My Goals for 2026

It’s time again to pick the top goals that I’d like to accomplish next year. As I have for the past few years, I’ll be keeping this list short so as not to overwhelm myself and give myself a better chance at accomplishing more of these. Without further ado, here are some things I hope to do in 2026.

1. Make peace my normal state. When I was doing at least one sensory deprivation float a week, I typically felt good in daily life. I felt even better when I did some experiments involving floating every day for a week or more. That got me to some incredibly deep states of peace that stayed with me the whole time I did those experiments and lasted for days even after I resumed my normal one float per week. Once I learned how to let go and practiced it for hours a day, I felt similarly at peace, even at a few points after I stopped floating entirely. With the deaths of my dog Sawyer and my grandmother plus tons of other issues for almost four years in a row now, I’ve long since lost that state of peace. That’s why my main goal for 2026 is to make that peaceful state my natural, daily state. Even though letting go while sitting or lying down got me through a lot of challenging times, it seems like learning how to let go while walking, talking, driving, working, reading, writing, juggling, unicycling, and doing other things in life is what I need to get to a lasting place of peace. With that in mind, 2026 will be the year that I learn how to let go continuously and feel peaceful in my daily life.
   
   
2. Stand up for myself without being a bully. Despite all the progress I’ve made in my healing journey, I still act like a doormat more often than I’d like, and sometimes the bulldozer comes out when someone has pushed me too far. I want to keep improving at voicing my concerns and setting and maintaining boundaries effectively without going overboard. I hope that the better I get at addressing concerns when they’re still small early on, the better I’ll get at setting and maintaining boundaries without becoming like one of the many bullies I’ve encountered.
   
   
3. Get more sleep. After adjusting my sleep schedule a lot for work this year, I got pretty good at going to bed early enough to get sufficient sleep on both work nights and weekends. Unfortunately, that fell by the wayside after a few months. At this point, I tend to get enough quality sleep on my days off and not nearly enough quality sleep on work nights. Even when I go to bed at a good time on work nights, I often toss and turn, which makes me feel even more tired the next day. My sleep is even worse on the days when I have to wake up much earlier for work than usual. I suspect that going to bed much earlier will give me more time to settle into bed and fall asleep. I also believe that spending less time on my phone before bed will make it easier to drift off to sleep. I look forward to getting better sleep and more of it in 2026.