Dear friends,
Happy new year. I hope that 2026 brings you more of what you like and want in your life and less of what you don’t.
Today, I’m keeping things simple and focused on the topic of reflection—both about the previous year and the year ahead.
I tend to spend the last few days of the year in the style of a product management retrospective: what went well, what didn’t, and what actions do I want to take next.1
This year is a weird year to do that same style of reflection because of the nature of my overarching storylines of the year, which were:
January-June 2025: “I am still recovering from knee surgery and trying to return to sport.”
June 2025-December 2025: “I am now pregnant and need to do what I can to carry a baby safely and healthily to term.”
As a control freak with a tendency toward great expectations, 2025 was a challenging year because I was not in a position to control or expect much from myself.
I didn’t know when I’d be able to “trust” my leg again and how I’d feel about returning to jiu-jitsu
I didn’t know how my body would handle pregnancy or how my own experience would compare to those in r/pregnancy, r/babybumps and the like
Especially during the first trimester, I became less outgoing and ambitious because I had less energy to be outgoing and ambitious.2
I didn’t recognize myself for most of the year, because I was forced to be more “along for the ride” than actively “driving my destiny.”
When I forced myself to put something on Instagram commemorating the new year, I realized that there was still plenty to be proud of when it came to my 2025.
Rehab and Return to Sport: Even if the months that followed required me to adjust and slow down my jiu-jitsu training (again), I managed to reclaim full function of my leg and return to a sport that can be exceptionally unkind to an ACL recovery.
Traveling for Work and Play: I traveled a lot for work and saw a lot of family and friends on my “homecoming” visits to the Northeast. I also took bigger trips with my husband: one to Bozeman, Montana, and one to Greece.
Having a Fairly Undramatic Pregnancy: I made it through 80% of the pregnancy with all signs pointing to a healthy baby come February. A lot of weird stuff can still happen between now and birth, but I was relieved that I didn’t have to take more extreme measures to successfully conceive despite repeated reminders of my “advanced maternal age.”
Writing a few things I was very proud of: I didn’t get the book deal that I had been hoping for at the beginning of 2025, but I did get my first real byline in Atlanta Magazine, completed two and published one personal essay that I liked very much, and did a number of interviews of athletes3 and business owners4 that I found inspiring and insightful. Even if my “pregnancy diaries”-style articles are something of a time-bound and shorter-lived experiment, I’m glad I took the time and space to reflect on this period of my life while it was at its freshest.
In my day job, I earn a living by making plans and getting various groups of people to execute them. More often than not, the plans I make are good, and I’m effective in getting people to execute them to completion and on schedule.5
In my personal life in the new year, I’m unlikely to build a great plan. Even if I did, I am unlikely to be able to execute against it.
2026 comes with too much uncertainty. The arrival of the baby—joyful, welcome, and blessed as it should be—promises a breakdown of the life I knew and rebuilding it to suit a new and permanent presence within it.
In the longer arc of my life, I’m sure that 2026 will be a year that I look back on as a rewarding and character-building one.6 In the short term, it’s an intimidating year.
My husband often tells me that there’s no point worrying about the things that are inevitable—it’s just a waste of energy and time.
Even so, I can’t help but think about what to expect after I’m done expecting, including but not limited to…
Months of poor sleep
Hormonal whiplash and likely postpartum depression
A social media algorithm that is likely to infuriate me, filled with parenting influencers and postpartum fitness influencers to help with “bouncing back”
Needing to ask for and accept a lot of help from a lot of different people in my life
Gaining a whole new level of responsibility in keeping a child alive and raising him as well as I can
The only antidote I’ve found to this is treating my favorite line from Hamlet as a personal affirmation: “The readiness is all.”
Even with the uncertainty and anxiety and fruitlessness of making big plans for 2026, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a few things I want to achieve, even in this birth and postpartum year ahead:
To return to normal jiu-jitsu training by the end of the year.7
To write at least one full piece of fiction.8
But the most important thing I want is this:
To navigate this next year of life as gracefully as I can.
I don’t know what "living gracefully” will look like or entail, but if you have any tips, I’ll take ‘em via DM, comments, or reply to this email.
For today, I’m glad to have you here and hope to have you here on the ride to come.
With warmest wishes,
EZ
The only difference between how I approach this for my day job and how I approach this in my personal life is the time period. Most of my day job involves reflection on two-week cycles of work or reflection at the conclusion of a longer project. In my personal life, I tend to reflect in six- and twelve-month increments of time, capping them off with an email I send to about ~200 people in January and July.
“On schedule” and “To completion” are much easier said than done in the world of corporate IT.
I don’t expect birth, postpartum, and whatever else happens in Year One of motherhood to be easy on my body or mind. I do expect it to be more joyful though than recovering from knee surgery, carrying around a lot of extra weight, and not being able to enjoy my favorite foods or favorite activities.
I would define normal as being able to participate in hard sparring at a 3x/week cadence without experiencing any pelvic floor issues or serious postpartum strength deficiencies
The ambitious goal is completing a first draft of a novel that I’ve had in mind for the last eight months. The more realistic goal is writing two short stories that I’ve had in mind for much longer than eight months.
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