My 2026 Goals

Here we go! It’s 2026, which means it’s time to set some intentions for the year ahead. This year, I’ve gone about this list in a different way. I have chosen four overarching goal categories and within each category, I set five goals for myself. Then, because I am who I am, I also set 10 FUN goals to accomplish, the stuff that didn’t exactly fit into any of the previous goal categories. I’ve left three of those 10 goals as TBD.

Here are the goal categories:

• Take better care of myself – I need to treat my body better. I need to have snacks to stave off hypoglycemia episodes. I need to drink more water and get more sleep and take my goddamn medications no matter what. It’s doing the unsexy, sometimes annoying things because I’m an adult, and this is how I stay functional.
• Get a handle on my health conditions – As we’re all aware, 2025 was a shit year for my physical health. Each goal in this category corresponds to one of my health conditions: prediabetes, scalp psoriasis, (undiagnosed) psoriatic arthritis, sleep apnea, and heart disease risk. Let’s hope 2026 is the year my physical health is finally on an upswing!
• Be a more involved friend – I want to be a better friend in 2026. It’s not that I think I’m a bad friend. I just think I can get stuck in my hermity nature and not make plans or reach out as much as I should. I don’t need to be a social butterfly, but I do need to make more of an effort in my relationships.
• Create better daily routines – I’ve struggled a lot with daily routines since working from home, and 2025 might have been the year I was the worst at it. I’m going to make a concentrated effort to work on these routines by creating a schedule for myself and checking in on a weekly basis to make sure this schedule is working for me. If not, it’s time to try something new!

Okay, that was a lot of preamble! And this post is going to be a monster. Now, let’s finally get into the meat of this post: my 2026 goals!

Take better care of myself

• Create snack kits for my car, purse, and home, and restock them weekly – There is no reason for me to have hypoglycemia episodes. I should always have snacks on hand to fend off these blood sugar drops! Sometimes I have to treat myself the way I would a child, so I want to create snack kits that I can have in my car, in my purse, and at home, so I am never without snacks when I need them. Plus, sometimes I can get lost in what I should eat as a snack, so this takes away any decision-making (especially crucial when I’m at home). I don’t need to think about what I’m going to eat as a snack. I just get the snack kit and I’m good to go!
• Drink at least 50 oz of water per day – This feels like a stretch goal, but I can do it, right? I’m not counting seltzer as part of this goal, even though I have been told that it counts as hydration. I really want to focus on actual plain water.
• Close my Apple Watch rings – This is going to be challenging in the first few months of 2026, as I’m still dealing with joint pain, which limits my exercise/walking time. But hopefully, once I have a diagnosis and treatment plan, I can get back to my normal workout schedule.
• Average 7.5 hours of sleep per night – Hopefully, my average is higher, but I don’t want to set myself up for failure. I need to get more sleep, and this will be especially true if I’m diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition like psoriatic arthritis.
• Take medications every morning – I’ve gotten a lot better about taking my meds every day, but I can easily get out of the habit.

Get a handle on my health conditions

• Start tracking my macros (prediabetes) – The last time I got blood work, I was still in prediabetes and the next time I get bloodwork, I want to be out of the danger zone. I don’t want to track macros, but I do want to improve my blood work, so here we go.
• Work with my dermatologist to develop a flare/maintenance plan for scalp psoriasis – My scalp psoriasis is still not fully under control, which is frustrating. Even just a few days without treating the spots and I’m in a huge flare. Ugh. It appears that the treatments I’m currently using are better for maintenance, but not effective enough when I’m in a flare. So I need to figure out a better flare management program with my derm.
• Be compliant with my CPAP every month (sleep apnea) – I was not very compliant with my CPAP in 2025 and that is no bueno!
• Schedule an appointment with a rheumatologist to figure out my joint pain – I wasn’t sure what to put for this goal, so it may evolve if I am diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. For now, I need to get established with a rheumatologist to figure out what is causing all of my joint pain.
• Lose 20 lbs (heart disease) – My heart disease risk is still on the high side, although not alarming. (And a lot of my numbers came down to the normal range after making changes to my diet in the first half of 2025.) There are many ways I can work towards lowering my heart disease risk, but I do think losing weight will be key. So let’s try to knock off another 20 lbs this year, yeah?!

