2026 Goals: Mid-Year Update
July has arrived, and with it a chance to examine my goals and objectives for the year, and a chance to reset and see what new things have arisen.
New things:
Flowing out of morning pages and a sincere commitment to quit working on the project, I reset my expectations and approach for writing the Chronic Pain Handbook, and instead started the hard lifting of writing a memoir/handbook/philosophy book instead. It's 90 pages long at this point and suffers from being sparse and to the point. It needs to be relaxed and spend some time with the personal stories a bit more. I'm planning to pick it back up in August.
Breath // Break: As part of my learning new AI tools, I opted to start building the meditation app that I wanted to exist. Most meditation apps are very chill and zen, very vipassana inspired. I've opted for something closer to my tantric sensibilities. Meditators select an emotion to sit and breath with for 3 minutes at a time, not resisting or pushing away, but evoking and enjoying the texture. It's live on the website now, and coming soon to the play store and app store.
On track, highlights:
Career:
Last year and this year have been building years for my career. My team has grown, my influence and responsibilities at work have grown, too. I was promoted, I'm working now for both the local and global orgs, and trying to solve some deep operating model problems. There's a ton of room for growth, and I'm definitely growing new muscles and stretching my abilities. It's not always comfortable, but I am glad to have such a broad opportunity ahead of me.
My main focus for the remainder of the year is finalizing the center of excellence and practicing and growing my management and leadership skills. These are my leading edge and if I can combine them with my other soft skills, I'm going to be off to the races.
Martial Arts:
Nearly all of my martial arts goals are underway. Some of them could technically be marked off, but I am not yet satisfied with how good I am at those things. I described several of my jiu-jitsu moves as needing to be "razor-sharp" and while very effective. I'm not quite there yet. Adding multiple moves or counters to counter into the mix will complete these.
Body:
I made some mild diet changes, and have started work on strength, grips, and wrist maintenance for my body, but have not begun the mobility and flexibility training that I want. This needs to pick up pretty quickly in the second half of the year if I want to hit my targets. Overall, I feel good, but know that I'm entering the years when I need to secure my joints and muscles for my older years. If I don't do it now, it's a much higher hill to climb in my 40's.
Music, Play, Writing:
These goals have all been less intensely followed this year. They would have likely been started or completed had I not worked on the chronic pain book and Breath//Break, but I was happy to trade them out. I'm hoping to hit about 50% of these by the end of the year and continue with my other writing projects.
Breath and Buddhism:
I've started Ngondro practice and completed a breathwork course. I am waffling on my daily meditation practice and I want to dig in more on consistent breathwork.
Fails, highlights:
HELOC: Absolutely not going to pay this off this year. House needed a new roof instead. :/
GPTs: Definitely not building my own real agents at this point. There are way too many products that do just fine. Closest is using Claude with specific instructions for my projects.
Finger Drumming: I really thought I'd enjoy this more, but I honestly just want to make beats, not learn an instrument.
Overall assessment:
I think I'm on track to complete just 50% of my goals this year. To get on track, I need to do two things: reset a consistent morning routine with 45 minutes of meditation, breathwork, and movement. Second, I need to set specific time daily to work on music and writing.
