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mistressofmuses) wrote2026-01-01 09:21 pm
Intentions for 2026
This year really doesn’t feel much like a year has passed, y’know?
Not just in the “how has it been a full year? Wasn’t last January like ten minutes ago?” way, which… I mean, yeah, that too, but it always feels like that, ha. 2025 just felt really disconnected, even more so than I expected. Maybe it’s the abnormally warm weather, but Christmas hardly felt like Christmas, and still sort of feels like it didn’t happen (despite having a nice one), and it definitely doesn’t feel like we’re moving into a new year!
(Sure, there’s no literal reason that the move from December 31 to January 01 is a more meaningful change than any other day. But at least sometimes I feel a sense of closure when one year ends, and some enthusiasm for another one starting. That feeling is so completely absent this year, ha.)
I have stuck with habit tracking for another year, and I plan to do so again this upcoming year. I mostly plan to track the same habits, with one change. A couple years ago, I separated 2nd+ draft writing out from the rest of my writing, because I wanted to see how different my pace was for first vs second drafts. Now I’ve been having a terrible time getting anything written at all, much less to the point that additional drafts are a consideration, so that’s just kind of… a wasted category. Instead, this year I think I’ll split it into fiction vs other writing. I still count my other writing as writing: writing reviews, or other things that require a bit more effort than a typical journal entry. But for now, I think that’s a more worthwhile distinction for me to be able to look at.
A lot of my intentions for this year are pretty similar to last year. It doesn’t feel like a “new” year, and there’s not a lot that I truly want to do differently. The things I succeeded at are things I want to keep doing, the things I didn’t are things I want to try to do again.
I do still have the same feeling that I did last year, where the general State of the World meant that it feels… petty? inconsequential? to be worrying about little individual goals and things. The world definitely isn’t feeling better right now, but I’m trying to look at this the same way I did last year:
Setting these intentions is a way to say that I do have plans to stick around, and do more than stagnate. The things may be small, but… whether things get better or worse on the grander scale, at least I will have done good and worthwhile things on the smaller scale. Reading good books and going to good places will be good regardless.
That said…
(I’m splitting them up again into the categories I track via my habit tracker.)
Work (self-explanatory)
- Continue just… doing my job well. Maintain or improve my call rate, since that’s the biggest measure of success.
Household Maintenance (all the general things that count as “adulting:” cooking, cleaning, errands, bill-paying, appointments…)
- Continue attempting to do weekly-ish cleaning projects. (I have struggled to do this, but maybe this time I’ll manage it.) It’d be nice to get the apartment into some semblance of livability.
- Start going through the things in storage at my mom’s house. I have a lot that can likely be gotten rid of, and if I can get that cleaned up, I can store some of our current stuff there and make the apartment less miserably overcrowded.
- My houseplants really do need some TLC
Physical Activity (self-explanatory)
- I’d really like us to keep up with hiking! It was really satisfying to go basically every week, and I’d like to do that again.
Write 500/1000+ Words (I mean this for fiction writing.)
- I have declared a goal of 75000 words again in both
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getyourwordsout and inkingitout (placed under the first draft category, but the non-fic writing counts, too.) - Try to get at least one thing completed through the first draft stage
Non-fiction Writing (I will also break this into the 500 and 1000+ word increments, but this is the category for reviews or more topic-focused writing.)
- Continue writing reviews of what I read
Meta Work (planning, research, or the sorts of life-admin that don’t really qualify as household-related.)
- Wrangling my email is an ongoing struggle. I need to trim things down to what I’m actually interested in, and discard the rest.
- Take another shot at maybe organizing my tags on Dreamwidth.
Personal Writing
- Continue posting to Dreamwidth.
Other Creative Things
- Work on my pin boards, which always seem to get put off, as the pins collect in a box
- Put together a memorial shadowbox for Cy
Reading (self-explanatory)
- Read at least 50 books (hopefully more)
- Start reading some of the “classics” of the fantasy genre that I feel like I should have already read by now. A real read of Lord of the Rings, works by Ursula K Le Guin, and works by Terry Pratchett to start with.
- Share my reviews (or at least shortened versions of them) on actual review sites; Librarything, if nowhere else.
