Ganked from Austin Kleon

One of the creators whose content I adore is by the writer/artist Austin Kleon[1]. He posted the gem above last week and it blew my mind. It just is an absolutely sensical way to go gently into the new year. It also gives people (especially parents who need to start school/activities again and get back on schedule!) a wee break and time to consider what they want to focus on in the new year after the chaos of the holidays. Also, if I remember correctly, there is often a steep drop-off in interest after the first month for the more popular resolutions, which may make it easier to stick to if you aren’t elbow-to-elbow with people at the gym or if you can get into the classes you’d like to take.

Also, check out how February lines up into four perfect weeks:

Starts on Sunday and ends on Sunday. Perfection!

You say there’s gonna be a resolution, weh-hell, you know…

I don’t really have a resolution set for 2026. I do have a theme though, and that is the theme of scholarship. Basically, I want to do a deep dive into a variety of topics that I have always meant to learn more about.

After a year of re-calibrating the brain meats by staying off most social media (or social media, mostly – as it were) I realize that most of my problems stemmed from the fact that I’d find myself in a comment spiral. I was addicted to the conversations on social media which gave me a hollowed out version of two things I love: being social and debating. I would get dopamine hits from having rousing debates with friends online – especially during the years when my kids were young and I couldn’t get out as much. But I also came to terms with the fact that it also brought too many negatives: arguments between friends-of-friends, the nonstop highlight reel of negativity, the hours I spent glued to a platform that was serving up less content that I wanted to see and more slop and ads.

I read a lot in 2025 and now in 2026 I want to hone in and learn more about *specific* topics. Delving into Celtic history is high on that list. I also want to continue to work on my drawing and watercolour skills, which I think is just me doing more practice. Part of this is also setting up a well-lit workspace to be able to work in which is separate from my computer space in the shared office. I want to reduce the friction of working on my analog projects and increase the friction of just flopping down and reading/watching internet content all day.

Of course, I really ramped up the social events in 2025 and I plan to absolutely continue that into 2026.

Budgety

It feels weird to just…coast? To not have any financial goals or to have to think about money?

Mr. Tucker and I sat down and discussed how weird it was to have achieved everything we set out to achieve: our house & our car are paid, the kids have enough in their RESPs to each do a 4 year undergraduate degree, we have savings and investments, we’ve pre-planned our funerals, we gave my stepson some money to help him get his financial house in order as he turns 30 this month, and we basically are content with what we have. So what next?

We decided to use the money from Mr. Tucker’s work to save up for a cruise around the world. Of course, it wouldn’t happen until The Youngest is 18 and off to post-secondary, which gives us two years to save and figure out a game plan. We also would probably only want to leave for 4 months or less because that’s as much time as I can see me being away from home. We’ve only done a couple of 1 month trips so it would be a big leap for us. So essentially, the plan is to see the world over a few years – in 4 month increments at a time.

Milestones

It is a big year for our entire family:
My Stepson turns 30
The Eldest turns 18
The Youngest turns 16
Mr. Tucker and I will celebrate our 20 year wedding anniversary

I suspect we will spend a lot of our time celebrating our children and not celebrating our anniversary but that’s ok. We celebrate our marriage every day, really. But our kids will only get these big milestones once. My Stepson will be moving in with his girlfriend and opening a new restaurant, The Eldest is graduating high school and off to university in the fall, and The Youngest will be celebrating her Sweet 16 and getting her driver’s license in the spring. So it will be a busy year full of life events. I am excited.

I guess that is part of the reason why I am not really leaning into a lot of personal change right now: because life will be full of changes this year anyway. To be honest, I am so proud of all of our children and what amazing people they are that even though I am a bit sad and nostalgic, I am glad they are growing up and starting to live their own lives, seperate from us. This is, after all, the goal of successful parenting.

[1] I won’t ever spend money on Substack because they a> platform nazis, b> their payment tiers are ridiculous, c> no social media company is gonna save us – and have we not learned this lesson? But if you don’t have the same reservations, then I highly recommend his content! Also, you can just do what I did and buy his books. Here is a handy dandy link to his stuff on Bookshop.org.