I don't want a goal for 2026

When I was in high school, I loved to bring my art projects home. Set up my station in front of the tv, with whatever show playing, and I’d happily play there for hours. When I was in university, working at the Mexican restaurant and the clothes store and the liquor store, I’d stack shelves or squish guac around and sentences would come to my head. When I had a chance, I’d disappear and write them down on a receipt reel, or a napkin.

I miss that relationship with my creativity. I miss courting it, flirting with it, being an open vessel that ideas could arrive whenever throughout the day. I’ve had the luck that my business allows me to write and record and play with different mediums. But somewhere along the way I did begin to frame it in the lense of ‘content.’ And ‘will my members like this? Pay for this?’ And ‘what will everyone else think?’

I was in such a tight squeeze of motherhood (that age 0-5) that it felt like any time I did dedicate to creativity had to make something. Or serve some sort of purpose. To justify having my head in a computer or my focus away from Jago.

The first time my friend asked me five weeks ago what my goals were for 2026, she said I looked like a deer in headlights. I think I mumbled something about wanting to get faster and jump higher on my bike. Which, I mean, is true, but also quite underwhelming for someone who spends her life diving into the depths of life and trying to make meaning of it all. I think my friend was expecting something a lil more profound and ‘I’d like to pop a wheelie’ probably didn’t cut it. Nor to myself.

I spent weeks thinking about it.

Last year it was clear. This year was not, and I realised it was because what I was craving, and what I want my 2026 to be more coloured by, is more…whimsical. Less with a direct point. Last year it was ‘I want to go all in with my business.’ And I did. Clean goal, clean motive, clean outcome. 2026, I feel a craving to bring my relationship with creativity back online in a different way. I miss a particular communion that happens when you’re open to inspiration, when your hands want to make something for the sake of it, without a goal or a destination. Without having to package it into a product for consumption. Instagram didn’t exist when I was in high school, and I think my inner voice and creativity was better for it. My writing was certainly better for it, without the constant influx of everyone else’s voice.

I want to re-tune the dial. I want to hear how I write when everyone else’s words aren’t creeping in, when I’m not rushing to finish something. I want more of those nights sitting in front of the TV with a mess of an art project splayed out in front of me.

But it’s more than that.

I always think I’m done with big shifts. There was quitting my life in Australia and moving overseas. Then there was motherhood. I thought I was all done with transitions but without even noticing it, year of the Snake really took about 80% of the key players out of my life. Work relationships, friendships even entire friendship groups fell away. Each time, it felt like a disaster. Each time, I did actually realize my life was and is recalibrating toward this new chapter.

I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I feel a need to let the inner witness of my life come back online. To revert back to that seeker mode I was in when I first moved to Central America. What is my soul calling out for? Where is my curiosity leading me? What are my values, now? Who am I, now? Obviously this time, a little different. I own more than one pair of shoes now, for example (yes there was a point there my 23 year old self owned none at all.) It doesn’t look like schlepping across the planet and putting myself in risky situations just to see how I fare. Now, I move as a family unit, so I’m not exactly sure what it’ll look like.

But it requires pulling closer those relationships I really feel held and known in. That I don’t need to do mental gymnastics to feel ok inside.

It requires getting to know myself deeper so my son can feel like he really knew me.

Maybe it requires stepping away from the scaffolding I relied on from older, more knowledgable people in my life, and starting to make my own structures.

I don’t know.

But it definitely involves learning to do a wheelie.

Leave a comment