There has been some interesting discourse on the internet this year on the contradictory nature of coming out swinging on New Years Resolutions while smack dab in the middle of winter. The slowest, dreariest, season most begging for rest, and we are supposed to completely revamp our lives? Never is motivation so scarce as it is in winter. For a substantial bit of history, the Roman calendar did not even consider the winter months as part of the year, but rather a sort of purgatory of gray between the end of one year and the beginning of the next in spring.
Embracing these winter months as a sort of planning base camp, I spent most of January in a dreamy state, in deep consideration for what I want this year to look like. February has been a month for a soft launch of sorts, and the real work begins in March.
Spending the better part of a month dreaming and scheming for the year, I spent a lot of time considering this question: what is it that I want? This question does not initially make me feel uncomfortable, although I know that it does for many people. My main issue with this question is that my answer to it has been changing at such a rapid pace, a pace that seems to coincide perfectly with the development of my daughter. When she was a baby, all I wanted was a string of four hours of uninterrupted sleep. When she was one, I wanted time to put on a little makeup and read an interesting book, to spend time with the person I married and laugh a little bit. When she was two, I wanted a break from the tantrums and the brain space to write something, maybe even something that other people might want to read. Now that she is three, a dam has broken and an entire flood of desires has come surging back to me. My capacity has returned, and with it a world of possibilities for how I could spend my time.
I used a myriad of tools and tricks to create a list of ideas for the life I most want. Narrowing down these desires into a list of aims for this year was enjoyable, to say the least. Here are the prompts and projects I used to design my year.
In the book You Only Die Once by Jodi Wellman, the author regales the legend of Alfred Nobel, the man who created and funded the famous Nobel prizes. After a newspaper mistakenly printed a premature obituary, Nobel came face to face with his legacy as the “merchant of death” (he was the inventor of dynamite, among other things). Nobel set out to change this legacy and leave a more positive impact on the world, thus leading him to leave most of his fortune to fund the Nobel prizes for those doing good in the world. This story serves as the perfect invitation to consider the headlines I want written about my life: and the ones I don’t.
Emily McDonald, Perfecter of the Silent Treatment, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Woman Who Spent Half Her Life Scrolling Instagram, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Mother Who Resented Every Single Time Her Child Inconvenienced Her, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Woman Who Read Thousands of Books She Didn’t Like Because She Was “Supposed To”, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Writer Who Never Shared Her Writing Because She Worried She Wasn’t Good Enough, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Thrower of Parties That Made People Feel Loved, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Wife Who Never Missed a Chance to Kiss Her Husband, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Mother Who Stopped to Examine Every Interesting Insect, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Woman Who Left Everything on the Pages of her Prayer Journal, Dead at 99
Emily McDonald, Writer of Many Bad Things and Some Good Things, Too, Dead at 99
Last week, Peet and I were walking into a coffee shop for a quick morning date before starting the work day. As he stood outside the door of the coffee shop, I delayed our entry by stopping to inspect the books in the Little Free Library outside. I must investigate the contents of every Little Free Library I come across; if I do not, I’m pretty sure I would perish. It got me thinking about all of the other little rules I have for living. Here’s my list so far:
I always eat the birthday cake.
I never let getting my hair wet keep me from jumping in the water.
Any time I see something in a store that makes me think of someone, and it’s under $5, I buy it for them.
I always stop to smell the mountain laurel.
I always keep cash in my wallet for a musician’s tip jar.
I never drink alcohol I would not pay for.
If there is an open call for speeches at a rehearsal dinner, I always give one.
These rules serve as inspiration for how to spend my days.
On one of our date nights, Peet and I made dopamine menus together. Simply put, a dopamine menu is a list of activities that make you happy, activities that give you just a little morsel of dopamine. I made a list and categorized mine like so:
Appetizers: quick, easy, usually free, could be done daily.
Entrees: 1-3 hour commitment, low cost, could be done once or twice a week.
Sides: physical items that make you happy, cost a little money, could be done once or twice a month.
Desserts: activities best in moderation, don’t overdo it.
Specials: activities that take some time, money, and planning, could be done once or twice a quarter.
