I recently walked through my 2025 posts hoping to get a sense of what I did in 2025 in preparation for writing a retrospective. I mostly found draft posts that I deleted or set aside for eventual revision, but no real meat to chew on. That’s OK, because I can’t imagine that gazing at my navel is of interest to anyone other than me, so instead I’ll do something completely different from a retrospective and for me personally: talk about resolutions for 2026.

Pre-loading an entire year with well meaning but amorphous and unaccountable promises is a design for failure except for those with iron wills, and if that’s the type of person you are, you probably aren’t waiting until the flip of the calendar year to make changes in your life. I’ve heard say that the best way to start a habit is to start with something achievable, so I’m going to talk about what I want to achieve, and, ideally, how I’ll achieve it.

Decipher the cycle

I often say around here that my interests are varied but ephemeral. I will get hyper-interested in a subject for a few weeks, then suddenly…it ends. Sometimes this is a result of entering into general “project torpor”, and other times I segue quickly into another topic without tidying up the previous work. Part of any momentum comes from progress, which is very important to me; seeing “numbers go up” is a sure way to keep me interested. For everything else, I need a way to determine what circumstances are causing me to jump ship.

To that end, I have a multi-pronged strategy:

Write it down

I won’t call it “journaling” as my medium will not allow for content as florid as what the more advanced journal-jockeys are putting out. I have spent time setting up an Obsidian notebook and template with a few auto-note-creation plugins that will generate a new page every calendar day and keep them organized by year and month.

The idea here is to understand over time what I did when I look back on things in the hope that I can discern a pattern and pinpoint when things either went off the rails or got back on the rails.

Track it

In a somewhat similar vein, I’m going back to an earlier idea, which is app use tracking. In some ways this is a nod to writing my own “gameplay wrap” that we all received through Steam this year, but since I play games across other platforms like GoG, Epic, and, of course, Star Citizen, I need to know more than what Steam knows. However, it can also help me track use of Blender and Resolve, and other apps that might enter the arena.

Do what is possible

I considered titling this section “do what I can” but I think “do what is possible” is more apt. The idea here is to pick a goal that I know I can achieve. This might be setting daily, weekly, and monthly goals (note to self: update the Obsidian template with this info) that are doable and realistic at the time I set them. Of course, if life gets in the way that’s unavoidable, but I’m hoping that tracking goals feed a rather difficult part of this puzzle: accountability.

Resolutions often lack accountability unless making a pact with someone else. Right now, my goals are started the moment I think of something I want to do and I believe that once I start something I’m going to be able to rely on wanting to see it through to the end as my motivation. This works sporadically, usually when the goal is — wait for it — achievable. So the idea here is that setting these possible goals in writing will add an actual, trackable layer of accountability. If I miss too many milestones, I can hopefully look back on past Obsidian entries to see what got skewed, and take steps to get back on track.

Do things better

I’ve always tended to half-ass everything I do. I will learn just enough to do what’s in front of me and that works in the moment, and over time I somehow manage to amass enough experience doing things piecemeal to actually look like I know what I’m doing from a distance! But that’s no way to achieve goals, so I am going to try real hard to put more effort into the things that I do. As this is rather vague, let me illuminate the areas in which I’ve identified as benefitting from this strategy.

Blogging

Hello! I used to write better, IMO, over a decade ago. I used to be more thoughtful, more insightful, and less…I dunno…angry and annoyed when choosing topics and writing posts. Somewhere along the way my tone shifted; it was probably gradual so that only I noticed it (as I am the only constant in my decades-long blogging career) but I have noticed it. I want to put less emotion into my posts and more facts and information, and be more matter-of-fact. When I’ve tried this in the past, though, I felt that I lost too much “voice” which resulted in posts that were clinical and robotic, which is a wake-up call for me to spend more time considering different perspectives on a topic, gathering sources and information, and, the bane of my existence, actually editing my posts. What you are reading right now (thank you!) is the result of several passes of review and revision. Hopefully it makes more sense than my usual output.

Be nicer

Here’s something you might not know about me: I’m kind of an asshole. There’s a lot of reasons I ascribe to this particular personality quirk, both internal and external and like a lot of psychological issues, I suppose, knowing about it and fixing it are two different things. I cannot excise the external stimuli that contribute to it, such as being online which I am certain has rotted portions of my brain, but I can be aware and take steps to mitigate my expressions. “Fake it till you make it” kind of applies here, but I don’t want to fake it. I want to be a better person to everyone and every situation.

Except racist, thugs, and dipshits. Those fuckers can fuck right off from not until the Sun burns out.

