January 3, 2026
This year has been pretty hard for a number of reasons. One of my biggest struggles has been feeling like I'm getting pulled in a million different directions.
Some of this is my fault, and some of it is just the circumstances of work and life. I have been trying to do better at looking at things in my life I'm in control of and making changes to simplify.
This applies to my routines in my day-to-day life, but also to how I choose to use my devices or even the code I write.
The biggest way I've simplified my routine this past year is by being as consistent as possible. Obviously, sickness and random events will pop up and throw a wrench in my daily routine, but for the most part I've tried my best to be as consistent as possible.
Almost every day last year I woke up at 6:05 and went downstairs to do my journaling and then Bible study. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I would go for a two-mile run. Then a shower, coffee, and off to work. Like clockwork. Having this consistency took a lot of the decisions out of the morning and left me with more energy for work and family time later in the day.
This has been one of the best areas of change I've made in 2025. I deleted all my social media besides LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Not just off my phone, but I went in and completely deleted my accounts. It felt weird for about three weeks, but since then there has only been a sense of calm. I feel like I have more energy throughout the day, and I really don't miss checking my phone over and over to see if anyone has updated their story.
As another unforeseen benefit, I've been FaceTiming my family more to keep up and having deeper text and phone conversations with friends to learn what has been new in their lives. It is so much more intentional, and I love it.
Coding and the software I use is one of my goals for 2026. In 2025 I started digging into learning Astro.js and honestly have been really enjoying it. My current website is made with Astro, but I'm not very proficient at it yet. Every time I want to do something new, I have to look up how it's done and then look up if that way is the most performant or user-friendly.
So this year I'm going back to basics. I've decided to make my primary website with vanilla web technologies only HTML, CSS, and JS. I'm very good with these languages, and I know transitioning back to basics will make me feel more motivated to work on my site and to write, because I won't have a knowledge gap keeping me from creating.
This site looks terrible. I was making better sites freshman year of college. In its current state, I've spent a total of three hours on it. But I know if I don't launch first and fix later, the perfectionist in me will make this site never launch.
My plan is to take a snapshot of the site currently, the site after launch, and then whenever I make a larger design change over the course of this year to see how much I can improve this site using only vanilla web technologies before 2027. I think this will be a fun challenge, and I'm excited to see how far I can push it.