Attention to Media (movies/TV/podcasts/music/etc.)
(I really don’t have a goal, here.)
Video Games (playing them alone or with someone else)
- Really, for real, let myself play them when I want to, and stop feeling guilty about having fun instead of doing something measurably productive.
- Maybe this is the year that I finally get a PS5 and play something that isn’t more than a decade old.
Social Interaction (this can be online or in person, but has to be active, not passive)
- Try again to participate in Dreamwidth comms and maybe Discord.
- Find some opportunities for Alex and I to go do “event” type things. That was really enjoyable last year.
20 intentions for the year, some of which are repeats, some of which are new. I still anticipate time management being the biggest struggle, since so many things take time and energy, and I can’t do all of them at once. That’s nothing new! The battle is ongoing.
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Yeah. What we do have control over, or have the most control over, are the small-scale things. Might as well do what we want to do on the small-scale. Sometimes it's about the survival of yourself and your loved ones, and trying to have nice times, because the world is much too large and unwieldy.
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I don't want to ignore the big things - as my country remains and escalates being an international nightmare - but even as I do what I can, I also want to make the small-scale parts of my everyday life worthwhile.
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I've got that John Rogers tweet about taking a deep breath and reminding himself that millions of people lead fulfilling lives during the fall of the Roman Empire.
Hiking that often is amazing!
I enjoy discord, I've been on it a while. Discords with media trackers are great for keeping off of other social media sites and cutting down my time on them overall.
Good luck!
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...I think I should just print that tweet out and tape it to my mirror or something, haha.
I was really happy with how much hiking we did last year.
I like Discord so well in theory... but I think I've just failed to find servers of the right size for me. They're either so slow I forget about them, or they move so quickly I get immediately overwhelmed and can't ever find a chance to step in. Considering how much I do struggle with my own time management, though, perhaps it IS extremely good that I don't actually have social media vying for my time on the regular.
Thank you!
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I like discord, but finding good ones is a mystery. They just fall into my lap or not.
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It really *was* a light year on video essays. I know there were some, but I feel like I rewatched more older ones than really had new ones that grabbed hold.
The discord experience does seem so wildly unpredictable! I hope that I may someday find the right fit for me in what I want from a server... while recognizing that means I have to *try* to find the right fit, haha. Maybe this will be the year!
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My book clubs have a shared discord server. There is a horror media one started by someone here on DW. I've got some for gaming. I'm also in one for the m/m content creator that had to turtle. We've got an online book club going in there, and I'm pretty sure we can invite people we know as long as we don't post the link publicly
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I'd certainly be glad for any server recs you have! I have a few different fandom ones that I'm in, but they were ones that moved too fast for me to feel able to keep up with, and so I basically immediately just wanted to hide, haha. Not that I need more books to add to the list, but I can see an online bookclub being worthwhile.
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https://tongue-in-cheek.binderybooks.com/
Next book club book is We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebestian
And the horror discord is here: https://discord.gg/s7bvwYxzHb It's run by Snick here on DW if you know them?
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I have something else by Cat Sebastian books on my TBR, and have heard good things about her as a writer.
I feel like I've seen Snick around, but don't know them.
Perhaps I just need a reset on Discord, ha.
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I like discord, just remember you can disable sounds, alerts, notifs and do a lot of customizing. I have a personal server that I use for passing info/link/photos between my laptop and phone, and organizing stuff.
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I am positive I have seen them around before, though I don't think we've ever interacted. I'll give them a follow - always love seeing more about horror stuff.
That is definitely something I need to do more with for discord. I've only used it via app on my phone, which is also probably part of the problem - I hate typing on my phone, so replying to anything takes ten times as long as I want it to, and feels more onerous than it should. And the push notifications just get overwhelming to the point I glaze over and ignore them, rather than actually muting/disabling them. I might have a better time with it on computer.
I've heard a few other people mention having a personal server for the same reason, and can see that being helpful. (It's probably better than passing things via email drafts, which is what I tend to do, haha.)
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I truly wish you the best of luck in pursuing, further developing, and progressing on all of your intentions above this year though!!! ^_^
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Thank you! I appreciate it!