2026 Goals
It's that time of year again. Quick review of 2025 goals:
✔ Draw every single month
? Not lose sight of my ultimate goals
✔... Study scoping but go slow
✔? Do my translation duty but go slow
✔✔✔✔✔ Drag myself out to one thing with strangers
Years never seem to go how you think they will. I actually thought I was going to fail drawing in the month of November but I somehow pulled through one (1) day. I have handed over the leadership of my translation group and relieved myself of translation duties, but I'm still on the hook for watching it all go smoothly. I studied slow, all right, and then the country got worse and I regretted it. Art is still my ultimate goal, but it's really hard to try to keep that at heart and not worry about my life going to shit. So I don't know about that one.
The thing that I actually managed to knock out of the park was going to a social thing with strangers, and establishing myself as someone who shows up to this thing. 10 book club meetings, and 8 art meetings. In other words, I beat the hell out of that goal by 18 times. I can't say that I feel like upping the ante for this next year though.
2026 Goals
Listen to dread & tiredness early and pull out of projects/quit working on stuff midway.
Put up unfinished things, etc. I honestly didn't quit my translation group early enough. Should've quit years ago. I'm talking like 5 years ago. I shouldn't have even started this group if I was really listening to my feelings, but I live with my mistakes and random things I have now practiced by running a group I didn't want to run and doing a bunch of different things for it. Regardless, I don't want to do things just because I feel obligated ever again, if that's even possible as a goal. I want to get a batter sense of scale and aim not to overload myself with random things — including reading — that makes me feel bad when I don't finish or even start them.Figure out how to center art in my life by actually making it more fun than writing somehow.
If possible. I blogged a lot this year (some of this was uploading stuff from 2024 also), but I honestly could do less of it.Pass the grammar exam and the notereading exam.
Ideally sooner rather than later, but I don't want to jinx it by setting up yet another deadline I don't hit because I'm slower than the average person to everything. This next year though, I would prefer to only spend my time (when not doing social stuff or whatever) studying and drawing, with some reading.Journal when I feel bad.
Since it's good for me, but I also am really lazy about doing it because it feels easier to just type up a post even though that doesn't really make stuff process as well in the brain... for some reason...Stretch daily, and when I inevitably miss some days, don't let it go past a week.
This year has maybe been the worst for me in this because I gave up for like 2 months or something like that from all the emotional stress. And my body is getting older so neglecting it has a heftier price to pay.Look at social media less.
This one is hard because I'm not quite sure what to replace it with, especially since basically everyone cyberloafs with something. To start, I've at least limited Tumblr to 20 minutes and Twitter to 10 minutes a day on my phone. That doesn't have any effect on browser use, so we'll see if I have to actually download something to block them. Current thought in replacement is just whatever random comics (especially ones in Japanese, if I can get my brain to focus). While I have mixed feelings about my comic-reading habit, it's probably better than opening up social media where it's a russian roulette of "learn something you didn't know from someone else's experience" and "witness a bunch of bad-faith discourse." I still do want to access some of the former, so I don't think I'll block out social media entirely, but I would probably be happier if I had less of whatever I'm currently doing.
Most ideally, I would somehow figure out how to program myself to reach for art every time I get bored, but I don't actually know how to do that. Why is it so hard to get your brain to think of an activity as fun and taking 0 brain power?
Don't know how this next year will go, but I want to believe that I'm cutting out the stuff that has weighed me down. And I want to take some time to relax and heal if possible, rather than taking on more stuff from weird anxiety and sense of goals. I can't say that I'm going to solve my feeling of running against the clock, but I don't have much to show for running harder so it's time to try to engage the brain in the elusive thing trained out of many of us known as "fun." (Or so I say, but I'm already feeling the pull of anxiety.)
2026's motto, to borrow words from a Tumblr post:
it’s not “am I good enough to do it?”, it’s “do I like it enough to be bad at it?”