Week 01/2026: Farewell to another year

Posted On 6 January 2026

Week of 29 December 2025

This was a week of low expectations and not much going on, as we said farewell to another year. So this is a kind-of sort-of year in review post.

This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.

Farewell to 2025

I usually spend some time in the week between 25 December and 1 January doing a stock-take of what I learned in the year, where I struggled, and what I might want to do differently next year. It’s probably a more elaborate review than it needs to be but it’s a lot simpler than it was in the days I used to re-read my entire year journal in that week.

I don’t remember actually finishing my 2024 review or setting any goals or intentions for 2025. As a result, “finish year review” and “set up 2025 planner” hung around on my to-do list for several months before I decided it was well past the time these things could usefully be done.

In this year’s annual review I made a list of what I’d achieved during the year (easy because I had a running list that I added to every time I did something), what I’d learned, and what hadn’t gone well. I took that and tuned it into three new lists of “what I want to do in 2026”, “what I want more of” and “what I want less of”.

And now, some kind of process will happen where these things will get turned into actions on my to-do list or something . . .

Here’s some of the things I identified.

What I am proud of doing in 2025

• Sharing my photos at a group session.
• Going back to uni to a subject that’s new to me and stepping outside my comfort zone in choosing creative writing assignments over theory ones. Writing a poem.
• Performing on stage three times.
• Keeping my sister’s cat alive for four days.
• Setting up my Substack blog and writing about my writing process.
• Contributing to a project at work that’s outside my core responsibilities but which I care deeply about, and having this work completed and published.
• Submitting photos for the Tassie Nano Group’s annual zine.
• Winning a prize in the Open House Hobart photo competition.
• Submitting a story to AWC’s Furious Fiction and being longlisted.

What I’m most disappointed by

• Not completing a major project at work.
• Not getting as far with my writing as I wanted to. Not having a consistent creative writing practice.
• Stopping going to the gym and not walking as much as I used to.
• Not doing as much photography or photo art as I wanted to.

My greatest challenges

• Kramstable leaving to go to uni in Melbourne. (I mean, I could stop there. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with.)
• Complaining about things I can do nothing about
•  Noise. Everywhere. Tinnitus.
• Hoarding too much information that I’ll never use. Too much input and not enough doing things with it. Too much content, not enough creation.
• Scrolling, social media, clickbait, outrage, the never-ending bad news cycle.
• AI everywhere.
• Procrastination and distraction and being unable to focus. Not doing other things while I was waiting for one big thing to happen later in the day. Tinkering with things that weren’t the main game to avoid doing the thing I was supposed to be doing.
• Getting injured and stopping exercising.
• I feel like my brain is so used to shunting between things that when I sit down to focus, it feels wrong and unusual, and I can’t do it because my brain wants to be doing many things. I’m leaving things half done and flitting between tasks because I can’t concentrate on one thing at a time.
• My fixation on having perfect notes instead of learning the things.
• Being so afraid of messing things up I didn’t do them at all.

Well, that all feels rather negative, doesn’t it!

But it gives me an idea of where I might need to make adjustments (including adjustments to my mindset) to have a better chance of making best use of my next 52 weeks and turning some of those disappointments into achievements in 2026.

I know that uni, even just one unit, is a big commitment and that I won’t be able to do everything else as well as I want to if I devote time to that. But I also know I spent a lot of time scrolling, procrastinating, and tinkering with colour-coded spreadsheets instead of doing things like art and writing. I want to make more of an effort to focus on the thing I’m doing rather than constantly being distracted and flitting from one thing to another.

And when I have down time, I want to make it restful down time, not mindless scrolling or checking emails.

I know I’m also in the trap of planning the thing = doing the thing.

It doesn’t, and I have to change my mindset into just do the thing. Oliver Burkeman said it well: “do something right away”. Stop planning, don’t think about what needs to be done, just do something. I need to get unstuck from planning and actually take action. Otherwise I’ll keep planning forever until the plan is “perfect” but I never work on the thing.

