2026 Audition
Practicing gradual refinement
Happy New Year! I’m a little late.
I wrote down vibe shifts for 2026 because I’ve decided it is my year. A sentence I usually don’t trust. There is a lot ahead of me. No shortage of possibility.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to make an impressive list. I stopped after five things. More than that felt aggressive and I don’t trust myself with extensive goals.
I think this is a year for being quick. Sharp. Unapologetic in smaller ways.
I finish with a short list of indulgences.
Surrender to the timeline
I compare my life to other lives. I know this is not productive, yet I watch it happen from inside myself.
I am closer to thirty than I am to twenty. This feels significant to say and I feel grateful for this in a way I didn’t expect.
I wouldn’t turn the clock back, except for a few ordinary things. Starbucks runs during open lunch. Smoking weed in the town park with friends. Messy buns that smelled like Herbal Essences, the pink one. Peace signs held too close to my face in absurdly cropped, over filtered photos. Sitting in bleachers with the girls at lacrosse games, our legs tucked beneath us, time stretching wider than it ever would again.
I look around now and see countless trajectories. Lives unfolding beside mine. Ahead of mine. None of them belong to me. Still, I measure myself against them anyway.
I worry I’m missing life’s sweetest moments not because they aren’t happening, but because I’m watching them occur elsewhere.
When I slow down enough, I notice that my life is still here. Moving. Accumulating. Asking for attention.
It doesn’t look like anyone else’s. It was never going to.
I am learning to surrender to the timing of it. To stop asking it to arrive faster. To stop interrupting it with comparison.
It is not late. It is not early. It is simply mine.
Placement of care
I’m careful now about where I place certain thoughts. Some spaces don’t know what to do with them.
I’m paying closer attention to where I place my expectations. On people. On outcomes. I’m noticing when I’m coaxing a friendship that may not obey.
Not everyone is available in the same way. Not everyone wants the same closeness. I notice now when I start adding context where none was asked for. When I soften a truth before anyone has pushed back. When I say more in hopes that something will land intact and there will be love.
I want my care to move both ways. Reciprocity is my currency. I want my words to rest somewhere. I’m trying to trust that discernment is not withdrawal. It is respect. For myself, and for the shape of my relationships.
Some expectations belong only where there is capacity to meet them.
Fixation
I’m trying to let my longings just exist as facts of the day.
Sex. Beauty. Money. Confidence. Friendship. Attention. Pleasure.
I’m tired of treating these things like problems to be solved. They arrive whether I approve of them or not. They sit beside my coffee. They are specks of dust on my coat.
Yesterday I spent four hours rearranging four or five bullets on my resume. I was afraid they sounded juvenile. I felt small and strange. I meant to shower. The sweat from the gym stayed on my skin. That too felt up for review.
Time passed.
I sat in my robe, naked underneath, refining. Refining. Refining. The makeup I’d put on to disguise my dark circles wore away on its own. By the time I noticed, it was dark outside. I was hungry.
Allowing
I’m learning that uncertainty doesn’t mean something is wrong. Last year I thought too hard, confusing myself often. This is my nature. I’m now carrying that forth with a boundary or maybe ten. New York will demand decisiveness anyway.
Its like I’ve been wearing an electric blanket, sweating through decision fatigue. Each thought gets too warm. I become grumpy without warning. Old feelings move through my body whenever they please.
This is sometimes confusing to the people I love. It is often confusing to me.
Solitude has a way of escorting you directly to your problems. It sits you down on the couch with them. Your eyes cross. You realize you haven’t blinked in a while.
Then you laugh.
Then you stay.
Permission
Big one.
It was just Thursday morning when I met a possible future. A habit so nasty remained on my tongue behind my teeth as I sat with a woman who may have the potential to change my life.
I felt the fluency of self erasure attempting to breathe life into talking points, job responsibilities, and hopes for a career as we sat in a big booth. My body felt strange and separated. I wanted it banished.
I noticed how quickly I moved to manage myself. How my voice shrank.
It’s come to my attention that I don’t lack ambition. I lack permission. I care deeply and immediately move to neutralize it, as if wanting too much is a character flaw I should correct ahead.
The idea that being delusional about your life makes good things happen feels slippery. But I’m starting to see how much energy I’ve given to undermining myself without question. How often I narrate the ending before the middle has given shape.
So I will try something else. I’ll let myself feel genuine excitement without auditing it. I’ll let a thought exist without trimming it down. I’m choosing not to interrupt myself mid hope.
Because if I don’t, it’s possible a year may repeat itself. And I’d like to see what happens if it doesn’t.
Smaller indulgences as promised:
Eye contact
Sparkly nail polish
Moisturize my feet
Love my smile lines
Financial literacy
EFT tapping
Apartment hangouts
Nailing a lip combo
Toe cleavage
Pay attention to the moonlight
Physical paper sudoku in the morning
Laying on the floor
Make fairy houses again
Canopy bed
Coatigans
Trying new fruits
Hug mom for longer
Fur
Colored tights
Arch supports
Fun pens
