scaled-down goals has also helped soften my perfectionism about writing and accept that, while the totality of my life is really demanding right now, I'm doing the best I can.
Now, to propose goals for this year.
Minor note: I don't mean to over-utilize the word "consistently" in the following resolutions, but it's important to me to prioritize endeavors I can pursue in a sustainable way rather than goals that have a specific accomplishment or outcome at the end.
1. Consistently engage in creativity.
I'm going to define "creativity" broadly while also using this resolution to hone in on some of the most rewarding leisure time I've had in the past year. For the purposes of this resolution, creativity can mean things like writing, working on photography, decorating or redesigning a space, and coming up with fun activities to do with my family, but it can also mean the more generative aspect of creativity that is manifested in things like baking and caring for plants and animals.
2. Consistently care for myself physically and emotionally.
I'm proud of my continued engagement in a variety of emotional healing and recovery processes, and I see the cumulative benefit of those commitments year after year. I'm also proud of breaking through whatever barrier(s) inhibited my ability to more actively care for myself physically, and that as a result I've been taking more personal responsibility not just for scheduling and transporting myself to medical, dental, and massage appointments, but also to doing physical therapy and exercising in my own time. In 2026, I want to continue caring for myself in this holistic manner.
3. Consistently participate in anti-hunger and community-focused work and activism.
Of all of the horrific political incidents in the past year, one that was so repugnant that I struggle to comprehensively articulate how disturbed, upset, disgusted, and enraged I was as a result was the government's cutting of funding for SNAP benefits. I want to consistently work to ensure people in my community aren't hungry. Thankfully, I've found that there are several avenues for engaging in this kind of work that are more feasible for the stage of life I'm in.
4. Watch at least 30 movies and write at least one post per month.
I'm happy to say that I've already watched 9 movies this year, which under other circumstances might lead me to consider increasing this year's movie-watching goal. But recent years have made it very clear that the mental, emotional, and practical space I have to watch movies tends to fluctuate a LOT over the course of the year, and I'd much rather keep my expectations of myself on this front gentle, realistic, and reasonable than set a goal I may not meet because I briefly felt cocky and overly ambitious.
All that aside, I'm excited for the movies of the future year, and I'm also excited for the time I'll spend writing about them.
I hope this new year is beautiful and so much better than any of us might be expecting. Whatever happens, thankfully we're walking through it together.
{Heart}
