Taking Stock, Not Starting Over

There’s something about the days at the start of January that feel somewhat still. Work hasn’t fully resumed, the calendar has technically rolled over and the year itself hasn’t quite arrived yet. You’re counting down the days till you head back to work… but you don’t really feel them till the day before you start again. It feels less like a starting line. It feels more like a threshold. It’s a moment to pause and take stock. Notice where you’re actually standing before stepping ahead.

That kind of reflection is easy to dismiss as ritual or cliche, but I’ve come to think of it differently. Not as a reset or reinvention, but as a checkpoint. A chance to look back with some honesty, look ahead with a bit of humility. – acknowledging that most things worth planning don’t happen cleanly on the first of January. They unfold with context, constraint, and the realities of everyday life. This isn’t a manifesto for who I’ll become in 2026. It’s more a quiet sum of where I’ve landed. It’s also about what feels worth paying attention to as the year begins.

2025: A year of finding footing

For me, 2025 wasn’t a year of dramatic leaps forward. It was a year of landing properly. I started a new role in a sector I hadn’t worked in before, and during the first stretch of the year, a lot of my energy went into understanding the terrain of that workplace – how things actually function, where decisions are made, and what constraints really shape the mahi done there. It was less about output (although there was plenty of that) and more about orientation. Initially, from the outside, that kind of year can look quite quiet. There’s a lot of listening and a lot of asking questions. You spend a fair amount of time sitting with uncertainty. You find out about all the ongoing projects and plans while the bigger picture comes into focus. But it’s also the sort of work that builds a sense of place. Not in a dramatic way – you start to grow a confidence that you know where you stand. You understand how to move within the system without breaking what already holds people together.

I’ve always been a fast learner. In fact, Learner is my top CliftonStrength. This probably explains why this phase suited me more than it frustrated me. Although I’d be lying if I said there was zero frustration throughout an entire year. I genuinely enjoy the process of catching up, of connecting dots, of slowly turning unfamiliar systems into something legible. That said, I’m conscious that learning without direction can turn into drift (I’m certainly guilty of tangents). Foundations matter, but eventually you have to build on them.

Looking back, 2025 feels like a year of preparation rather than performance. I spent the year getting my feet under me. I learned the context I’m working in. I also built some internal stability.

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It would be easy to remember 2025 as a year defined entirely by yet another year of crisis. The news cycle certainly encouraged that, whether it be Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, or even Elon; the constant urgency and conflict left very little space to register anything that didn’t arrive with sirens blaring on it. But stepping back, the picture is a bit more complicated. Quiet progress happened without much fanfare: global renewable energy overtook coal for the first time (EMBER); New Zealand reached record levels of renewable electricity generation (MBIE); young councillors added some fresh energy into local democracy (The Spinoff); cancer survival rates continued to improve (The Guardian); UC Online saw thousands of online learners – many first in their whānau – gain new skills (UC Online); and organisations like the Rātā Foundation invested millions into communities across the motu (Fuseworks). None of this cancels out conflict, inequality, or displacement – but recognising that some genuine gains have been made should be acknowledged – not viewed soley as naïve optimism.

If 2025 taught me anything, it’s to be suspicious of confident predictions – especially my own. Every year arrives wrapped in declarations about what will change everything, and by the time the dust settles most of them have either quietly stalled or reshaped themselves into something much less dramatic. Systems rarely shift in big ways. They stretch, strain, and adapt in ways that only make sense in hindsight, usually after someone has written a very confident blog post explaining why the outcome was obvious all along.

I think part of my scepticism comes from proximity. The closer I’ve worked to technology and digital systems, the less they’ve felt like forces of disruption and the more they’ve looked like collections of trade-offs, constraints, and sometimes compromises. AI is probably the clearest example of that gap between promise and practice. The headlines talk about replacement and transformation; the reality, at least where I’ve been working, is much quieter. Small tools doing specific things well. Automation that saves minutes, not jobs. Systems that still need people to babysit them, sense-check them, and explain their outputs to someone else who didn’t ask for this tool to be implemented in the first place. I’m not making a prediction about where things are heading so much as an observation about where I keep finding myself. While billions are poured into research and ever-larger claims are made about what’s coming next, most workplaces I see are busy figuring out what’s actually usable, governable, and worth the effort. The work feels less like reinvention and more like maintenance: improving what already exists, deploying what genuinely helps, and being honest about the limits that seem to get left out of the sales pitch.

Sitting with that has shaped how I’m thinking about 2026. Rather than chasing novelty or intensity, I’m feeling more drawn to steadier forms of progress – capability over aesthetics, practice over performance, depth over breadth. Not everything needs to move fast to move forward. If anything, this feels like a year where the right direction matters more than acceleration, even if that direction only becomes obvious after a few wrong turns.

