Another year has passed, so it’s time to reflect as well as to look forward.

When this year started, I was thinking about how the focus on hiking had led to neglecting other hobbies, and part of my goals for 2025 was to find a better balance. This affected my goals for 2025, and I can say for now that I feel that part turned out quite well. So, I can say that my goals for 2026 will remain quite similar to those for 2025. Let’s get into the details.

Reading

My reading goals have been stable for quite a while. I set a goal to read 20 books, and I matched that – though this has still been uneven. But I’m happy with giving myself some flexibility. Thus, I’m keeping my goal at 20 books.

I might try to pursue some more variety – my 2025 reads were mostly fantasy, only one book was Sci-Fi, and one was a mix. So I might want to try and push myself a bit more to read more than 1-2 Sci-Fi books a year.

As for the specifics, I know that there’s one series I want to read (continuing from some of my 2025 reads) and one series I’m likely to re-read at some point.

Writing

After the long hiatus that spanned a good chunk of 2023 and 2024, 2025 had seen some slow but steady progress. I haven’t been able to get as close to finishing the second book as I hoped, but I’m happy with getting out of the massive slump and writer’s block I faced in those two empty years. Most of the scenes that needed heavy adjustments have faced edits necessary to get the story to a decent spot, though there’s a lot of polishing left to be done – which will be my main goal for 2026. At this point, I expect changes that affect the story itself to be minor.

The end of 2025 also brought me to make some edits to the beginning of book three, caused by edits to the end of book two, and a secondary goal will be to refamiliarize myself with the story of book three and have a good idea of the changes needed for book three. In the ideal case, I’d work on book three as well, though probably in the second half of the year.

That said, writing has been the hardest hobby to plan. I have intended to use some of my vacation days at work for writing, but inspiration doesn’t always cooperate. I do hope that if I get some idea of the changes I’ll need to make in book three, these might be a source of writing opportunities in case of downtime.

Hiking

After 2024, when I focused on hiking a lot, at the cost of other hobbies, my goal for 2025 was a bit gentler. I planned to go hiking three times a month, which I almost managed – the only month when I didn’t was November, but that was caused by the 4-day trip at the very end of October, so I gave myself some grace there. I was also aiming to end up around 1000km total, which I managed: the final count after Saturday’s hike stopped at 1057km.

Given that easing up on the harsh goals I set for 2024 has freed me some time and allowed me to better balance my hobbies (which helped my writing the most), I plan to keep my goals for 2026 the same: as long as the weather (and my health) allow, I plan to go hiking three times a month at least and aiming to end up around 1000km again. As usual, the plan is to participate in the spring and autumn weekend trips, as well as the summer week-long trip with the hiking club.

The summer week will be special – not only will I be leading it (and thus in charge of the schedule), but it’ll be a return to an area where we spent the autumn weekend back in 2012, and I’ve longed to return to that area. This time, I’ll see it at a different time of the year.

Other goals

I don’t have any major goals aside from these three areas. In a vague way, my goal is to keep the better balance between my hobbies I managed in 2025 and maybe see if I can improve on it. Going to a concert or two is also a possible way I’d treat myself in a different way than my usual hobbies.

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So, that’s my retrospective of 2025 and my goals for 2026. I hope that you managed to fulfill your goals for the past year and that 2026 will treat us all well.