I thought it was only last year that I skipped writing my New Year’s post, but it looks like my last one was three years ago! I won’t bother recapping the words and years gone by; we’ll just start fresh and move forward.
My word for 2025 was STRONG and my goals for the year were mostly fitness-related. I work a desk job so there’s a lot of sitting, but I started the year with setting up a sit-stand desk and aiming to be more consistent with being active. I don’t think that I fully achieved the consistency I was hoping for, but I did sign up for the Ladder app and have been loving their workouts – I completed 82 of them in 2025, plus did two (or maybe three?) series of Hatha yoga sessions through my local community centre, got outside for some walks when the weather cooperated and rode the stationary bike when the weather did not.
Reading-wise, I set my goal at 50 books as usual, and surpassed that midway through the year, ending at 126 books. I did a huge purge of my shelves during the summer, reducing my physical TBR from 245 books on January 1 to 190 on December 31.
This brings us to 2026, and the word I’ve chosen is CONSISTENT. While I did maintain more activity last year, there were stops and starts along the way. I want to be more consistent this year, prioritizing being active but also integrating better nutrition – doing more homecooked meals and less takeout, as well as having more protein in the mornings (my breakfasts need a lot of work!). Like prior years, there’s no goal of lose X pounds, but I’m hopeful that if I’m consistent, I will find myself feeling my best by the end of the year. Hand in hand with that is the goal I always have of being more consistent with drinking water — one of these days I’ll get it 😉
I don’t have much to improve on with reading – consistency is really just about making sure that I stay off my phone and prioritize reading over mindless scrolling. Sometimes I look at my screen time and think that I could have read a whole book in a day with the amount of time I spent on my phone! I also plan to journal consistently, and keep both the podcast and the blog going – I like that I cross-post with the blog for some podcast episodes, and I’m aiming for a post per month. My reading goal, like always, is 50 books – I don’t need an app telling me that I’m behind on my hobby 😉
Reading from the books that I own is the biggest goal for me this year, as well as being super intentional with the books that I purchase – I want to reduce my physical TBR even further by the end of 2026, but I also like to read everything that I add to my shelves in 2026 … if I’m not reading it pretty quickly, then why am I buying it? I love the idea of curated shelves filled with my favourite books rather than shelves full of books I haven’t read yet – my big BIG goal is to have a physical TBR of 50 books or less by the time I turn 50 … it’s still far enough away that it’s achievable, but not so far away that I don’t need to start working at it now.
Happy New Year, friends, and may 2026 be everything that you’ve hoped for.
Writer Grrl Reads 