But first… a bit of a somewhat-related tangent…
Honestly, I wasn’t really planning on making one of these posts, despite talking about how I wish I was more consistent about doing this in years past, lol.
But as usual, around the beginning of a New Year, my Facebook feed was completely chock-full of everyone’s 2025 Wrap Up posts and discussions about what they hoped to accomplish throughout 2026.
And as usual (at least in my circles, I guess), most of the posts talked about how the person making the post accomplished 93452039840394509238420983402938450293845203498 things in 2025 and planned to accomplish 43958049809834059283408523048538439 + 1 things in 2026.
And my reaction to every single one of those posts was “Good grief. How absolutely exhausting!!!!”
O_o
Now, the #1 thing I’ve really come to learn and understand (finally, REALLY understand) in the last year or so, however, is how incredibly different every human being is.
So, when I see those posts now, I can only hope that the person making the post is the kind of person who is energized and motivated by such a Long List of Things, and that they are not fast-tracking themselves into horrific burn-out by thinking they need such a Long List of Things in order to be seen by others as a “real professional” or “accomplished” or “knowledgeable” or “respectable” or whatever other impression of themselves and their accomplishments would make them feel validated.
Because my first reaction is always serious concern, honestly. 😛 I can just see all of these people crashing and burning in the next few years when such a crazy pace of Doing Things becomes no longer sustainable. And my first reaction to those posts is that particular reaction because after over a decade as an indie author, I’ve seen people crash and burn soooooooooooo many times. (Actually, what tends to happen is that they suddenly just vanish from social media, never to be seen again, and everyone is left wondering what in the world happened to them… and then when you finally do hear about them again, it turns out they burned out real hard and could never write again… eek.)
In my experience, that seems to be the default End Game when you attempt to do 9809809809485203948523845230894 things every year, year after year. It’s far more likely than the person maintaining that breakneck pace indefinitely, it seems.
The lucky people are the ones who recognize they’re heading into burn-out before it happens, of course, so they can course-correct and avoid being waylaid for years while they climb back out of the pit.
BUT ANYWAY. The point of this post is not to talk about how I’m concerned for many other people’s health and sanity in 2026, believe it or not, lol. No. I do realize that people are different, and so I’m just going to believe that everyone knows what’s best for them, and that they have things under control, and that I don’t have to worry about them falling off the face of the planet from severe burn-out in a few years, because they’ve got this! 🙂 (This is also, of course, obviously not considering all of the other things going on right now that could very, very easily rob a person of their health and sanity on a daily basis… but that’s an entirely different discussion for a different day.)
So the point of this post is to talk about my OWN reflection on 2025, and my own plans for 2026 – obviously! ^_^
Reflecting on 2025…
There won’t be a lot to talk about here, because most of the last year for me was spent doing a lot (and I mean a LOT) of internal mental and emotional work on myself, which was expressly necessary in order to not give up on life, humanity, and everything.
For most of my life I have had a terrible burning desire for humans to just be better, and whenever they prove that they are not, actually, being better, or getting better overall, it would very, very much bother me.
So I had to get over that. I had to wrestle with and accept the fact that the concept of “The Wheel” as some call it exists because of the very fact that The Wheel does indeed exist. As has been proven over and over and over and over again throughout history. I do blame my history teachers a little bit here, because when I was kid, they all acted like The Wheel was over and done with. We surmounted it! We conquered it! We broke it! All hail progress and the evolution of humanity into a better race!
Except… no. Alas. We did not break The Wheel. We are still on it. And doomed to forever be on it, I think. BUT after doing a lot of reading and reflecting and contemplating, I’ve finally come to peace with that reality.
Since most of my available time and pretty much all of my emotional and mental energy was spent wrestling with this crises of hope, needless to say I can’t really think of much else that was “accomplished” in 2025. But I’ll certainly take coming out the other side of that crises in a state of mind that still allows me to create and help other people as a win in and of itself. 😛
We also had a real garden for the first time in 2025, which we loved and plan to extend in 2026, and I started to lessen my reliance on digital services as well as increased my collection of physical media in 2025… both of which really helped my mindset as well. Additionally, I drastically increased my charitable donations. Money talks, as they say, and whenever I felt like I was helpless to do anything else, at least I knew I could fund the work of other people who could do more than me. <3
The other thing that happened in 2025 was that we increased our family fun nights… and that was the best thing ever, to be honest. As I mention when I talk about goals for 2026 below, I tend to get obsessive when I’m working on a book, so it was actually pretty nice to be able to pull away from that the last few years and get some really good quality “living life” time! ^_^ The biggest challenge for the future will definitely be figuring out how to still write books but also live life, for sure… oh boy! Lol.
