2026 / January

The Monthly Recap–in this format–will serve as a regularly compendium of what captured my attention, piqued my interest, or shocked me in the last month. In 2025, I sent a weekly newsletter to my partner and the format evolved over the course of the year informing what I'm trying to do in 2026. This–as we humans are–is a work in progress. Thanks for joining the exploration.

Only in January. The trends, the lists.

I've been on this trend since 2014 - pick a word, phrase, motto to serve as your touchstone for the year. A word to live by or live into. Last year I choose three words: Curate, Create, Commune. This year, I was given a word at random in a mindful retreat. That word is "healing". And while I am sure I could make it work, I'm not interested in forced fits. My chosen word for 2026 is Narrate.

For good luck in the new year make sure to eat your peas (black-eyed, that is)

52 places to go in 2026 | NYT

52 analog activities to do during 2026: the year everyoone is going offline

Some tips on how to keep your new years resolutions or at least make incremental progress; pay attention to the closing loops advise (message to self)

Get out those boots, this year is all about line dancing – at least for those able to dance like no one is watching (or filming).

"Bookstreaming" – will it be a thing?

Did you know that e-books are more expensive for libraries than paper copies—even though e-books need to be repurchased every two years?

A trend I am totally here for is letter writing although I may need to invest in some stationery as opposed to my ever growing greeting card collection. You can join the Sunday Letter Project and commit to writing a letter each week.

And now to what I can only imagine will be a year full of max-maxxing.

Frictionmaxxing

"maxxing" is starting to look like the hot new suffix. I think I liked "touch grass" more but I guess the sentiment is similar.

"We’re on an algorithmic conveyor belt to nowhere.” - Way of Excellence author, Brad Stulberg

How can we stop or even reverse that conveyor belt? Perhaps with frictionmaxxing. And there is no shortage of writing about this concept - yet in my day-to-day I have yet to hear a friend or colleague utter this phrase. Still, influencers are "busy" showing how strong they are by doing nothing…on film. University of Waterloo's boredom lab suggests maybe just take up a hobby for the sake of a hobby–without filming it.

This is war. An attention war. ZINE newsletter author, Matt Klein details 11 rules of the war that every good soldier should know. Sun Tzu said "All warfare is based on deception." I've been saying something similar recently about how the administration is acting like a magician and redirecting our attention so they can perform their nefarious (and profiteering) tricks. Sun Tzu is far more eloquent. The article also mentions an app Randonautica that I may explore.

AI companies keep espousing that "boring tasks" will soon be obsolete and outsourced. But then what? When will epiphanies have space to spontaneously arrive? But none of that raw dogging for the views nonsense. Life is friction after all. 

And not all friction is created equal. Frictionmaxxing in the workplace can look like taking notes by hand or meeting someone in person as opposed to virtual intros. But it can also be a place for privilege to creep in as André Spicer, executive dean at London’s Bayes Business School said, “We often find people use friction as a way of increasing the difficulty and inconvenience of a task, to create status around it, so it’s very difficult to do." In the end the article suggests maybe hosting dinner as a nice way to incorporate friction, that's my kind of friction.

Can we also apply all this frictionmaxxing to the beauty standards of today? I love this interpretation. Less trying to control and carve out some ideal, and instead embrace exaggerated facial expressions, because you can! The article also mentions a hot trend of injecting cadaveric fat. Stop yourself.

Many people fantasize about the idea of co-housing or living near / with friends (every woman and gay man has some variation of a Golden Girls pact) but in some ways we make ourselves "hot house flowers" or as I like to call them soufflés that make it difficult to make the adjustments and accommodations required to live with others. The article says "we increasingly avoid ties of mutual obligation in favor of frictionless transactions,” she writes. This results in a weakening of our connection-making muscles, what she calls “relational decay.” The writer sums it up nicely in the end:

Deep down, we don’t want to be hothouse flowers, requiring very specific conditions in order to bloom. We know, as Oldfield has come to realize, that “the relentless enhancement of experience does not usually bring inner peace. Avoiding minor annoyances becomes addictive, and it can lead to a life perfectly optimized to our preferences, all alone.”

To embrace boredom does not mean to allow yourself to BE boring. Follow the wise words of Ray Bradbury

...one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them. Read the essays of Aldous Huxley, read Lauren Eisley, great anthropologist. . . I want you to read essays in every field. On politics, analyzing literature, pick your own. But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?

Sleepmaxxing

Yo bro, what's your sleep stack? Talk about cringe. The latest focus for self-optimization seems to be in the bedroom. According to some bros Oura rings are out as the "daily readiness score" can throw off their day. The Garmin and Whoop seem to lessen the assault while still providing data on how you slept. Why people need external technology to tell them if they slept well or not is beyond me. Regardless, Dr. Chantale Branson, a neurologist and professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine says "people who check their sleep statistics every morning would be better served by spending their efforts on sleep hygiene." Data overload and hyper-fixation on health metrics can result in new stressors which in turn may affect your sleep. So if the wearables aren't doing the trick, maybe if you had the best hack of all–a human–your sleep problems would be answered. The hottest accessory in the sleep stack is now a sleep coach. (I hope I'm not the only one picturing Richard Pryor being picked out of a toy store in The Toy.)

