It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.
Today that topic is…
One word that sums up your theme for 2026.
Hey look! New year, new template.
So, um…. that’s not exactly a rule, but when I rebooted this blog space back in April I tossed up a placeholder template to get me started, customized it lightly and kept rolling.
(Well… typing and posting.)
It was solid design, sure, but it never really grew on me. The value of a good template is that it (a) is reasonably unique to the author but (b) isn’t so unique as to be distracting from the words while (c) being somewhat timeless enough that maintaining it doesn’t become more of a burden than keeping the blog itself.
I can offer such advice because 2026 will mark my 25th blog-iversary.
(I mean, it’s in April… but it’s also new years in a couple days so…)
That’s right, I’ve been posting online in various forms for twenty-five years (nearly.) Gulp! You can’t read any of those posts from twenty-five years ago, I suppose, but they exist somewhere as files on some computer, in the cloud, and as experience in my fingertips. In that time I have designed hundreds (if not maybe thousands?) of web pages. Probably, definitely thousands I think.
This site, this blog, has changed as often as a couple times per year.
(In other words, a template refresh is nothing new around here.)
And that’s not all that is refreshed. My resolve to be better and to self-improve is back for another instalment of “hey, it’s new years!”
I am, as usual, setting off into the fresh calendar with a resolve to switch up a few bad habits and re-energize the good ones. I hesitate to call the “resolutions” but sometimes a fresh calendar is a nice place to start a new project. A milestone of a sort, you know?
I will be looking to kick off a new writing project on January first. I have plotted out a brand new novel and I’m going to slam a 500 word per day goal against that plan and see how much sticks.
(I’m still prodding at the other novel, but I think some fresh writing in the same universe will help to unjam that one.)
I have exactly six months left on my gym membership starting on January first, so a weekly swimming goal is brewing into the mix. I am fairly certain they won’t be closing the pool for maintenance again for at least another year or so, so… my only competition is laziness and lane space.
(And maybe a threadbare swim suit.)
The run slate is clean once again. Those apps tend to reset everything to “year so far” numbers, so January first as the clock rolls over all of us are right back to zero milage for the year. And I have a reasonably fresh pair of shoes (and a couple new pairs of socks!)
(I’ll quickly fall behind, but for a glorious few seconds all of us are on the same page.)
I always write this, but I am going to read more novels. I was doing good for a while there last year and was ticking off like a book a week for a while. A reprise attempt is always on my bedside table, even if my success rate is a repeated rake in the face.
(Those books are not going to read themselves!)
And since I won’t have my blog every day motivation from my december-ish blogging streak, this being the last post of the series, maybe having a refreshed blog template will motivate me to write and post as much as I did once… or just to keep at it regularly.
It’s been a crazy year. Ready to refresh things a bit? I sure am.
Happy new year. See you in 2026.