No More New Years Resolutions and 2026 BINGO

2026 is here. It has been here for barely three days and I already can't stand it...

But I'm not going to let another new year win! Because that happened last year, and I'm more than a little bit miffed about it.

For those who haven't been following along at home, last year I resolved to do away with New Years Resolutions in favor of making a 2025 BINGO card full of generally small yet meaningful goals to accomplish over the course of the year.

Got a BINGO by the time the year is over? You win! Easy stuff.

At least, that is how it seemed when I was planning it all out at the start, and to a point, it was. While I knocked off 10 of the 25 squares on the board, I didn't get a BINGO, although I did learn a little bit about setting more reasonable goals for myself going forward.

For reference, this was my BINGO card for 2025 at the end of the year:

I definitely made at least a little bit of an effort on most of these (Raindrop cakes? Who do I even think I am with that?), but I didn't fully consider just how many of these goals would be dependent on factors outside of my control.

Getting some more comics graded in 2025 would have been easily doable, if I had gotten around to it early on in the year before the second Trump administration decided to make shipping heavy paper goods across a damn land border into on overly complex and exceedingly expensive ordeal.

Similarly, getting anywhere close to 2,500 articles published on CBR means getting that many headlines approved or picked up over the course of a year. I did 2,330, which is super close, but again, not entirely within my control.

At the same time, there were plenty of BINGO squares that I could knock off easy enough, and just as many that were generally inspiring where a similar New Years Resolution would have been sould-crushing instead.

Fortunately, I can take what I learned last year and apply it to my 2026 BINGO card, which looks like this:

I recycled a few of my goals from last year, and I refined a few of the same general ideas from last year into new goals for 2026. Instead of aiming for a specific number when it comes to my gaming hauls, I'm just aiming for a couple of wins. Instead of promising myself I can get so many articles written, I'm betting myself that I can get paid to write beyond the platforms that already publish my work.

One of the big themes of my 2026 BINGO card is acknowledgment, both in a personal and professional sense. I am trying so hard to worry less about lost opportunities and fighting my chronic anxiety, and to channel all of that energy into sustainability and progress on every possible level.

This time, my New Years BINGO card isn't just a checklist of things I would like to do or accomplish, but a series of personal side-quests interspersed with the kind of stepping stones that will (hopefully) make this year better than most. And, even if the kind of year that I have isn't entirely up to me, the kind of year that I try to make of 2026 certainly is.

If anyone reading this is inspired to make their own 2026 BINGO card, feel free to tell me all about it in the comments. Or, if anyone has their own alternative to New Years Resolutions, leave a comment about that, because I am always interested in new ways to spite old traditions that have outlived their usefulness as whole.