Cheers to 2026

I’ve gone back and forth on setting resolutions over the years. On the plus side, I find it helpful to hold myself accountable to certain goals. On the negative side, I usually forget about my resolutions a few weeks into the new year. 😅 I’m indecisive and open-minded, which causes me to flip-flop on the resolution front.

Every year, I buy a planner. At my previous teaching job, they actually used to buy the same one for each of us middle school/high school teachers every year, usually one of these Blue Sky planners that include spaces for daily and monthly planning. They’re great! We needed them because each of us was responsible for all the students and coursework in our subject area. For instance, as the sole English teacher at the school, I taught English to all the 6th through 12th grade students, which amounted to teaching about 20-30 different courses in any given year (many of which I designed, which was SUPER fun…. but also a ton of work). We also had individual weekly meetings with each of our students. It was a lot to keep track of, and the social studies teacher and myself agreed we couldn’t manage it without a physical planner.

Ever since starting my newer teaching job at the technical college a few years ago, I’ve been continuing to buy these planners. I’ve maybe gotten a bit dependent upon them. I usually try to order them by early December before the new year. Having forgotten to order it sooner, I just ordered my 2026 planner on Monday, and it wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week. However, it magically arrived yesterday, by some stroke of luck, and it has a new page on the front that reads “Yearly Goals”. I don’t remember that page from previous years of the planner, but maybe I ordered a slightly different variation?

All this to say, seeing the goals on a page of my planner that arrived unexpectedly on New Year’s Eve makes me feel obligated to set resolutions this year. 😅

So, here they are. I hope that posting them here and in my planner will help me to hold myself accountable:

1. Be early more often than late. Not early all the time, but…you know. Maybe I’ll keep a tally.
2. Finish organization/renovation projects we’ve started in our house in 2024/2025. I’m “manifesting” 2026 as the year of completing works in progress on all fronts (including the writing realm).
3. Write every week. I want to get to the stage of life where I can say, “Write every day”, but I want these to be realistic goals for my life right now. Hopefully, weekly writing should help with the writing element of goal #2.
4. Do my daily PT/stretches/mini-workouts. Build up to more frequent physical activity. Gotta stay healthy.
5. Save money towards our pole shed/pole barn goal. I have a certain number in mind and did the calculations to see how much we’d need to set aside from each paycheck to hopefully make this less intimidating. With the state of the economy, it’s still going to be tough. But our current garage fits either one vehicle or my husband’s projects, never both and not much more than that, so we’ve had our hearts set on a large space for a while now. Here’s hoping this is the year we can finally make it happen!
6. Enjoy the year. 😜 Hopefully an easy goal. 🤞

Happy New Year, everyone!