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My Goals for 2026

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Aywren

While I have a lot of IRL things to work on for the new year, I’m going to focus in this post on creative and gaming achievements I hope to accomplish. Last year, I found rounding up all the blogging, coding, gaming, and hobby focuses worked well, and that’s what I’m going to do again this year.

Play the Steam Games I Own

I usually break this section into two – one about “playing games I own” and one about “not buying a game unless I expect to play it immediately.” I’ve gotten pretty good at the second part of this goalset, staying away from purchasing unneeded bundles and games just because they’re on sale. So, this year, I’m going to lump it all together, and specifically note this is for Steam games.

At the end of 2025, I’d finally reached my goal of having played at least 75% of my backlog.

This is a pretty comfy place to sit, but I know I can do better. There’s still a lot of bundle games from years ago I have not touched, and short plays that I could knock out. So, this year, my new goal is to shoot for 80% of my backlog played.

I feel like if I can get it to about 85% overall, I can finally feel like I can rest a bit in terms of my Steam backlog. This has been a challenge I’ve tackled every year since 2014 – so well over 10 years now. I’d love to get into a place where I can guilt-free just play what I want without thinking about the loom of the backlog.

And now that I have a Steam Deck to enjoy some casual and cozy couch play… well, let’s see what I can do about it this year, okay?

Play at Least 5 Switch Games

For the past several years, I’ve dropped a goal that says something like “play more Switch games.” I play a couple, maybe beat one or two, but overall, do a pretty shoddy job of tackling Switch games.

For 2026, I’m going to put a low but quantifiable number on it. I want to play at least 5 Switch games this year. When I say “play” I mean play to either completion or to what I feel is completion. Not just “try it out.” I have a number of games that are sitting at the halfway done point that I keep wanting to finish. I feel like those should be some of my first focuses.

I’m hoping that with the new Steam Deck in my household, I can start building up a more hand-held and away-from-PC gaming mentality. I do have the second Switch dock set to allow me to play on my PC monitor, as well, so I really have no excuse for not buckling down and building better gaming habits.

Play ALL of my VR Headset Games

Last year, Syn gifted me a Quest 3s headset. I did build up a small library of games on the Meta storefront that I am interested in trying out. Before I get an overwhelmingly large number of games in this ecosystem, I want to start strong on playing through my small backlog here.

The definition of “play” in this case is just casually trying out the games I own and finding what sticks. Many of them were cheap purchases during sales, and some are sandboxes or experience apps that have no ending.

I’d also like to focus on blogging about these apps as I try them out. I wanted to do that last year as well, since VR gaming is a learning experience for me still.

Focus on Fitness

As a follow-up to the VR gaming, I want to focus more on fitness in 2026. After being in the hospital for pancreatitis last year, I ended up losing a chunk of weight due to absolute necessity in changing my diet. However, exercise has fallen through the cracks. I feel like if I can start implementing fitness habits, I can only continue to get in better health from here.

I have several tools in mind for this. First, I have a number of walking and fitness apps on my Quest 3s, one which I purchased specifically to get me moving more. Second, I’d like to walk more, and start to focus more on my Walkscape mobile app as motivational support.

Journal More Consistently

Back in early 2024, I was journaling quite often and almost every day. However, in late 2024 and through 2025, I kinda let that slide. I did journal a bit, but it wasn’t very consistent. Thankfully, I haven’t let the habit go all together as I still do think to sit down and write, and I think I can still very much revive my desire to journal by hand with a bit of focus in 2026.

I have this journal, which I started back in the summer of 2024.

You can see that I’m about halfway through filling it up – there are about 224 pages, and I’m on page 103.

My goal is to journal consistently enough to fill this one and start another. I have a number of empty journals patiently waiting their turn. It would be great to break out a new one for 2026!

Read More Books

Last year, my goal was to read at least 10 books. This did include audio books and graphic novels. I managed to finish 12 books last year, which makes me quite happy.

This year, I’ve nudged my goal up to reading at least 12 books – also still including audio books and graphic novels. I have a number of rather chunky books that I’m tackling this year, so forging a solid daily reading habit is going to be essential to meeting this goal, I feel.

Coding Projects

I have a couple of website coding projects in mind, but I don’t think that I’ll have the stamina or time to finish more than one. My main focus is moving all the 2022 calendar posts to the microblog section. I’ve already started on this project, but I haven’t gotten very far yet.

If I manage to finish that project this year, the second project I have in mind is to archive all my old Guild Wars 2 fanfiction on this blog. Currently, it’s just hanging out on Tumblr, and who even knows what could happen to it there. So, I’d like to put it in a safer place, mostly for nostalgic purposes.

There you have it – these are my goals for 2026! I think this will be more than enough! Whew!

How about you? What’s on your goal list for the new year? Or are you just going to wing it this time around?

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