Intentions for 2026!
As my semi-related tangent above explains, I’m all about not doing 989838523482398523904852398429348 + 1 things if I can help it.
In the past, I’ve tried that approach. It was… not pleasant. For me. I spun my wheels a lot and went almost nowhere.
So then I learned that taking a more deeply focused approach on a lot fewer things worked much, much better. For me. 🙂 I even made a post about this realization!
And as we now move into 2026, I’m tightening down even more than before! And I’m starting to feel as excited and energized about my authordom as I used to feel when I was still an innocent little Baby Author! I find this extremely wonderful, because I’m not going to lie… for awhile there I was really worried I’d never feel that way again. 🙁 And that is a really scary thought to have, because writing fiction was a major cornerstone of my life for… well, most of my life. 🙂
To consider having that part of me destroyed was a really depressing thought.
Alas, it seems it has been saved!!! (At least for now) *trumpet fanfare*
And so here we go… my focuses for this new year:
- FINISH DRAFTING THE LEGACY OF LUCKY LOGAN 5. Yes yes, “finish the next book” has been on my list for a long time now… but… something you may not know is that my level of Focus Obsession when I’m drafting a book honestly kind of scares me. It essentially forces me to have no life, which is why I pulled back hard from writing the last few years. I realized that I wasn’t really living my life, because I was too obsessed with writing the books and stories, and I really didn’t like that. Because what is the point in being alive if you’re not going to, you know, live your life??? Since then I’ve tried to find a better balance between enjoying life and writing books… but you know what? I can’t find it. 😛 Apparently with my top Strengths being what they are, being balanced like that is extremely, extremely difficult. Sooo. My idea for 2026 is to simply… ride the dragon, so to speak. I’m going to let myself go 100% in on drafting, and try to work in some of the other things I need to do when I need brain-breaks, or when I get stuck and need to ruminate on the story for awhile to get unstuck. Yes, I am extremely nervous about doing this given my past experiences with how this always goes, but I also can’t see any other way to finish a book. I have tried so many other things since 2023 and none of them work. The way I’m wired, I’ve learned, I do my best work when I can 100% commit to something – ONE THING – and go in real deep and not come up for air until it’s finished. With most things, this is not a problem, as they can be knocked out in hours or days or weeks. But when you write 100K+ words for each novel AND can’t devote 8 hours a day to just writing… that can get really tricky to manage. But we’re gonna try it!!! With my increased awareness of how my Strengths really work + mentally being prepared to set all other projects aside until the novel is finished… maybe it will overall be more manageable!!! Wish me luck, in any event! 😛
- EVENTS! Since events are one of the few things that I both a) almost always enjoy doing and b) bring me actual income (whoo!), I have decided to add a few more events to my calendar for 2026! In previous years, I only really did Planet Comicon for in-person book sales… but the last 2 years, I did 2 events each year: Planet Comicon and Boozy Book Fair. I loved Boozy Book Fair both times, so I applied for their event again in 2026! But this year, on top of those 2 “usual” events, I hope to add 2 more! I’m aiming for one event per quarter in 2026! I’ve already applied for a Children’s Literary Festival in April, so cross your fingers I’m accepted! I would love to give my children’s picture book some love for once, lol. And I’m still looking for one more event, preferably sometime in July, August, or September. So if you know of any good ones you personally love to attend, please let me know and I’ll look into them! They can be book-centered events or your local comic convention… either one! And thanks in advance! 😀 In addition to book-selling events, I’ll be hosting the fabulous Becca Syme in Kansas City in May!!! EEEEEEEEeeeeee. To say I am THRILLED about this is a drastic understatement, lol. Becca is pretty much the only industry guru I listen to anymore, hahaha, so yeah, I’m real, real excited to have her speaking in my hometown and to get to pick-her-brain one-on-one for a bit, too!!! WHOOHOO!!! There may also be another writer-focused event in store for the Kansas City area in 2026… but more on that later… 😉
- AUDIOBOOKS! Indeed. Now to be fair, I have never NOT wanted to be working on more audiobooks… but they are extremely expensive, because I pay real humans for their time. And I wouldn’t have it any other way… but that does put some restrictions on how quickly I can put out more audiobooks. 😛 Also, my narrator is quite popular these days, lol. He hasn’t really had time to add more audiobooks to his schedule lately, but as luck would have it, I was able to see him in-person just a few weeks ago at Celebrity Con Kansas City, and we’re hoping I can send him The Legacy of Lucky Logan book 4 to start work on after February!! YEEHAW! Keep your fingers and toes crossed that stays the case! Additionally, I aim to create an audiobook omnibus of books 1-3 all together before the year’s end, and hopefully also get around to fixing a few small audio quirks in book 3… that’s been on my list FOREVER… but yeah. So many things to do, so little time… BUT! Since audiobooks made the list of MAIN PRIORITY this year, maybe I can actually get it done at last!
