First Day of 2026

So, that’s 2025 done and dusted… Stranger Things is officially finished, Zohran Mamdani is now the mayor of New York and I’m pretty sure it’s now 2026 no matter where you are in the world.

All in all, it’s been a slow and unproductive start to the year but that’s to be expected after spending the night in the local pub and sending “Happy New Year” messages to my friends and family. I never go into the first day of the year with any expectation that I’ll be able to hit the ground running because that just isn’t how I do things. Ideally, it’d be nice if I could hit the ground running on day one of the New Year but that would be wishful thinking on my part. Besides, it’s still the holiday season so I think you can cut yourself a bit of slack for not having starting the year off with a bang.

I still don’t have any clear resolutions or goals outside of using the phone with more purpose — in other words using it less and not mindlessly scrolling through my socials - but I’ll add another general goal for 2026, which is to listen to more new music, watch more movies, watch more shows, keep up regularly with ongoing shows, read more books and play more video games… specifically so I can do a proper year-end list when December rolls around. Hmm… I think I’ve figured out what my keyword for 2026 is: it’s “more”… more shows, more books, more movies, more music, more games, more adventures, more socialising, more creative pursuits, more trips to the cinema, more concerts, more craic, more exercising, more improvements to the website, more everything… except for doomscrolling. Less of that in 2026.

Once again, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and a athblhliain faoi mhaise dhuit to my Irish friends. Yes, learning Irish is also on my list of things I would like to do in 2026. Whether or not I actually get around to doing so remains to be seen.