I also need to be kind to myself and acknowledge that my brain feels safe in this planning stage, and that taking action is scary. But it’s not dangerous and I won’t die.

So, what are these things I want to do in 2026?

My biggest goal is to pass both of my second-year uni units. That’s going to take a lot of time, and to some extent other things will need to fit around that. But if I want to have a chance of doing some of the other things, I also have to be honest about how distracted and unfocused I am a lot of the time, and start to address that. Because art and writing bring me joy and I want to do them. I don’t want to get to the end of my life (or even the end of this year) wishing I had made more art and written more.

I want to work through some short writing courses I’ve signed up to but never finished. One course at a time, one exercise at a time. My tiny experiment for achieving this is: “I will leave my phone at home when I go out for coffee and do a 10-20 minute exercise from the course I’m doing” for the next 30 days.

I want to work through the Photoshop Artistry course I signed up to about five years ago and make some photo art. My goal is to submit one piece a month to the artists group I joined at the end of 2025.

Then there are a few things that I should be able to do fairly quickly, including

• Learn to darn socks
• Fix the broken candle holders
• Read The Rose Field by Philip Pullman
• Make an appointment with the tinnitus specialist
• Operate out of one to-do app
• Get to inbox zero with my personal emails
• Set up my 2026 planner before the end of January
• Make a zine

And a couple of others, as well as slowly re-establishing my bedtime routine and my morning walks.

Learnings to take into 2026

I came to realise late in the year that it would make my year at work great if I gave up the struggle of trying to change things I can never change and stop complaining, and started focusing my energy on things I can influence that will make a difference. (I know. I’m sure this is something I learn every year and it doesn’t stop me complaining and getting upset about things I have no control over. Let’s leave it on the list though.)

I need to do my night time routine no matter what time I go to bed.

Another one from Oliver Burkeman: To generate ideas, get better at noticing. And on similar lines from David Lynch: “Be alert and do your work.”

I don’t know where this one came from but I think it’s a useful mindset shift. When you aren’t feeling well, if you say “I’m healing” instead of “I’m sick” it’s a game changer.

The Tiny Experiments by Anne Laure Le Cunff: I will [do an action] for [duration].

That’s it!

Happy new year.

Habit tracker

• Go outside first thing (7 days): 5/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 5/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
• Walk (7 days): 6/7
• Carry a notebook with me when I walk (6 days): 2/6
• Thinking time (4 days): 1/4
• Mid-day journalling (7 days): 2/7
• 9.30 shutdown & dim lights (7 days): 4/7
• Evening routine (7 days): 4/7

Summary of the week

Some positive things

• Kramstable was here for Christmas. He went back on Monday and it was hard to let him go again, but it’s also wonderful seeing him thriving at uni and getting involved in campus activities.
• I finally went for a walk. I can build this back up. I know I can.
• Watching the Stranger Things finale and chatting to my friend in the US. It was like the old days of TV tweeting.
• I finished and submitted a short story to the January Furious Fiction competition on Sunday. My second entry in two months!
• It’s agapanthus season.

This week I learned

• The eyeroll emoji 🙄 doesn’t mean eyeroll. It means thinking. It reflects how people look up when they’re thinking.
• Blood clotting is a stress response from our caveman days. If you get attacked by a wild beast, the stress response kicks in and your blood clots more easily, so you’re less likely to bleed to death.

This week I noticed

These planning stickers listed under kids books. Ha.

A green bird in the back yard on Thursday morning. There was only one. There’s normally two.

I wondered where the other one was and worried something might have happened to it, but they were both there in Saturday morning.

A Christmas beetle on the driveway.

What’s making me think?

My new take on AI. If you can’t be bothered creating something, I can’t be bothered engaging with it. I’d rather spend my time with people who have taken the time and made the effort to make their thing.

Reading

• The Longest Climb by Paul Pritchard
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Watching

• Resident Alien
• Stranger Things Season 5
• Dr Rangan Chattergee: A Blueprint for Healthy Living BBC Mzestro course
• Doctor Who ‘The Macra Terror’

Listening

• Shrek The Musical Original Broadway Cast Recording