Hello 2026

A bit early, but happy new year! I guess it is alright, since this year's animation is inspired by New Year's Eve.

For a few years now, I've kept to a tradition of making a small animation with pico8 to celebrate the new year. This time, I made an itch page with all the new year animations, so please take a look!

Looking back at 2025

The last time I did a new years post, I mentioned how 2024 was a "warm blanket" over my head, and how I didn't really want to think too deeply about things. Turns out that feeling persisted for most of 2025. I barely remember the first semester of this year, in a feeling that for now I understand as a struggle with burnout.

However, for the second half of the year, it feels the fog started to dissipate, little by little. I think a big catalist for it might have been my trip to the Dagstuhl Seminar in August (which I now realize I never wrote about in this blog). There were also other events, other people I've met, other things I've read, that little by little dug in me a "will to do stuff", to put it in a simple way. While by the end of 2024 I felt like I just wanted to trudge on through the mists, my feelings by the end of this year is that I actually want to find a way to actually do some change in the world around me.

Goals for 2026

Because of this, I'm going to do something I haven't done in the past three years, and actually try to use this space to make a list of things I want to work towards in the next year.

Of course, like all such lists, this list is probably way too optimistic. But I'm feeling myself a tiny little bit in the mood of "shooting for the moon and landing among the stars" right now... or at least "faking it until I make it".

• To learn a new hobby: I have in my aims Picotron, and learning how to code music.

• Catch up with body maintenance: I want to gain some muscle mass, and do several check-ups, including at least one "人間ドック"

• Catch up with blogging/journaling: This includes - Rescuing my pictures from Piwigo, Setting up a guestbook for this blog, and writing here at least once a month.

• Improve my teaching: I have picked up a reading list on education, and I want to use this list to redo at least one of my university courses. I'd like to create some teaching materials for my hobbies too.

• Take on Long term projects at work: I have two papers that I have been sitting on for ages, so I want to organize myself to finish those.

There are other things I have written in my journal that I want to do, but the above will do for the blog. These are more concrete / check-pointy objectives that I guess I can revisit every three months or so.

As I read these, it comes to mind that all of these are "new" stuff, and little of this is "keeping up what I'm already doing". I'll try not to think too hard about that right now, and just note this point and put a pin here.

You might have noticed that I have actually been posting a lot on this blog that last week. This was something I've tried to push myself to do during the vacations, and I'm happy that it is kinda working. Hopefully, I'll be able to habit myself into chipping at these tasks little by little every day.