Hello, 2026!
Hello 2026! As of writing this, we’re 12 days into the new year. And I LOVE new years. I love new starts, new goals, new habits, I find them magical. At least, most of the time I do… this year, I haven’t been feeling the magic. And from what I’ve been hearing, a lot of the people around me aren’t feeling it either.
Is it the people I’m surrounded by? Is it the fact many of my friends and I are entering our mid twenties? Is it the bleak state of the country right now (for context, the US)? There is an air of hopelessness that I feel this January. I feel creatively and spiritually bankrupt. I’ve been thinking about this website for weeks, and couldn’t actually finish making a post until now.
I do feel like something has changed since the start of 2026… I feel I need to take my life more seriously. I’m almost 25 and still have never had a salaried job with benefits or anything. I lose my parent’s health insurance at 26. I very much feel like a fake adult. There’s still so much that I don’t know how to do. And simple things overwhelm me easily. So even the idea of a lot of these “adult” tasks like going to the dentist and getting a new license stresses me out a lot. But this year, one of my goals is to take my own wants, needs, and goals seriously.
I often struggle to do the things I want to do because I feel the need for external validation that I’m doing the “right” thing. Even when I’m able to start doing what I want to do, I find myself checking my phone often, like I’ll have a text from someone that says “It’s okay to do this right now” or “What are you doing? You’re wasting time!”. In college, I was so busy and always had a direction based on what others told me I needed to do. In real life, I’ve found myself with more time and less external direction, so I’ve floundered a lot. I feel a bit detached from myself at the moment, like I don’t know Gaby as well as I thought I did. I always see the things I really want to do with just me as frivolous or silly. So, as I said before, I’d like to take myself more seriously, do what I truly want to do and not worry how others see it. And I’d like to get to know myself better.
One thing I love doing that often feels frivolous is this website. So I hope to write a lot more blog posts this year. I recently heard that “writing is thinking, and giving yourself time to write is giving yourself time to think”. I’d like to be more free in my writing on this site, to not self-edit so much, and to have entries that are true to who I am. If anyone reads these, I’d like them to walk away from my blog feeling like they know me a little better and feeling less alone in their own struggles.
If this post was a bit of a downer, I apologize. But it made me feel a lot more optimistic. Something about getting the words out into the world makes me feel a little bit stronger. If you have a blog on your site, drop a link in the guestbook or chat box so I can read it! Or if you don’t, consider making your 2026 resolution to start one. It’s a living, breathing work of art. And it’s fun in a way social media no longer is for me!
Thank you for reading. I hope these words can feel like a warm hug or a cup of tea or a lit up Christmas tree.
Much love,