Today is New Year’s Day, and I do want to make a post daily this year about various cool topics. This is a long one! I don’t plan on most to be nearly this long, but given that I haven’t posted since Christmas Eve, and it’s the New Year, I figured why not?

My goal is to bring genuine joy, nerdiness, quirkiness, goofiness, and the like, at a time when it feels all too mindlessly instinctual to get nihilistic about the world, or my own life’s work-in-progress. It’s too easy for me to catastrophize my insufficient trust towards myself and my loved ones, and heartbreakingly too tough to see their humanity, love, and goodness.

I enjoyed New Year’s Eve going Cosmic Tubing at Ski Bowl with my wife, her family friend, and some acquaintances. It was a niche and unique way to ring in 2026, mostly listening to fun 2000s pop hits under colorful rave-like lights, and accelerating fast down the icy hill. I hope it’s an annual winter tradition, possibly even for New Year’s Eve again. If you haven’t done it before, I would definitely recommend it for both the wild nighttime adults and the families with kids alike (but hopefully the secret doesn’t get out too much about cosmic tubing…).

While I want most of my blog posts going forward to not be depressing, I realize there is a colorful spectrum to everyone’s human experience, and some topics just fucking suck. Today, I feel most authentic to blend the unpleasant topic of mental health with New Year’s resolutions.

While I find New Year’s resolutions to often be a bit… I don’t know… cliché? Overhyped and performative? Something for people who only go to the gym the first two weeks of every January before perfection-infatuated disappointment gives way to old habits? Okay, maybe that’s admittedly a bit cynical, as we’re all guilty of it, and it’s time for a celebratory reset for many, and I want to fully endorse that. I want to cultivate the hope and right attitude nonetheless that doesn’t always seem to ignite easily. But I just need to Give It Time, the title of a Goose song (of course)!

As a pretextual side note: importantly, my biggest and most important New Year’s goals I just can’t ‘measure’ in a numerical sense. I want balanced mindfulness towards proxy indicators nonetheless, without descending into my typical, unhealthy anxiety about perfection. Proxies that come to mind include increased kindness and confidence towards myself and others, and assuming the best more often, even if imperfectly. I’m sure other valuable metrics will arise over time that I can report on.

As my overarching New Year’s theme, I do not want perfect to be the enemy of good in 2026 (a phrase apparently attributed to the French philosopher Voltaire? I love it). That’s really my main New Year’s resolution, as paradoxical as it may sound. At the same time, I don’t want stagnation or cynicism to be the enemy of good! You feel?

Second, and similarly, I want to take healthy yet feasibly small steps towards trusting people. I know there are many justifiable reasons why I distrust others, and I want to honor that, when I all too often blame myself or my own sanity instead. It’s too easy to feel individually unseen, when I was born societally privileged with every demographic advantage namable. Maybe it’s why civil rights, immigrant rights, or systemic oppression resonates with me, as I get what feeling othered far beyond your control feels like, even though I have been immensely fortunate to have avoided the systemic iteration of othering. Irrespective of demography, it often seems that most people don’t feel insecure (for good reason) about the size, quality, or stability of their communities of people, whether friends, family, colleagues, or whomever else. I hope to get there, and I have a good feeling I will, especially as I build the skill to refocus my precious and limited emotional capital on the love I do have, and the bright parts of my future sense of belonging I can work towards.

But as I get older (and hopefully wiser), I know that I engage in too much confirmation bias towards finding anything that might reinforce my toxic narrative to protect myself, even though it no longer serves me. While there are many people in my life whom I fully like, admire, and even love deeply, I just can’t say I fully trust anyone yet. I try to, believe me, I really do, and I really want to, but it’s just not there. It’s not all or nothing, and there are many shades of gray. I partially trust many people, but I don’t yet feel safe or secure enough to put forth the requisite vulnerability warranted. Worst of all, I know there are people who deserve my full trust who aren’t receiving it. That’s why I’m motivated to put forth all the right mindsets in 2026. In fact, I’d hypothetically forfeit so much of my other hard-earned successes and privileges if it meant I could fully trust people, feel seen, loved, and secure in my chronically fragile sense of community. That’s how monumental and crucial this feels to me.

I want to be allowed to ‘fail forward fast’ (recently discussed by Governor Gavin Newsom, and apparently credit is due to John C. Maxwell?) on enjoyable yet low-stakes activities that get me out of my complacent comfort zone. I’ve seen my wife’s community and how ‘low effort, low expectations’ it feels. I want to channel that in my own life too, and actually emulate all that I admire. I want to feel nothing but happy for her, and a big part of me truly does, but I’m also ashamed to admit that my ego feels strongly jealous, which isn’t fair to anyone.

Similarly, I’m working on activities, at least once a week, to connect with people—whether an open mic, a run club, or a Meetup event—which I did little of in 2025. This is really important to me: to do things I love with minimal expectations and to build the resiliency of failure being no big deal. Additionally, it gives me exposure. Among other goals, I’m vowing to participate more diligently in my automated 5-minute phone notifications 3x/day, checking in on how I’m feeling and reminding me to slow down, breathe, and recenter myself. I hope this is a precursor to meditating more, something I’ve struggled to get in the habit to do.

Less importantly, but still mattering: physical health. I am pretty disciplined on it and want to stay the course. Marathon training, usually sleeping, exercising, and eating well have all mostly helped. I also plan to remain fully sober, with the exception of the possible no-more-than-quarterly spiritual/psychedelic experience (more on mind-altering medicines sometime in another post). I don’t believe in being ‘fundamentalist,’ as I might have a single drink if offered, but that’s it. I don’t like feeling out of control in social settings, which might be why I’ve always gravitated towards most stimulants. I think the ambiance and ritual of having a cold pint of craft beer I enjoy far more than the alcohol buzz itself. At night, I’ve replaced it with the ambiance of tea drinking. Now that I have a Garmin smartwatch tracking my sleep and running, I can see quantitatively how even one drink compromises my HRV and sleep quality. Not to mention, I can’t mix any alcohol (even beer and liquor), and being even a little hungover is among the most miserable human experiences, similar to food poisoning or the flu.

As for THC, it’s a different but similar story. Generally, there are much milder next-day side effects, but in the moment, cannabis makes me feel much clammier, sometimes jittery, and conversationally sluggish and anxious compared to most, so I’ve stopped. I do enjoy CBD drinks and products occasionally, getting many benefits of the herb without the psychoactive side effects.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I wanted to be a stoner and naively figured maybe if I smoked enough weed I’d be stereotypically chill, and thus likeable and accepted—the misguided foundation to some semblance of stable belonging. But weed is just not for me. I’ve always had many stoner values, including liberalism, skiing, outdoor activity, jam bands, being a foodie, and, of course, being super forgetful!

But taking care of myself physically and mentally are both important. Physically, I’m mostly there; mentally, it’s a mixed bag, but growth isn’t linear, of course. It’s time to lower expectations, slow down, smile, and take a deep breath. As Goose’s song ‘All I Need’ says, ‘all I need is coming, though it’s not here quite yet.’ Here’s to a good 2026!