I've got news. The best trick to better sleep is free (and kinda boring but 100% fact), you just have to be consistent! It’s not sexy or expensive but it’s likely the thing that works best. Another option is to consider a NASA nap, since a study found that pilots who napped for 26 minutes performed better than those that did not. I'll take my nappuchino now, thank you very much.

Looksmaxxing or Beautymaxxing?

Either way I think it's badmaxxing and I'm definitely anti. Peptides are the latest craze and they're familiar, given insulin is a peptide and often injected for those with diabetes. Plus GLP-1's are peptides. Med Spas–my favorite unregulated capitalist industry willing to inject, laser, or flip, just about anything for the right price–are in on the action, no surprise here. Apparently we are in the great age of "peptide exploration" aka wild wild west and anyone who can is trying to make a buck, especially in China. In New York Magazine one writer dove into the peptide market, injecting herself and all. She shared one patient's description of shooting up:

She tried intramuscular NAD+ shots deep into her thigh. “That one scared me — it makes your heart pound hard,” she said, noting it often sparks intense euphoria. “A lot of the people I know who like it are former heavy drug users who turned to wellness,” she said. “You have to be a little bit insane to do it.” It’s also a little ritual, and it “gives you something fun to talk about” at parties. “People love to compare stacks.”

Podcast hosts–the men you're thinking of–are in on it and when the Secretary of HHS was a guest on one he promised to “end the war at FDA” on peptides. They all tout their stack and if you ask me, when Joe Rogan and his ilk are hacking something, it's probably best to distance yourself.

The whole “movement” gives me visions of the 50s "perfect" housewives and their "happy pills" or "mother's little helpers." And that didn't really turn out so well in the end.  

While not peptides, other drugs are also finding their way into the hands of many Americans and often viewed as a low risk drug easily obtained from a friend or your doctor. Xanax and Lorazepam come to mind. They are romanticized like an old Hollywood actor smoking in a black and white film (see Parker Posey in White Lotus). Seems like history really does repeat itself just changes its name ever so slightly. But there are real side effects and addiction potential that people seem to not be aware of or to dismiss given how common it is.

While Alabama University is the birthplace of RushTok it seems to also be the epicenter for some major body dysmorphia and deep insecurities. This quote is so disturbing.

The pressure to succeed in this sexual marketplace is immense. I talk to a girl whose last real meal was on Thursday night, two whole days ago, to look better in game day and going-out photos. Hunger is kept at bay with packs of candy, stashed in purses for quick access at the bars.  “It gives you quick energy and keeps you from throwing up when your mouth starts watering,” she says breezily. Another girl says that everyone’s on Ozempic, paid for by their parents, because it’s cheaper than the cost of food” and debit-style Bama Cash cards to be used at the local medspa for lip flips and filler. 

Is the answer to social media, social media?

“Are we boys playing with toys? Or are we adults who feel responsible for the society that we’re stewarding?”

Enter West Co. — the Workshop for Emotional and Spiritual Technology Corporation — and their creation, Tangle, a “purpose discovery tool” that uses AI to help users define their life purposes, then encourages them to set intentions toward achieving those purposes, reminds them periodically and builds a community of supporters to encourage steps toward meeting those intentions.

Now, all this sounds fine and good but they have failed to find a revenue stream in the last two years…which in our capitalist society is the only reason any of this should exist, right?

The self-proclaimed app for living with intention operates by accessing your calendar, photos, asking you questions and then with the help of AI producing “threads,” or categories to define your life purpose. Users receive periodic encouragement from friends, or “supporters” - who is sharing their full calendar, photos, and presumably contacts with an app that has said they're still looking for ways to earn revenue?

Fast 5: Quick Links

Gadgets for your aging loved ones | Wired

Should all cancers be treated? NYT

Trend alert! Time to track your pee | Wired

Have we finally reached late-stage protein | The Atlantic

5-day brain health challenge. Day 2 recommends the MIND diet | NYT

What you should be cooking

I tested a number of new recipes this month but the best of the best are the following:

Butternut Squash with Tomato Ginger Chickpeas - I used cubed butternut squash and reduced the chickpea and tomato recipe. Don't sleep on the ginger yogurt sauce!

Salted butterscotch chocolate chip cookies - truly a bakery worthy cookie that by the mere weight of it you know you're going over your daily caloric intake with a simple bite.

Localmaxxing

More reasons to love the Alexandria, Virginia DASH transit system. They will embrace the opportunity and go all out to celebrate the birthday of a little fan. DASH launched their 12th annual DASHing Words in Motion poetry contest and I submitted three poems. I will find out in February if any of my submissions poems were selected to be featured on the transit system later this year.

I guess words of affirmation is a big love language for many exercisers

What is the hottest place for Gen Z's? Apparently they wanna go where everybody knows their name. aka regularmaxxing

Quotes

It’s nice to turn a page into the unknown, not to make yourself anew but to believe that a better version of yourself is possible. Hmmm..that’s interesting by Clara Substack 

It goes on. Robert Frost on life.

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?”

He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.

Still figuring out this format and if / how I want to share other things like what I'm reading, watching, or buying, but I think this first post is a bit long so we'll leave it here for now. Here's to 2026!