Hi all! I’m publishing a second post today to share my hopes for the new year. I don’t call them resolutions and I honestly hardly look back at them over the year, but it’s somewhat fulfilling to notice that I did make about half of my hopes for 2025 happen indeed. In fact, when I was talking with my wife about the year 2025, I realized I’d done better than I had expected, contrary to what I said in my yearly review. Anyway, here are the things I hope to achieve in 2026.
1. Get in more and more varied physical exercise. I am pretty sure that this is going to be a hard one, because it looks unlikely that I can go to the gym regularly or go swimming again. However, there are other ways too, like yoga, pilates, etc.
2. Do more meaningful activities, such as cooking, baking and crafting. This was one area in which 2025 has been less successful than I’d hoped but more successful than 2024. I’m still hoping to make that standing unicorn sculpture I mentioned yesterday happen. However, even if that’s not going to happen, I hope to include crafting and kitchen-based activities in my day schedule regularly.
3. Focus on mindfulness and gratitude. I am finding that even a few minutes in the Gratitude app helps lift my mood. I honestly think this is because it’s something new, but I hope that I can keep up the mojo. I already started this habit in 2025 when I wrote the positives and negatives of each day and E-mailed them to my assigned staff. I’ll continue to do so this year.
4. Improve my wake/sleep schedule. Over the past six months or so, I almost always spent most of the morning in bed. I’d really like to change that. Today was good in this respect.
5. Write more regularly. I don’t just mean blogging, although I seriously hope to do more of that too. I mean, my blogging year was better than 2024, but 2024 was about the most disappointing year blog-wise. I hope to write more this year than I did last year. I also started doing Morning Pages again. I however don’t get up early for them, because I know that’s a recipe for disaster. Rather, today, I did mine after breakfast, when I used to hop back into bed.
6. Further taper my medication. I’m having another meeting with the intellectual disability physician, who prescribes my psych meds, next week. So far, I’m pretty sure I’m still able to further decrease my med dosage.
7. Stay relatively mentally stable. This is an almost obligatory item on the list, as I honestly think the above have covered all I can do to help myself along in this respect. Some of the contributing factors to my deep lows have been related to external circumstances. Now I wouldn’t say I have absolutely no influence on those, but it’s not like I’m all-powerful.
8. Stay true to my wishes and needs with respect to my care. This means, for example, that I will continue to assert my right to informed consent for all of my care agreements.
9. Expand my social circle. Like I shared on Monday, I fully intend on going to more meetings in 2026. At least one of those, the brain injury support meeting, is local. I also intend to go to the nationwide cerebral palsy day in April. I intend to go by myself. In previous years, I went with my mother-in-law, but I’m not in contact with her anymore. Besides, I am pretty sure that, now that I know quite a few other participants, being accompanied by her is a hindrance to my social inclusion more than a help.
10. Be more conscious of my food choices and eat more healthily. I stepped onto the scale yesterday evening and the number wasn’t pleasant. Now I do know that part of that is probably holiday weight and part is the fact that I’ve been moving less. Regardless of my weight though, I seriously hope to be making healthier food choices.
A Multitude of Musings 