Below is my personal dopamine menu that I made from a template on Canva. I keep this list on the refrigerator for easy reference.
Here is the list of words and images that came to me while dreaming up my year:
Literature
Really good literature
Call Me by Your Name
A woman with good taste
Stacy Raby
You and I by Ingrid Michaelson
Smart families
Well-made clothing
Strong foundations
Intellectual wealth
Art, history, literature
Smart girl
Smart girl outside
But add some whimsy
Add pops of color!
Reading classic literature in a beat up paperback by the river
Reading outside
Museums
Theatre
Art
Inspiration
Old money
The Artist’s Way
University life
Joy
Discovery
Renaissance
Feeding my artist
After writing the above list, I made myself a little vision board that encapsulates the feeling of what I’m dreaming up. Some of the photos are pretty straightforward; some are a little more vague. What matters is that they make sense to me. I keep this collection of photos on my phone background so that I can see it every time I pick up my phone.
One of my favorite things I did in January to plan my year was taking the Live Like an Editor Workshop by Tonya Leigh. This workshop has you design your year as if you were a magazine editor. You give your magazine a title (your word for the year), write some headlines (the things you hope to embody and accomplish this year), imagine a setting (your external environment and inputs), design your cover (how you style yourself), and write your internal style guide (your commitments, affirmations, and self-talk). This workshop really resonated with me in a way that most goal-setting workshops don’t. It seemed to take into consideration my personhood in a way that felt authentic to me. Tonya Leigh is a great teacher.
My word for 2026 is Taste.
I love every meaning of this word. I hope for 2026 to be a year of:
Tasting the world
Feeding my artist
Developing good taste
I made these magazine covers on Canva with photos I found on Pinterest. I could not decide on just one photo for my 2026 magazine cover, so I made three.
I want a lot of things for 2026. I want to read a lot of books, especially classics, preferably near a body of water. I want to spend more time with Scout in inspiring places, like parks, museums, and nature centers. I want to lie on the floor with her, flipping through gigantic books with colorful photos of insects and trees and the Great Wall of China. I want to spend more time outside together. Looking at art. Reading books. Attending story time and watching only the really good kids movies. I want to take her to the farmer’s market and eat things that are in season and make a lot of messes in the kitchen. I want to make a perfect cocktail and enjoy just the one. I want to learn to dress beautifully, in quality clothing, but not so much that I forgo a little bit of sparkle. I want to be a woman of good taste, my own definition of it.
Why does it feel so hard to admit what I want, even to myself?
Why does it feel so hard to say that I want pretty things or that someday I’d like to be a person who gets my nails done every week, but not so much as I want to be a person who can look a homeless person in the eye. Someone who makes people feel every bit as transcendent as they are, worthy of my time and my gifts and my words. And when I tell someone they matter, I want them to believe me. I want to be a person who can talk about politics without crying and talk about Jesus without feeling embarrassed. A person in a healthy body that gets up and down easily and fits into most clothing in the store, and mostly how I just want to feel that I have the restraint to not eat the thing I know will make me sick even though right now it makes me feel that I have a little bit of control over something, anything, in a world where children die and people suffer and justice seems like a fairytale. And I know that there are people who are stronger than me and smarter than me out there doing something important and I have to wonder: do I have what it takes to join them or even just to pay their rent while they do it? And, God, I want to be a writer, I want to be a writer so badly I feel like I could die. To be recognized by name, but not by face, so that I might one day hear someone talking about me without knowing who I am as I stand nearby waiting for my coffee and they might say Wow, she really has something to say. And really, I just want to have something to say. And I want to support my husband so that he can be free to do everything he is so obviously created to do and I want to make my dad proud and I want to take my sister to Hawaii because she deserves everything. And I want my daughter to have a record of what I thought of her: that she is every bit as boundless and exceptional as she suspects that she may be. And I want to write down my grandmother’s stories so that our family never forgets what she fought for and what God did. And, God, I want to be a writer more than anything.
And so I will go and read some books and look at some art and bathe in the Light. And maybe then I’ll have something to say.
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