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A luke-warm take on New Years Resolutions

Resolutions aren’t always bullshit, but resolutions have earned their bad reputation. They’re often too ambitious, too vague, or too performative. They can be declarations made in a brief window of optimism… then quietly dropped once the year begins to feel real again. Most don’t fail because of a lack of discipline, but because they’re framed as outcomes rather than ongoing practices. When goals are treated as endpoints, any deviation feels like failure, making them brittle.

Still, I don’t think the instinct behind resolutions is wrong. At their best, they’re a way of choosing or mapping direction rather than demanding a complete or instant transformation – a light framework for deciding what deserves attention over time. Framed as practices, resolutions can create structure without rigidity and allow for adjustment as circumstances change. Seen this way, they’re less a test of willpower and more a reference point to return to when momentum fades or priorities blur.

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My Intentions for 2026

What this means is cancelling subscriptions that no longer earn their keep, consolidating overlapping services, and removing small points of friction that quietly drain attention as much as they drain money. It’s less about optimisation and more about making sure the basics don’t demand more energy than they deserve.

Alongside tidying the basics, I want to spend more time letting my money work for me, rather than just pass through my accounts. I’ve been reading about the FIRE movement (specifically CoastFIRE) mostly as a framework for thinking rather than a destination. I don’t realistically expect to stop working entirely by 35 or 40, and I’m not aiming for an extreme version of financial independence. What’s more appealing is the underlying idea: building resilience, optionality, and a buffer against shocks that increasingly feel less hypothetical than they used to.

For me, that looks like investing more deliberately, setting clearer medium and long-term horizons for my finances, and making sure future me isn’t overly exposed to short-term instability. Not a radical overhaul, just a gradual shift toward sustainability and preparedness, the kind of financial footing that makes other decisions easier, not heavier.

Not to say it won’t be in another 10 years, but it does start to feel like there’s a clock running down for that ‘top performing’ period. Running and endurance still sits at the centre of my fitness. I want to run more deliberately, build consistency, and work toward a half marathon this year, alongside getting out for a proper hike at least once a month. These are things I try to enjoy now, but I want to approach them with a bit more structure and intention – less drifting, more commitment to schedules. Running, in particular, feels like an anchor habit: accessible anywhere, quite measurable, and honest about where my fitness actually is on any given day.

Alongside that, I’m finally giving strength training a proper attempt. Not as a replacement for running, but as a complement to it. I’ve spent years consuming information – Jeff Nippard, Mike Israetel, endless articles and videos – and I’ve trained at home with free-weight dumbbells many a times before. What I’ve never quite done is make the jump into a gym environment. Most of that hesitation has been practical: not knowing how to use machines properly, how to set them up, or what sensible starting weights look like when you can’t just pick something like a dumbbell up and feel it out. Part of it has been psychological, specifically the time commitment, the unfamiliar space, and the quiet (yet roaring loud) assumption that everyone else knows what they’re doing.

CityFitness moved their lowest tier to a month-to-month option, cleaned up their advertising after the Commerce Commission involvement – and with a nudge of peer pressure from two close mates who’ve been going consistently since December, I finally signed up in person. It was peak hour, busy, and quite anticlimactic: I was directed to a computer, given a fob, and sent on my way without any introduction. No tour, no walkthrough, no rules. I left pretty quickly, feeling excited but anxious. Now I’m just crafting a plan to return at quieter times once I’d found my bearings. Against my anxiety I also figured that I should book a free PT session to get the basics right – Learn how the machines work, how to set them up, and where to start with weights in a way that’s sensible and sustainable. My goal here isn’t chasing numbers or aesthetics; it’s learning the environment, building a routine, and taking advantage of those early “newbie gains” in a way that supports everything else I want to do. In the broader effort to clean things up and move forward in life.

I never thought I’d be someone who quietly accumulated subscriptions, but here we are. Somewhere along the way I ended up paying for almost every AI tool under the sun: ChatGPT+, ElevenLabs, Midjourney, Sora, the occasional Copilot – alongside Envato for digital assets, YouTube Premium and Spotify (despite YouTube Music being perfectly good now), and at one point even Notion Premium just so I could have multiple graphs before eventually moving my financial tracking to PocketSmith. Each of these tools is powerful in its own right, but collectively they’ve become noise. I don’t need this many overlapping capabilities, and I definitely don’t need to be paying for all of them simultaneously.

