A Few 2026 Intentions
Happy New Year!
I'm not a huge resolutions person and haven't been one for a while now, but I do appreciate the resetting nature of the New Year. It's a natural time to look back, take stock of where we're at in life and set our intentions for the future.
My last few years have been quite stable from a work-life balance perspective. That's been intentional, and perhaps also a natural product of reaching my 30s and doing the same job for (almost) a decade.
I don't have any big changes, resolutions, goals or targets for the year ahead. It's mostly about continued consistency, focus, intentionality and improvements on the margins.
That said, here are a few of my specific intentions for 2026:
- Up running volume — According my Garmin watch, I ran around 165 miles and walked an additional 125 or so in 2025. Late in the year I got a lot more intentional about my running and adjusted my training routine to focus on that instead of lifting. This year I hope to blow that 165-mile total out of the water, and just run consistently throughout the year. I'll continue to lift regularly as well, but that'll be more about maintenance than any significant strength gains.
- Write sharply — Last year one of my goals was to become a more crisp writer. It's again a focus for 2026. It's easy to fall into a routine of "this is just how I write" when you do it daily for work. But I'd like to be as precise as possible with my words and be aggressive in self-editing. This blog will be a great space for me to continue honing the craft.
- Blog regularly — Speaking of the blog, it's been a great creative outlet and passion project for me since starting it last August. I can't imagine this will be hard to keep up. So far it's been nothing but fun. I love the process of creating things, building something of my own and getting my ideas and thoughts somewhere on the web that isn't social media.
- Emphasize focus & quality at work — I've been covering the draft and prospects long enough now that I sort of know what I'm doing. But, as close friend once told me, improvement is a continuous pursuit. Each year I want to put out better quality work than I did the year before. That remains the goal in 2026. Excellence is mundane in many ways and I think a lot of that in my field is just about being consistent and hyper-focused on quality. Those are traits I will strive for.
- Read 36 books — OK, this one is specific enough that it kind of counts as a goal. I'm not too hung up on the 36-book number, but it is the number I plugged into my 2026 Storygraph reading goal—so here it is. I enjoy reading, I like having read books, and there are more books I'd like to read than I'll ever be able to in a lifetime. So I may as well get going. A few specifics I'm looking forward to this year: Robin Hobb's "The Tawny Man Trilogy," books 3-10 of the Malazan series by Steven Erikson, more American classics (if you have any recs let me know), "Hail Mary" by Andy Weir and more on Stoicism or philosophy more generally.
Those are the main things I'm thinking about for the year ahead—as well as our long-awaited move back to North Carolina.
I hope you all have a great 2026.