2026 Goals

 I recently looked back on my blog post from December of 2024 when I set goals for 2025. The first thing I talked about was weight loss and how I wanted to do 10,000 steps a day. Haha, 10,000 steps a day definitely didn’t happen. My main weight loss happened in 2024, but it stayed the same this year. My step count has only been on average 2000-5000 steps a day, depending on work. My husband makes it a point to actually go to the park and walk. I simply don’t do that. I should. Usually when he goes, I just crap out on my bed and doom scroll. Doing that isn’t good for mental health either. 

I also said I wanted to pay off my car and that my hybrid would potentially need a new battery, which might impede my ability to pay the car itself off. Well, both of those goals were met this year. I paid the car off AND got it a new hybrid battery. 😪 

Absolutely no plans on selling that car any time soon. It has 222K miles on it, but the new battery made it run like almost new. 

For 2026 goals regarding health/step count and finances, I would say a realistic financial goal would be to get my total student loan balance down to four figures in 2026. A few months ago, I was serious about paying it down. Then, on the student loans subreddit, several (and I mean several) people started posting that they paid theirs off years ago, and are just now being notified that they owe crazy amounts. And these aren’t people who received any sort of forgiveness- these are people who paid it off with cash money. When I started seeing all those posts, I stopped caring so much about decreasing the balance considerably and only started decreasing it minimally. 

Since my weight plateaued for the entirety of 2025, I think I should definitely revisit the 10,000 step count. Yesterday when we got paid, I bought three extra audible credits and then three titles I was interested in. Because of that, I earned a $15 credit, so I used that on a fourth extra title. That should help with the walking. 

One of the audiobooks I got is called The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carrol. I was thinking about getting a planner for 2026, and keeping it on my desk. I really want to challenge the notion that I “can’t” keep a planner. I was told that my whole life, long before I was diagnosed with ADHD. Then when I got the ADHD diagnosis, there was crap everywhere with the message that people with ADHD can’t do planners. If I just keep it on my desk and remind myself that if life happens and I don’t bullet journal in the planner for a day or two I haven’t “failed at it”, then I can really conquer that belief about myself. 

I really really want to focus on getting better from anxiety. That’s the main thing that will solve many problems. I can’t believe that next month, it will be 12 years since I started having panic attacks. For about the first five years, it was extremely bad. Sometimes I wonder, what do I do if the extremely bad happens again?  What if I get really bad like that again?  Part of me assumes I would lose my job and that my husband would divorce me. Then I slow down and think of what actually helps my anxiety. Honestly, my job does, and my husband does. Having cared for children and elderly since I was basically a child myself, doing inventory is a nice, factual reprise from constant moral dilemmas. I told my manager once, there are no moral dilemmas in inventory. The count just is what it is. It’s also constant mental action. Quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity. It literally takes all the pent up anxiety in my system and gets it out. It’s hard to explain. My husband is also a great support person. He’s amazing, actually, and I met him at this job. I know that I have to placate women who demand to know “what I would do if he died or left me”, but honestly, none of those women would approve of my top three answers, so fuck them. He also swears he’ll never leave me. Am I supposed to trust my own partner or pacify the women who demand to know what I would do if he did (who would not approve of what I would do anyway)? A balance of both, probably, especially since it’s entirely possible that he could drop dead. 

He definitely isn’t leaving me over panic attacks. He’d be pissed if I missed work over a panic attack, but he’s not going to leave me over missing work, and it doesn’t make sense to miss work for a panic attack when the actual job itself helps anxiety. I have thought of possibly looking at intensive outpatient programs to have on hand in case my severe panic attacks come back, but here’s the catch- Those programs will not do shit for me. All psychiatrists do when prescribing medications is trial and error. Nothing is based on anything tangible like bloodwork, urine, or imaging. Antidepressants like Zoloft and escitalopram will either do nothing for me like a placebo, or they give me a terrible side effect called akathisia. The same goes for anti anxiety medications like buspar, hydroxyzine, or any benzodiazepine. Gabapentin works!  But they no longer want to prescribe that. In fact, if you tell them that’s what works, they think you’re this shitty person and will accost the absolute hell out of you. So why would I want to give psychiatrists a second thought when literally all they have to go on is patient testimony, but my patient testimony isn’t what they want to hear?  It’s best to just look within myself for “help”. Maybe my anxiety disorder wouldn’t have lasted 12 years if I had done that in the first place. But, what choice did I have, the cheerleading for mental health care is everywhere. “Oh honey you deserve” (meds, therapy, etc), but then “No not like that” when I describe my experience with it. 

I do have a therapist that I see every two weeks, and she’s a great person, but I’m still trying to figure out what solutions she really has. It took me a lot of mental energy to secure this therapist. The process of finding one was an absolute nightmare. They all require “15 minute free sessions” and then what ended up happening was that I couldn’t explain everything in 15 minutes. So whatever small snippet I could get out in that time frame, the therapist would single that out and say she “doesn’t specialize” in whatever I just said and therefor it “wouldn’t be a good fit”. It was emotionally fucking brutal. It felt like going on job interviews, except for the fact that I have never faced nearly that much rejection in job interviews. And it’s not like I could “just remember not to bring that topic up to the next one in a 15 minute session” because they would do it no matter what vast topic I brought up. Finally, with this one I’ve been seeing, I was emailing her back and forth for a couple weeks beforehand, and I was EXTREMELY VAGUE in those emails. I would just say, I want 6-8 sessions where I just tell you my life story. That’s it. She ran my insurance, and it worked. She pressed a little bit, and eventually insisted on a 15 minute free session, but I did not go into ANY detail until my first session that started with “I was born…” and then about five or six sessions later, I got to present day. That’s the way to do it, honestly. 

And yes I want to tell my therapist some of my plans for 2026 on how to help myself, although im not sure what she can say except “That’s great”.  She might surprise me, though.  I feel like I need to keep her at bay not only so I can “say” I’m seeking professional help and not doing it all on my own, but in case the unthinkable does happen and the panic disorder gets so bad again that I’m practically disabled.  

So I’ll wrap up this blog post by saying bc that for 2026, my financial and health goals will center around the number 10,000. 10,000 steps per day and the total student loan balance being under $10,000. Keep a 2026 planner by my desk and bullet journal in it most days. Use audiobooks to help with the walking. This will also be better for my mental health than bed ridden doom scrolling I do when my husband goes walking. 

I also want to close this with a quick memory. In 2026, I’m turning 48. My mother’s 48th birthday was memorable. We were on the road moving from Chicago to Arizona. We spent her birthday in a motel in Oklahoma and ordered pizza. Then we went to bed, and my father insisted on leaving at 3:30 am because our dog was borking and he didn’t tell the front desk that we had a dog. To this day, my mother will insist that we did, but I distinctly remember that being the reason he wanted to leave before we got caught. I can’t believe I’m almost the same age my mom was when we did that move. My dad was 51at the time. I can’t believe kind of understand their desire to go to Arizona, now that I’m older. It really is unique there. At the time, I couldn’t wait to leave. If I ever went back there, it would probably be cool for about a year and then I’d get sick of it again. Happy new year!