Be a more involved friend

• Text two friends every day – I was astonished one day when my friend Mikaela went down the list of everyone she texts on a daily basis. I can sometimes go entire days without texting anyone but my mom. I want to be better about keeping in touch with people and reaching out. Hopefully, this will become more of an ingrained habit as the year progresses and not something I need to track so closely!
• Make plans with friends once a week – I love my hermit-y existence, but I also recognize that my mental health is better when I’m seeing my friends regularly. This is a simple goal, and I don’t need to overcomplicate it. It could be dinner or a walk or just going over to their house to help with the kiddos when their partner is away.
• Organize a girls’ weekend – We haven’t had a book club getaway since before the pandemic! I really want us to plan a fun weekend away, even if it’s just somewhere driving distance from us.
• Send three pieces of snail mail every month – Who wants to get snail mail from me? Here’s my open form for addresses, so you can look forward to postcards and such throughout the year.
• Schedule a standing monthly date with at least one friend – I have a few ideas for this! More to come.

Create better daily routines

• Develop a regular morning routine before my workday begins – I have struggled with my morning routine ever since I started working from home. It’s just easier to hop onto work and then worry about the morning routine later. In 2026, I want to have a solid morning routine before stepping into my office for the day. And I want to take the time to play around with my routine until it works perfectly for me.
• Do my hair and makeup and put on real clothes on days when I have meetings – I have become very lazy about my hair and makeup routine since all my meetings are video calls and I can use filters to enhance my appearance. In 2026, I want to actually do my hair and makeup (and by makeup, I mean slathering on some tinted moisturizer, drawing on eyebrows, and swiping a little mascara) on the days when I have meetings so I feel a bit more put together. I also want to wear real clothes! I don’t have meetings every day, otherwise this would be an overwhelming goal for me. Ha.
• Create an evening routine that includes reading time – Every year, I read a little less than I did the year before. I’m not going to continue that trajectory in 2026! I think the key will be setting aside at least an hour every evening for reading time. My goal is to add this to the end of my evening routine, so I’m winding down with a book, which is what I used to do but definitely got out of the practice.
• Do some form of movement every day (stretching counts!) – While I can’t do as much movement right now as I will hopefully be able to do later in the year, I do still want to move my body daily, even if I’m just doing stretches or going for a short, 10-minute walk.
• Get outside every day – This should be a simple goal, but there are days when I don’t leave my apartment. (Like yesterday, ha.) There’s no reason for that, so I need to make a point to get some fresh air every day.

10 fun goals

• Complete my self-created Unread Shelf Challenge – I miss the Unread Shelf Project. I loved it because it was a low-key reading challenge that focused on reading books I had already bought, so I knew I wanted to read them. So, with the help of ChatGPT, I created my own Unread Shelf challenge for 2026 and I’m excited to get started.
• Schedule a solo reading retreat weekend – I did something similar last year when I had to be out of my apartment for a few days while my tub was getting refinished. Only I had to bring my cats with me and that did not make for a restful reading weekend. This year, I want to find a cute Airbnb within an hour or two away from where I live and spend the time reading as much as possible!
• Try four novels from the Zero to Well Read podcast – I’m enjoying Zero to Well Read, a podcast from Book Riot where Jeff and Rebecca deep dive a “classic” book (or really, all of the books in the cultural zeitgeist that have stood the test of time). They talk about so many books I’ve never read or even considered in my own reading life, so I want to choose one per quarter to read. (“Try” being the key word here, as I’m absolutely fine DNF-ing any books I’m not enjoying.) From the episodes they released in 2025, the books I have my eye on are Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Hopefully, I’ll be able to round out this list with a book from their 2026 episodes!
• Take one picture every day and do weekly roundups on the blog – I’ve done Project 365 a few times and I always post a picture to Instagram, but while I wanted to get into a habit of taking a photo every day, I didn’t feel like putting each one on Instagram. Instead, you’ll get a bonus post from me every weekend with a roundup of my pictures from the week. You’re welcome!
• See a Miami Dolphins game at Hard Rock Stadium – I’ve only seen my beloved Miami Dolphins once and it was a preseason game in Tampa. I’ve always wanted to take a long weekend in Miami to see a game and enjoy the stadium. This will be an expensive trip because stadium tickets are hella pricey, but it will be worth it!
• Decorate my patio – I have a patio I can use! Right now, there’s not much, just the zero-gravity chair that I got for Christmas. I ordered a rug, which will be here next weekend. And beyond that, I’m not sure what else I want for my patio! Maybe a small bistro table and chairs? Maybe some cat towers so the girls can enjoy lounging in the fresh air? Maybe some plants? This shall be a fun project!
• Visit somewhere new – I don’t know where this will be (my mom and I have been noodling over a trip to Vermont in the fall) and it may end up being somewhere in Florida I’ve never been, but this can be as low stakes as I need it to be.
• TBD
• TBD
• TBD

What’s one thing you want to accomplish in 2026 – big or small!