I want to go into 2026 with more intentions, I have set myself a word of the year. 2026 is going to be the year to linger. When thinking about what I wanted for the new year, I decided I wanted to slow down, be more intentional with what I engage with, quiet my mind and disconnect from my phone more. My wife was trying to work out her word for the year, and she found linger for me. What I love about the word is the way it seems to cover all my intentions in a single word. Linger tells me to stay in the moment, to be present and not performative, to be quiet and grounded, but also, I can remind myself not to linger on my phone.
I have taken up journaling recently as a way to slow my thoughts down. I find that taking the time to write with a pen and paper to be freeing and while I realise this is just a small step in the never-ending journey of self-improvement; It really has been meaningful to me, and I hope I can stick to it. I have been doing a course on creative rebooting in the hope to develop better practices for activating my creativity and there is a piece of advice that has really stuck with me. “Reengage with your notebooks”; even a simple act of transcribing what I wrote a week ago into a document allows me to interact with my previous thoughts. This could lead to new ideas or projects, but also it allows me to have a conversation with previous thoughts while I centralise my data into one place.
What I really liked about this idea is not that it is a form of editing; it’s almost like translating; and if you’ve seen my handwriting, it does need to be translated into something readable. Also, I am engaging with previous thoughts and seeing if I agree or disagree now. I am taking the time to interact with myself and hopefully finding ideas to expand into something more. I am hoping this will help me understand my mind a little better and also be more creative.
I plan to engage more with the media I consume as well; I find I think about music more than I do any other form of media at the moment. I thought maybe it was because I listened to over 200 albums last year, but I have realised that it is the simple fact that I have been engaging with these albums on AOTY. With each album I wrote a few words of what I thought about what I heard and picked the tracks that stood out to me. It might only take me a few minutes but the fact that I am reflecting and trying to understand my thoughts as well as document my journey has been quite insightful. It is interesting to see what albums I rated highly but were not in my most played albums on last.fm.
I have seen a few journaling videos on YouTube recently and there is this phrase that keeps getting used: “journalling ecosystem”. The idea is that not all journals are the same, there could be a commonplace book, a media journal, a planner, and any type of journal. I saw one person that loved talking about their K-pop journal and I have no idea how much information you could write about Korean music, but I am not someone that is actively listening to it. The idea of a media journal is the one that interested me; why not do what I do with music and write my thoughts on films, shows, podcasts and anything else. It can help me engage with the media and maybe even write reviews. I know I neglected literature here when talking about media, I did that intentionally.
For my reading plans of 2026, I want to get back into the habit of writing reviews, I might not blog every book I read but I will write something somewhere about them all. I hope to get more out of what I am reading. The simple act of writing something about my favourite books of last year made me realise my feelings towards them a little better. Like when I wrote about Giovanni’s Room, I realised themes in the book that I did not pick up on while reading it. That act of reflection made me like the novel more.
I have not set myself a reading goal for a few years now, I always wanted to read without worrying about hitting the goal, but why am I scared of failing? Does it change anything? I am going to try for 50 books this year because I want to intentionally push myself more and disconnect from my phone as well. When I stopped setting a goal, I can see a decrease in reading. I was reading over 100 books a year and then it dropped to 83, 65, 56 and then last year only 46 books. I was disappointed with the amount of reading I did, I know it has been a busy time, but I want to see if the act of goal setting has any bearing on how much I read.
This is my plan for 2026; I hope this sparks some creativity and thoughtfulness in my life. I wrote the term ‘sparks some creativity’ and realise that is wrong, creativity requires practice, but I left that in as a reminder. I am really hoping to be less online and, on my phone, and more in the moment. I want to be more creative and slow my mind, I hope this plan works for me.
This post will serve more as a place to link all my reviews together. Much like last year I do plan to read the entire longlist. I read all by one last year, leaving Going, Went, Gone for later, which turns out might mean never. This was an interesting selection, and I managed to only 
For the past few months it has felt like I have really slowed down in my reading, and that felt a little demoralising. Granted, to use the world ‘demoralising’ when referring to one’s reading life is very much a first world problem. To think my biggest problems in my life is about my reading journey really does mean that I have a pretty great life. I am currently in a period of uncertainty with my job where I am unsure if I will be made redundant and yet my concern is directed towards how many books I have read in a single month. As much as I would love to keep my current job, I feel at ease around the whole situation, one path leaves me with work, the other leads to a pay out and more reading time. While I do experience a little worry, it only comes in short waves and honestly I feel like they would be stupid to get rid of me.