Hello 2026
Happy 2026, my loves!
It feels frankly bizarre to be in January. 2025 was one of my favourite years in a long time: twelve months of feeling closer to myself than ever before, travelling to some of my favourite places, making our house a home, getting engaged and starting to plan our wedding, a rollercoaster of a year at work, and generally looking after myself properly.
How was your end-of-December? Mine was fairly frantic and rushed as I squeezed in festive errands after our week in Hong Kong, and I didn’t manage to take any time off over the holiday period. Nonetheless, it was fun to work the hectic days with my beloved work wives and make all of it an excuse to eat good food as we did so. My week in Hong Kong was so healing and resetting for me, and it’s made me feel invigorated for the year ahead. More on that soon! Plus, I spent New Year’s Eve revisiting the letter I wrote to myself last New Year’s Eve, which was so emotional. I, of course, penned another.
It’s been really reassuring and gratifying to reach the year’s start and realise that I’m already on the right path towards the bigger things I’d like to achieve. I remember being far younger and agonising over my New Year’s resolutions for weeks, even spending my Christmas holidays trying to work what it was that I so badly needed to fix about myself. And, religiously, each year since I’ve had this blog, I have also been devout with finding things that must be wrong with me. Society wants me to find things to improve!
For the past few years, though, I’ve felt fairly ambivalent towards goals and resolutions because I feel rather content with my life as it stands. Perhaps it’s the leg work from two decades of working on myself to varying degrees of success. Maybe it’s that I have now adopted good lifestyle habits in my general pursuit of my own dream life. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the wellness habits I’ve adopted, my gym routine, how much water I drink, the non-work activities I build into my weeks… Having said that, there are a few things that I’d like to focus on in 2026, and I thought I’d take today as a chance to share some of them.
Read my physical TBR
2025 was a brilliant year for reading for me and I checked off lots of backlist titles that I’ve wanted to read for ages. I’m finding that being a little more intentional with my reading has been really rewarding, and in 2026 I want to continue this. At last count, I have 53 unread-but-owned books, and I want to read all of those this year, alongside my usual flurry of NetGalley ARCs. I’m also making a priority list of titles I’d like to read.
Finish the second draft of my novel
I spent 2025 working on my fiction manuscript and it was quite the journey. Half of it came to me really easily and the other half was difficult. Midway, I even fell out of love with the story and had to almost force myself back into the process. But, a first draft now exists! And I’m looking forward to revising all the messier parts and shaping my novel to how I now envision it. I don’t think I’d really appreciated just how difficult – and mind-boggling – it is to work on something as long-form as a novel. You live many lives amidst writing, editing and sharpening 80,000 words!
Reread more of my personal library
It was probably in 2020 that I decided I wanted to be somebody with a personal library. It’s very gratuitous of me, I must admit, but as a lifelong keen reader it also made complete sense. Five years later, I’m well on my way to curating a collection of books that have shaped me in some way and that I absolutely love. Now, I’d like to begin using it more vigorously and rereading more of my personal library. In my mind, I’d like 20% of my annual reading to be made up of rereads. I typically read around ~75 books a year, so this means 15 rereads – a drop in the ocean of my library of 350 or so books.
Plan our wedding!
For countless reasons, I started sharing wedding and engagement bits on here and then dropped off the face of the world for a few months. Eddie and I have finally started the process of planning our wedding, and I’m so excited to spend 2026 deep in wedding land. It’s funny because I’d always imagined I’d create content around it all yet, now that I’m here, I thiiink just want to savour it all to ourselves.
Start my studies(!!)
Sometime in August last year, as I was finishing up my first-ever course of acupuncture, I realised that I was really interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). After all, it has helped with nearly all of the health ‘things’ I’d been dealing with, and it’s what I was raised on (alongside Western vaccines and medicine where recommended). In September, I decided that I’d like to pursue an education in TCM and train to become a practitioner, focusing on functional nutrition, women’s health and consultancy. I’m not entirely sure that I’d like to work as a doctor, but I do feel this interest so keenly that it’d be great just to learn something formally again. I start my studies in January!
Continue to be guarded with my diary
A resolution from the last two years has been to guard my diary and protect my ‘me time’ and I really think it’s been one of the biggest game-changers. I feel more balanced, more energised, and just a little more ‘me’. Each week, I set out certain evenings and a weekend day that’s just for me to live (i.e. clean, do laundry, take care of everyday things) or indulge in my hobbies. I see friends once or twice a week, if that, and it’s really been working for me and my friendships. I let this slip a little throughout November and December – and I instantly burned out – so I’m making this a non-negotiable in 2026, especially as I balance work, studies, wedding planning and being a partner/sister/daughter/cousin/auntie/friend.
Become an OMNES girlie
Last year marked 10 years since I started working on my forever wardrobe. I’m not interested in a capsule wardrobe; mine is a small collection of pieces I hope to wear forever. That being said, a few of the original pieces – from fast fashion brands – have finally given up the ghost and ✨ died ✨ in the laundry, and I’m planning to (slowly) fill those gaps in with pieces from OMNES, my favourite more-sustainable brand. Their pieces fit me SO well and they focus on fair fashion made from recycled or susty fabrics.
