Flash Forward

“New Year, New Me!”

You’ll see that line a ton from content creators, influencers, and the media as we move into 2026. It stems from the idea of “New Year’s Resolutions,” a concept that oodles of people latch onto to try changing themselves or their habits in the New Year. In the last several years, though, I’ve noticed more and more people denouncing those resolutions. It even seems like the trendy-but-sensible consensus these days. No point in trying to change if you, ultimately, are just going to slip back into your old ways, after all.

My personal opinion on New Year’s Resolutions oscillates between the two sentiments. I’m mostly in the latter camp, seeing as I’m maybe the most likely to fall into bad habits by February. But honestly, New Year’s is the best time to try and think up ways that you can better yourself and your goals. We can make the next year suck a little bit less than the past year, right?

So while I’m not setting anything in stone here, I do want to write down my two goals going into 2026. Maybe you can help me stay accountable?

Being Present

Listen, I’ve never been great at taking care of myself physically or mentally. I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety for what feels like my entire life. I’m pretty sure that, at some point over the past year, I’ve told the story about how I cried in kindergarten one day because I thought I had no friends and nobody liked me. It’s only grown into a bigger ordeal as I’ve gotten older, and I am being medically treated for it, but sometimes I think that there’s a lot more that I should be doing for my brain that I’m not. I mean, honestly, it’s hard not to be anxious or depressed with the state of the entire world right now, but surely there’s still a way to find joy in our lives or something that meaningfully makes us feel whole, right?

This past year, I absolutely went through a midlife crisis. I might still be going through it. It’s the only way that I can explain the way that I’ve felt over the last several months. At one point, a couple of weeks ago, I had an emotional meltdown after seeing a TikTok video that someone made of their kitten growing up into an elderly cat set to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Justifiably, I had to get it together and then confront the looming question of why I’m a 40-year-old man sobbing at the image of an aging cat. Then Stevie Nicks popped into my head, repeating the lyrics, “Time makes you bolder. Even children get older, and I’m getting older, too.” And I realized that was what’s bothering me. The internet described it as “grief in advance.”

I’m very close to my father. Sometimes he’s incredibly frustrating, but I love his humor, his way of always supporting us, and even just sitting and watching TV and eating copious amounts of junk food together. But he’s visibly aging, and it worries me. My four cats, my babies, are visibly aging, too. We don’t know his exact age since he was an adult when we adopted him, but Tigger has been with us for at least 13 years. Even my sweet little Rufus, who is practically my shadow, is coming up on 10 in 2026. And me… I’m not ready for it. I still feel like a kid most days. And somehow forty snuck up on me. Despite my bad back, migraines, achy bones and feet, diabetes, and increasing forgetfulness.

I’ve started coming out of the “meltdown” phase of it all now, and I’m trying to take action now and in 2026. My goal is to FOCUS ON NOW. Indeed, I can’t choose when the inevitable comes for dad, my cats, or the rest of my family and friends. And even if I could, it still wouldn’t be enough time. But I can control here and now. And here, I want to spend more time in the living room with dad. Laughing and watching TV, even when it’s his ridiculous cop videos on YouTube. I’m trying to remember how it feels when petting one of my cats, sometimes even gently grasping their fur in an effort to hold onto them forever. I know they don’t understand my words, but I tell them that I hope to find them in every timeline.

And for me? I need to exercise more, honestly. I need to start working a walk around the neighborhood into my days. Maybe some light exercise videos. I’ve never been somebody who enjoyed physical activity, so it’ll be slow and steady. But it’s certainly better than the last forty years of nothing. I hope that spending less time seated will start easing the rest of my ailments, too. It’s so simple, yet so overlooked. I have a Fitbit that I’ve woefully neglected since I left my retail job. Maybe it’s time to start putting it to good use again?

Being Consistent

Another one of my worst characteristics is that I’m terrible at staying consistent, and it is often the biggest obstacle in the way of my achieving anything or making real progress. I’m just taking an educated guess in saying that it’s probably from undiagnosed ADHD or some other “neurospicy” explanation, but I lose track of my motivation pretty frequently. I’m easily distracted and maybe a little bit lazy, too. Which isn’t to say that I don’t also work really hard on things — when I do feel motivated, I can hyperfocus like a superhero! — but everyone has low-energy days, and as I get older, it gets harder to keep on keeping on.

For example, I started my Twitch channel several years ago in 2019. I have just barely over 200 followers on the platform, though, and even that very “smol” community took years to grow. And the one thing making the growth of my channel feel like an uphill battle is my lack of consistency. Yes, the channel has been active since 2019, but I haven’t streamed to it that entire time. Work and school, for a while, made it nearly impossible to find time to do it. So I’ve taken a lengthy hiatus or two from Twitch! But toward the end of 2024, I decided that since I was no longer employed or enrolled at a traditional school, it was time to make my triumphant return. And as I wrote about in a past Ghost Archive post, streaming started feeling a lot easier this time around! But while my feelings toward going live have changed considerably, I still struggle with maintaining the schedule I’ve set for myself. If ever I don’t feel great or just don’t want to be “on” for the camera, I simply cancel the stream for that night. Going into next year, I want to BE MORE CONSISTENT.

Even when I don’t feel good, I still need to make sure that I show up. If I don’t feel like being on camera, I can turn the camera off and continue with whatever activity we’re doing. If I have trouble maintaining my presence, I can end the stream early. I mean, really, it’s my channel, and I can do whatever I want. But it’s important to keep your known schedule so people know when and where to find you. If you keep failing to show up, though, then why should anyone else? And it’s especially important for Twitch, since the tips and subscription fees are my only source of income at the moment. And even that is pretty slim!

And that’s just one example in my world of very poor consistency. I’ve waffled back and forth about projects on my family’s home server that I built, I need to keep working on my courses at freeCodeCamp daily and not just “whenever the urge strikes,” I need to take time to keep my bedroom and office clean, I gotta remember to update and maintain this website and other web projects, I need to play with the cats more often, I need to read more, I need to keep looking for job opportunities, I need to work exercise into my daily schedule as I mentioned in the last section, and on and on. I get so absorbed in the things that I’m doing that I forget to take care of the rest. And sometimes, I’m not going to lie, it’s important for me to get “me” time. As an introvert, I need time to unplug and decompress. Take a nap, watch a show, play a game, pet a cat, sit with dad.

And really, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even currently have work or school filling up half their day. There’s never enough time. It’s a constant juggling act. And I guess what I’m saying here is that, maybe if I’m more consistent with my daily schedule and the pen-and-paper agenda that I keep for myself, it’ll make that juggling process a bit easier. Fingers crossed that I can start making that work!

So those are my two major goals for the New Year. Call it a resolution or just call it some goals that I’m personally going to be working toward. Until then, I’m taking the rest of the year off. From everything! But how are you feeling about the New Year? If you have any resolutions or goals that you’d like to work toward in 2026, tell me in the comments below!