It’s January again and I’m eager to look forward. The past few weeks have been really nice with the kids coming home and spending time with family and friends. I made a lot of nice progress on personal projects and as the year turns over, I think I’m more excited about keeping those balls rolling then I am about making big changes or setting big goals.
A few notable successes:
* A focus I had for the year was spending/wasting less time on my phone. I had some ups and downs but I think the thing that helped me most was spending more time with a journal. This is something I have always messed with over the years and it’s similar to keeping a sketchbook in a lot of ways. I tried Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages a few years ago and dabbled with a few other things but they never really stuck as a regular habit for me. Then back in September I borrowed some ideas from a youtuber Dominic Hart and have been able to keep at it – fairly consistently- for 4 months now. It’s a combination of a “five year” journal – or “one line per day” journal – and a habits tracker which, as I move through the month, builds up in a kind of appealing way visually, and helps me see how I am really doing with a few things that I am trying to be better at, do more of, or be more consistent with. Here’s an example from the internet (I’m not sharing mine).
Each page is a month and row is a day of that month. On the left you list one thing that made the day memorable. That could be something good or bad but usually I found good things to note. On the right facing page you have 10 columns for things you want to track. For example, in mine, I have: “exercise”, “drawing”, “reading” “flossing”, and a few others. Finally, the little bar graph is hours of sleep each night. Then at some point each day, you add a memorable moment and tick the boxes in the columns for the prior day. Simple and easy but for me there is something about seeing the X marks build up that kind of makes me want to keep at it. Also, for the things that aren’t getting done, it helps me ask myself why I’m not doing it and what might need to change to be more consistent. Anyway, for some reason, for me it’s been nice. I’m not too hard on myself when I don’t tick the boxes – so maybe if you are a perfectionist, this kind of tracking could be stressful. But for me, I actually look forward to updating the stupid thing everyday. AND like I said, its been a big help in keeping my phone out of my hand.
* Vacations and mini-vacations. We went on a bunch of trips that were really memorable: Got back to Michigan and Blacksburg twice. But also hit Shenandoah, New Orleans, West Virginia and South Carolina for little getaways. That rate may be hard to match in 2026 but I am planning to try. Going places and hanging out with friends and family is a game changer for me mentally and I really love it.
* Drawing. Also in the back 9 of 2025 I got back to drawing in great way. Working on the “Wandering Cities” project, doodling in my sketchbook, or drawing little things for our Tuesday Night Fights sessions. I am getting more consistent about drawing. I think the biggest thing was telling myself, “Just go to the shed and draw for 10 minutes” it’s easy – then – of course once I got going, I found I didn’t want to stop. I’ve told about a million people this quote but it’s such gold that I will repeat it again. In grad school I had a professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics, James Buchanan, he dropped this nugget in class:
“The hardest thing about Economics, is getting your ass in the chair.”
And Goddamn if that doesn’t apply to literally everything in life worth doing. Just getting started is the hardest step! by far! by a million miles! It’s so dumb but it’s true. Doing “the thing” is the hardest part. Doing the thing is what leads to making the thing. You can’t finish a project if you never work on it, and the hardest thing about working on something is putting down the phone and getting your ass off of that couch. (aside: I think the phone + couch combo may be the most lethal in history. Reigning champ time suck! Looking back at how people used to see TV as “the opiate for the masses”….HAH TV has nothing on these phones!)
Ok sorry for the long post. I’ll do another post soon with a few updates on things Im reading and watching lately.
