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Here we are again on the first day of a new year.

I don’t know about you, but for years I dove headfirst into the whole “make a bunch of resolutions” thing. I’d set up my perfect self doing all the things: get up and go running every morning, serious meal prepping on Sundays, journaling daily, yoga 3x a week. Probably also learning Italian and becoming a morning person. It would last a week. Maybe. By the time vacation ended and I was back in the thick of work, those pretty schedules and timelines were just words on paper. My well intentioned (and very much overly optimistic) resolutions? Gone. Abandoned. Collecting dust next to last year’s abandoned resolutions.

It took far too many years and far too many guilt-ridden Februarys to stop that cycle. Now I know better. Resolutions, especially specific ones, are just me setting myself up for failure, which is a terrible way to start the new year.

These days, I’m more in tune with the idea of setting intentions. Intentions are gentler, more flexible; they’re a gentle guide, not a demand for perfection. A lot of people pick a single word to guide their intentions for the year—something like “balance” or “growth” or “presence.” I like that idea. Having one word to come back to can help keep the intentions grounded and focused.

My word for 2026 is AUTHENTIC.

It’s the word that kept coming up as I thought about what I want this year to be. Authentic in how I show up here on the blog. Authentic in how I cook and share food. Authentic in my relationships, my creative work, my daily life. No more performing a sanitized version of myself. No more trying to be someone else’s idea of what I should be. Just… real.

In the spirit of that word, here are my gentle intentions for the year:

• More finding joy, less focusing on the negative. After the year 2025 was, I need to actively choose joy. Not toxic positivity, mind you. I’m not going to pretend everything is sunshine and rainbows. But I want to intentionally look for moments of happiness.
• More enjoying the outside and working in the garden, less being a lump on the sofa. The garden brings me so much satisfaction, and yet it’s so easy to default to the couch after a long day. This year, I’m choosing the dirt under my fingernails.
• More reading and writing and crafting; less mindless doom scrolling on social media. The phone is an attention vacuum. Books, journals, and creative projects actually feed my soul. This blog is part of it. Time to make those things a priority again.
• More game nights with my partner, less passive TV watching and YouTube scrolling. We both enjoy games, but we fall into the habit of just turning on the TV or staring at our laptops. Time to actually engage with each other and have some fun.

I want to find my joy in cooking again—spending time in the kitchen creating things instead of just reheating leftovers or ordering takeout. I want to pick up my camera and start taking photos for fun again. I want to start writing and journaling again. And I want to start blogging again. Really blogging, not just thinking about blogging.

Last night I ritually burned the bad stuff in the fireplace. Today I’m starting fresh. Not with a list of unmaintainable resolutions, but with intentions guided by one word: AUTHENTIC.

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What are your intentions for 2026? Do you have a word for the year? What are you hoping to create, change, or rediscover? Drop a comment—I’d love to hear what you’re working on this year.