- GOING ANALOG, BABY! This is an entire post all on its own, lol. So I’ll just be short and sweet here and say what this means is that I am drastically reducing my time online even more than I already have. I’ve always been a proponent of physical media, but given the continued accelerated trend of large corporations getting greedier and greedier and ads and AI taking over everything, I’m also doubling-down on getting out of digital mediums as much as possible as well. I’m reducing my streaming services as much as possible, listening to music on CDs or from downloads instead of streaming, moving all of my photos off the Cloud and on to my own storage devices, making back-ups of all my social media accounts, etc. My goal is to reduce my reliance on digital services as much as possible and take back control of the things I love and enjoy, so that they cannot be taken from me or held at ransom at the drop of a hat given the whims of some greedy corporate CEO. Also on the list… become more self-sustainable in regards to utilities and food, etc. This is a much larger, longer, more complex process, but I’ve started the first baby steps, and it already feels so good. 🙂 Onward and upward, me hearties!
And the “secondary” priorities:
Because according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities”… and I already have 4 priorities listed above! Whoops, lol. But in theory these priorities will be revolving and shifting as one or more is completed, so then these other “secondary” priorities will take the place of the primary priorities that are already complete.
Everyone following??? Okay good! Here we go…
- SHORT FILM. Oh, I could go on and ON about this one… but let me just say that trying to pin down movie industry people is sort of like trying to catch an eel in a sea of oil. Or at least, that has been my own personal experience so far!!! ARGH! Lol. But the bottom line is that things ARE happening, albeit insanely more slowly than I’d prefer… and eventually it will all happen all at once in a mad flurry of pure chaos… but until that happens I’m left over here mostly twiddling my thumbs waiting for other people to get back to me about things and hoping that none of the wonderful people who helped fund this thing get fed up and start sending me hate mail… however rest assured, if you are one of those wonderful people who helped fund this venture… WE ARE WORKING ON IT YES… and someday it will happen… THIS YEAR… or I’m forgetting the whole thing and sending everyone refunds. 🙂 Because I’m tired of waiting too! 😉
- BOOK 3 HARDBACK KICKSTARTER. Yes! Because I have to be able to pay for that Book 4 audiobook somehow!!! Oof. Lol. And when I go to in-person events, I get people asking about book 3 in the pretty hardback version. So! I listen to my readers, and it has been way too long yes, so we will do this thing… hopefully this year. BUT. I cannot write books AND run Kickstarter campaigns, I’ve definitely learned that. So I won’t launch this campaign until book 5 drafting is complete. Most likely I will start building it very slowly in the background in bits and pieces, and get the art started on it… but nothing will ramp up or go live until we have book 5 safely on its way to actually getting published first! 🙂
And that’s it. That’s so, so, so much, honestly. Stretching my capabilities already for sure. But we’ll see if my new Focus strategy works or not.
In the words of Tim Grahl, “Everything is a fucking experiment!!!” …. okay. I may have added the “fucking” in there. I honestly can’t quite remember now, lol, but that quote is on my whiteboard, so we’re going with it.
Wish me luck!!! And good luck to all of you out there reading this, too. We’re gonna need it to get through this next year! But I have hope, my dears, and faith in individual humans. Go out and do just one nice thing today. One kind thing a day, that’s how we change the world. 🙂
Happy 2026, y’all!!! Cheers!!
LOVE this! Always enjoy hearing from you! 🙂