Vision Board for 2026

Issue 71

Thank you to the new subscribers who have joined me this year. I’m so grateful to have you! If this is the first newsletter you’ve read, you’ll get a great introduction to what in store for me personally for the year.

Special thanks to new paid subscriber E. N. You’re a goddess!

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Last year’s vision board really helped me maintain momentum and I invested in myself more than anyone else for once. I took chances and succeeded. I rested. It’s time to get going though, and reinforce my capacity for positive change.

We come away year after year disappointed we didn’t become astronauts. I am my biggest hater and wanted this time to try encouragement without expectation.

• Letting Go

Very little in this world belongs to us. Whether a type of life, the land, or people. Loving anything means supporting how it grows and changes instead of trying to control or posses it.

We often view people and cultures as pressed flowers, beautiful things with a comfortable amount of dimensions. I want to allow people to have dimension but also to stop trying so hard to maintain what’s not mine to keep alive, whether it’s a dying succulent or a friendship.

• Good Food

I lie to myself. I swear I will eat what I’m supposed to, but butter and bacon and cookies call and I am a fool in lust. I don’t want to demonize food as good or bad but what pleases me. Perhaps by taking the pressure off, I can value what I eat and take more care in making it. Good health as a consequence of joyous eating.

• Photography

I pine for the old days of Instagram where the now defunct popular page showcased skilled eyes. A community did studies with light, distortion, color, and thirds. It was inspiring and liberating to be part of circles exploring what an iPhone could capture.

I used to have a folder full of photography apps where I’ll tool away for hours adjusting and retaking shots. When the first celebrities joined Instagram and their breakfasts stole the shine, it wasn’t fun anymore and all our feeds changed.

Glasses on, glasses off

Getting a good shot has mostly been about resilience. The first 10 shots could have different issues: lighting, angle, background distraction, or a lock of hair out of place. You patiently adjust one by one, then keep going. You have to be brave enough to keep trying and sometimes accept you won’t get absolute perfection to your eye. Along the way, however, you begin looking at each scene in your life as an opportunity worth snatching.

• Glimmers

They’re the opposite of triggers and I’m looking for them much more now as I cruise into a smoother stage in my life. Seeing the glimmers means being grateful I was able to pivot my career doing something that I enjoy. I have a greater bandwidth to support my children and minister to my own body the care it’s sorely needed.

Things still suck. But they are situations, fractions of the whole. Life doesn’t suck. There’s a big difference. This perspective makes the disappointment or the sadness smaller so by default, there is much more room for joy. I plan to pursue joy by any means necessary.

• Storytelling

I have thrown together many short pieces of fiction I’m proud of. They’re slices of life or snippets of what could be larger pieces. I’m hoping to do what I’ve done with my Listening Room presentations and craft great stories. I love the research involved and mapping out timelines or themes. Sometimes you have to love the planning as much as the making.

I also want to practice eliciting the reader’s empathy, a skill the greats have perfected. I have one story that requires the reader to step inside the main character’s pain. For that, I have to tap into something universal about suffering that speaks to the reader. I have to listen and observe more closely, not only to capture the feelings but find the words. What happens when you’re nervous or angry? Guts turn to water at a startling defeat, but what else?

I’m thinking of exercises in craft rather than execution right now. I want to see what flows when I get a couple things right first.

• Freedom

While other 9 year olds were planning their lives with Prince Charming, cooing to their baby dolls, or staging battles of good versus evil, I was daydreaming about my future apartment. The image is probably torn from countless 80s B movies of brick-exposed, unaffordable loft apartments, but dammit, that’s what I wanted. It was about freedom and autonomy and my own space with creative control.

While some just do, I have had to give myself permission. I want to continue making little hops and bigger leaps, not thinking too much, just moving with what feels or sounds good. A large part is suspending self judgement is allowing myself space to explore music, style, or sensation. Nothing is off limits to me.

• Reading

I want to continue making reading a steady part of life where I jot them down as needs like groceries. I’m a mood reader so I don’t get around to certain books until the feeling strikes. One year it was all Stephen King, another it was Philip K. Dick, but I want to try something very different.

We’re in a strange and disconcerting time where dystopian lit has been the US government’s blueprint. Nothing is far-fetched or paranoid. Any disturbing thing is imaginable. I’ve been in a spiral lately, my vivid imagination conjuring worst-case scenarios. I think of 1930s German, The Handmaid’s Tale, Milosevic, Lamumba, Sankara, and furious knocks on my door with barked demands. I’m scared.

There’s some research to suggest activists have less incidence of depression because they are actively engaged in purposeful pursuits¹². For my part, this requires studying more history and being empowered by the knowledge instead of burdened by it. In this time of monsters³, I want to be sure I have a blade ready.

What’s next?

• Poetry

• A sample for the faves

• Staying connected

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1. Racial justice activism, advocacy found to reduce depression and anxiety in some teens. (n.d.). https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases-from-aap-conferences/racial-justice-activism-advocacy-found-to-reduce-depression-and-anxiety-in-some-teens/?srsltid=AfmBOor8vk0ZHRwiTYWOz26Daya8IyP7dCEvlZxmJ3LIlBn9jCRCGW5o

2. Wolk, M. W., Strecher, V. J., & Hill, P. L. (2024). Considering the wellbeing correlates of activist purpose. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25(7). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00815-x

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

• Antonio Gramsci

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