Considering 2026
At the very beginning of this year, or maybe the very very end of last, I found someone's 2025 bingo card. They threw a bunch of personal goals on it and marked off the ones they'd achieved. I really liked the idea—I've always struggled to keep up with daily or weekly challenges (though I'll certainly spend the next month thinking of one I can do for two weeks and then give up on), so this felt like a good way to have goals and new year's resolutions without putting myself on any kind of regular cadence.
I didn't come up with enough items to fill the squares. I've decided not to dig up the list I was working on, because I'm sure it will depress me. Offhand, I know that I wanted to find a job (didn't happen) and open up an Etsy store (didn't happen). I'm sure I missed most of the others that occurred to me, too.
It hasn't been a great year, all in all. I've been almost legendarily unproductive, and it's hard for me to name anything I actually did. My partner (with whom I celebrated my one-year anniversary a month ago—the one achievement I'm willing to speak to!) is quick to mention things I have done, and I'm quick to minimize them. He's also quick to excuse my lack of doing things, which is also easy to dismiss.
I'd love to be in therapy, to be clear, but my job situation being in flux (plus the current state of the U.S. government) means that so is my health insurance! Yay!
Anyway, I'm trying to think about 2026 before it happens, though not that far beforehand. Here are some things I might put on 2026 bingo card:
- Open an Etsy store (for real this time) (although actually I'm going to host it through Woocommerce on my own site, probably)
- Get a job? (maybe not even worth putting on the card because if it doesn't happen like three months in then I'm in actual legitimate severe trouble)
- Publish a new TTRPG (just one! more would be nice! but let's shoot for just one!)
- Draw a crayon doodle tarot deck? (okay, at this point I'm just filling space to fill it)
- One zine each month (I wanna make zines so bad and then I don't)
You can see now why I had trouble filling a bingo card.
I haven't done anything for so long that I don't know what to do! I don't know what I want to do, and I'm not sure if I even want to do anything. I want to want to do things. I miss making things—or at least, I miss wanting to make things.
As an anti-capitalist, I don't like that I keep going "maybe I'll feel better once I have a job," but financial security goes a long way.
If I wanted to do some kind of daily/weekly challenge, I might think about...
- Drawing something (one year I tried to draw Hilda from Fire Emblem: Three Houses every day and fell off in I think early February—my friend started a similar challenge with G'raha Tia from FFXIV and was more forgiving with days that she missed, but I missed one and just moved on)
- Dungeon23 equivalent (I tried City23, and it didn't last very long, either)
- Selfies/photos/etc. (one of my friends records one second of his day every day and does a big compilation video at the end of the year, but I feel like I'm at home all day most days… selfies would let me watch the pink of my hair fade over time though)
I'd like some sort of challenge or activity going, something goal-like to keep me vaguely accountable, but I'm not drawn to anything in particular right now… But I feel like I haven't been drawn to creating in a while, either.
Anyway, I didn't mean for this to be so much about my mental health, but so it goes. Hopefully I'll come back here later with a more solid plan for 2026!