The intention for 2026 is consolidation, not abstinence. I want fewer tools, chosen deliberately, and better processes wrapped around them – clear reasons for what I keep, how I use it, and when it actually earns its place. That means building systems for using these tools properly, not just reaching for them ad hoc when something feels urgent or shiny. The goal isn’t to be minimalist for the sake of it, but to make sure the tools I do keep are actually working with me, rather than quietly demanding attention, money, and cognitive space in the background.

This year, I want to be more intentional by pursuing two forms of learning with different purposes: one credential related to my mahi, and one focused on capability outside of it. The work option might be something like SharePoint, information governance, or SEO – areas where I already operate with some confidence (or at least confidently enough to be useful), but where formal recognition helps translate practical skill into something legible on paper. Alongside that, I want to do something more grounded and practical, like avalanche awareness or first aid, learning that isn’t about career progression so much as competence in the ‘real world’.

Part of this is about closing the gap between what I can do and how that’s perceived. On paper, I have a Bachelor of Communications, majoring in strategic communication and practice. I think to most, this often gets read as theoretical, journalistic, or managerial. That’s never quite reflected my actual skill set. I started in fine arts, and I’ve always gravitated toward making things: working with data, IT systems, databases, SharePoint, marketing platforms, SEO, design, and websites – not just writing about them or coming up with the brief. At the same time, I’m wary of assuming competence just because I’ve managed to figure things out before (the Dunning-Kruger effect has a habit of sneaking up on people who think they’re immune to it, which is… not reassuring in the slightest). So getting some credentials aren’t just about proving capability, more so a way of learning properly, keeping some humility, and putting a bit of shape around curiosity.

I think part of it comes from my slightly overdeveloped need to be a Learner – how am I supposed to learn something if it’s not even real? How do I trust anything factual in a fictional book without immediately wanting to Google it? The closest I’ve come recently was dipping into George Orwell’s memoirs last year, a few pages at a time over a month. Funnily enough, I can’t imagine enjoying his fiction in the same way, but more memoirs from him? Absolutely.

So maybe that’s the entry point. Memoirs, essays, lived experience – stories that are still stories, but anchored in something tangible. The intention here isn’t to force myself into a genre I secretly resent, but to give space to feed curiosity in a healthier way. Reading because it’s enjoyable, not because it feeds an output, a goal, or a metric. Letting ideas sit without immediately turning them into something useful. If I read four books this year, I’d consider that a genuine win, and I know I’m capable of more if I remove the pressure. It’s a small act to try devoting some attention to.

We already have so many fragments of online life: Instagram stories, Facebook posts, the occasional video or photo that drifts past in a feed and then disappears. Useful in their own way, but none of them quite scratch the same itch. A blog feels different. It gives me space to use whatever medium makes sense – text, images, video – without worrying about how it affects a timeline, an aesthetic, or an algorithm. It’s slower, quieter, and more forgiving (Importantly, anyone reading it is here because they want to be, not because they’re a family member quietly wondering why I’ve decided Facebook is suddenly my long-form publishing platform).

What I like most about writing here is the idea of it as a record. A place to capture pieces of life as they happen – what I was thinking about, working on, struggling with, or proud of in a way that’s easy to return to later. Not everything needs to be polished or resolved. Some posts might be half-formed. Some will age badly (when relaunching my site, I certainly culled a few). Some won’t land anywhere at all. That feels fine. The value is in leaving a trail: something to share with others if they find it useful, and something to come back to myself as a reminder of what’s happened, what’s changed, and what I’ve already managed to get through.

This isn’t a promise to write on a schedule, or to turn my life into a stream of updates. But I plan to try keep showing up occasionally and thinking out loud – about work, systems, the world, and sometimes just where I’m at. If this blog becomes a small archive of that, something imperfect, incomplete, but honest, then it’s doing exactly what I want it to do.

Final remarks

Taken together, these intentions might sound like a grand plan, but I’m trying to view them as a loose framework for the year: running toward a half marathon while building strength alongside it, pruning subscriptions and sharpening the systems I already have, learning with more shape and humility, reading with curiosity rather than obligation, and using this space to write as a record rather than a performance. I might post the occasional update as some of these evolve – small notes about what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s shifted along the way. Maybe I’ll achieve some of these goals, and hopefully I’ll sustain them – I guess you’ll have to wait to find out.

I don’t know exactly how 2026 will unfold, and I’m wary of pretending that I do. Plans will bend, priorities will shift, energy will come and go in uneven ways. That’s fine. What I’m committing to isn’t a particular outcome, but a way of moving through the year – paying attention, keeping things simple where I can, and returning to the practices that matter even when momentum fades. If this blog becomes a record of that – imperfect, partial, occasionally unfinished – then it’s doing its job. I’ll check back in as the year goes on, not to measure progress, but to just try and post a notice what’s changed.