Be gracious

This one is kind of hard for me (see previous entry). I get very defensive even under the most beneficial of circumstances. I don’t take criticism well. I don’t even take assistance well. The Internet is full of unsolicited advice, and that really dusts my doilies at a personal level for no good reason. Part of my personality is believing in what I know, and if that’s challenged, I get annoyed. Sometimes violently though internally annoyed. This is bad. Very bad. See previous entry, again. Instead, I have to take a beat when I get advice, requested or not, and evaluate it. Does it sound reasonable? Do I know this person? Does it seem to be offered in the spirit of sharing knowledge? Sometimes people just like to puff themselves up in someone else’s space as a way to improve their own feelings of self worth and so long as they’re not being dismissive or insulting, is what they are saying or doing really that bad? I do not know everything; I don’t even know much about the things I know I know about if I’m being honest. I need to recognize that more, and appreciate that other people actually might be able and willing to help.

Another aspect of this bullet point is that since I don’t get a lot of feedback on my work, I might need to find places where I can. Blog comments aren’t just “conversations” for bloggers, but potential critiques on the poster’s thoughts, positions, and even voice if couched in a proper approach. For example, whenever I see that God-Tier Blogger Bhagpuss leaves a comment on my posts, I fucking panic. But I appreciate everything they post because I almost always go back and review my posts in light of their comments. While I don’t really like anyone coming up to me to “well actually” anything I say or do — I don’t think anyone does, of course — I have to stop being so mentally smug about thinking that I know what I’m talking about all the time. I need to learn from others, not just the learning sources I seek out for learning’s sake.

Be the change

I’m really kind of a background character. I’ve learned that even in sparsely populated room when I’m standing in the center of it all, I have an uncanny ability to remain undetected and unseen. I’ve accepted this by claiming that I like watching people and things, and not participating is fine. It is not fine because not only is it weird to accept being relegated to the role of perpetual fly-on-the-wall, it’s tiring to “be in a place but also not that place”. To try and combat this, I figure that I can try to be more front-and-center by making myself…kind of annoying, but in a supportive way. Now, I don’t mean that in a performative way. I often let people or events pass me by, acting only as an observer, when I sense that the person really would like someone to say something. Why not me? It’s easier to just not, lest I say the wrong thing or come across as creepy or pandering, or even butt into a conversation where I’m not wanted.

But then again, why not? The thing about putting things out into the world is that we want something in exchange, right? Blogging is an example I often use: we as bloggers want feedback, else we’d just keep a notebook of our posts under our mattress and never let anyone else look at them. If people are putting themselves, their works, their experiences, and their thoughts out into the world, as someone who wants to be a part of a better, more improved world, I should contribute to making that better, more improved world. I need to interject to let people know they’re doing good, better, the best, even when they don’t think they are. Ideally and if it can be done in a sensitive and helpful manner, point out what I like the most about what they’ve done. A pat on the back, fist-bump, or a high-five can some days be worth more than just the usual passive boost or a favorite, and knowing that putting ourselves out there is seen and appreciated might help people continue to do so, and hopefully they pass it on to someone else when someone else needs to hear it.

Life is an uphill battle

There’s no gilding the lily in that we’re living in bullshit times; 2026 doesn’t look to be a turning point on a world, national, or possibly even local scale. I know a lot of people are so very, very angry and if I’ve learned anything about anger it’s that it has a tendency to induce an astronomical amount of collateral damage in areas we’re actually not angry about. The Internet and specifically social media get a lot of crap for how much it hurts society, and though I’ve always espoused that the Internet and social media are just tools, and that we have chosen poorly in their use, and we are to blame. None of us have been exempt from being influenced by what’s become part of our lives in the 21st century, so we have to choose to use these tools responsibly for ourselves and those around us.

I can’t be angry all the time. I have been for a very, very long time and I’m tired, chat. Really tired of it. I can’t excuse the things that make me angry, but I can either write and repost memes and rail against the dying of the light 24/7, as some people do because it’s their way of coping, or I can say fuck it: if the World isn’t going to do better, then I need to. I need to for myself, for my family, for people around me. I’m not interested in doing this as a rebellion against a world that doesn’t want kindness or which kicks good people to the ground; it’s something I think I need to do mainly for myself and hopefully as a byproduct, help others be kind as well.

I do not expect this to be easy. I do expect to fail. But I also expect that, through the checks and balances that I plan to erect, the failures will be learning experiences and not just compounded interest in despair that pushes me down further. I need this. The world needs this. I have to make it happen.