New Year’s Resolutions: 2026 Edition

I’ve been making new year’s resolutions since I was a child. I’ve done it every year and shared it in this blog too. Last year I had six resolutions. I was able to achieve all but two resolutions related to my writing career: landing a literary agent and getting published in ten literary magazines.

I did not come close to those. And that’s fine even if it’s a bit disappointing because I know what went wrong last year. I was stuck in this horrendous writer’s block for most of the year. I spoke more about it in my blog post about Muses. 

This year though I’ve decided to recalibrate a bit and my resolutions will reflect that. So, without wasting any more time musing about resolutions, let’s get on with it.

Trigger Warning: I will be talking—not graphic—about body and weight issues so just be cautious or skip this blog post entirely.

Reflections from Last Year

So, this was my resolutions list from last year:

• Pass the German proficiency exam
• Get to my dream weight
• Read one book every week
• Post regularly on ATITW
• Get published in 10 lit mags
• Land a literary agent

And here’s how I did with these.

1. German Proficiency Exam

I’ve been learning German on and off since 2022. I used to work at an Austrian blockchain company and, even though our working language was English and I never felt like not knowing the language was a problem, I just felt like maybe I could do more if I learned German. 

Of course, it’s been years since I was let go (shoutout to SBF for nuking the industry) and everything, but I will never forget how amazing those people were. The work culture, the etiquette—everyone was amazing. I’ll never forget that job. It was the best. No one takes a chance on a kid from my background with no college degree. They did and honestly, that drew me towards learning the language and perhaps even thinking about moving to the DACH region at some point in my life. So, I REALLY wanted to be able to speak in German. And finally, in 2025, I did it. I passed the B2 German proficiency exam at the Goethe-Institut here and I’m pretty happy about it.

And now I can officially say that I know three European languages: English, Dutch, and German. I took Dutch in high school. 

2. The Weight Problem

So, I have a weight problem. Or, I can say that I had. I might have some sort of body dysmorphia issue but I haven’t been properly diagnosed. I did go to a doctor here and they didn’t see my need to be thin as an issue. But then, Turkish people are like, generally extremely lean so might be the cultural attitude? I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t have a healthy relationship with my body. 

I’ve never had it. The only time in my life I’ve been “happy” with my body was back in 2019 where I wouldn’t eat in uni. Seriously, I would go weeks without eating. And I know that’s extremely disturbing but I liked it back then for some stupid reason because I was “thin.” Regardless of what happened during the pandemic, I’m relieved that staying indoors and being bored actually led me to learn how to cook. So, I’d at least eat the stuff I made—if only just to hate myself for not being good enough.

And that’s been a theme in my life: not feeling good enough. Unfortunately, when you don’t like yourself, your brain does tend to notice and your body responds accordingly. Which is how I ended up with PCOS and other body-related issues. And a side effect of recovery was gaining weight which I’ve wanted to lose for a while. And I’ve done that. But what do you do when you don’t like what you see in the mirror? That’s something I’m working on with my therapist this year.

3. Read More Books

Now, the last bit was darker than I wanted it to be so we’re moving to lighter stuff: I read 64 books last year! My goal was one book a week and I knocked it out of the park! This year, we’re going to try to get 100 books. Fingers crossed.

4. Post Regularly on ATITW

And just like the last one: I updated nearly every week last year and I’m super proud of it. We will continue this momentum in 2026.

5. Get Published in 10 Literary Magazines

I didn’t do this. Have a new strategy here.

6. Land a Literary Agent

Yeah, I didn’t do this either. 

Now, based on how effective my resolutions were last year, I’m making adjustments based on the data.

This Year’s Resolutions

This year, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve decided to reflect on and basically recalibrate some of my resolutions. And that’s how I came to this list:

• Get physically and mentally healthy
• Get ATITW to a medium (7-10k) audience
• Grow my social media on IG and BlueSky
• Read 100 books 
• Get 7 short stories published
• Get one full manuscript request

1. The Health Thing

So, coming back to the conversation about not liking myself—I think this is not something unique to me. I think thanks to social media, everyone has a bit of insecurity around how they look. And we could have an entire conversation about how this is wrong, the implications here and more. If you want that, I could write a blog post about that too.

But going back to the issue: I think this sort of mindset, not liking yourself is very harmful. My therapist thinks it comes from a place of my need to be perfect—a result of me being the eldest of four and being parentified since a young age. And that’s common among girls. Of course, there’s more to that which I’m not going to go into detail about but it does come from a place of childhood trauma.

So, this year I’m working on getting better physically: which means going to the gym, doing yoga (which I hate but I know it’s proven to be good) and eating healthier. And I’m also working on getting mentally better. I’m tired of not liking myself. I get that being too in love with oneself is a problem too, but the needle is on negative 100 right now. I want it to be back to 0.

2. Improve ATITW

With that out of the way, let’s focus on this blog.

I want ATITW to get even better. So, this year, I’m going even harder and aiming for better SEO, better targeting and overall better content. So, the goal is 7-10k monthly visitors by December 2026. 

3. Grow Social Media for ATITW

When it comes to social media, I haven’t done much except use Pinterest to drive traffic last year. I’m not going to do anything differently on Pinterest this year except optimisation. 

BUT Instagram and BlueSky? I think there’s real potential to make something good there. As I mentioned in my new year’s blog post, we’re seeing a lot of gifters pretending to give people “advice” behind paywalls. What I want to do is create a free, accessible resource for anyone interested in books and writing books and that’s what we’re doing this year.

4. Read 100 Books

This one’s what I’m most excited about. I want to read 100 books this year and I have a few ideas on how I’m going to do this. I’m going to continue my monthly book reviews and also shed light on indie and new writers too. I also want to do in-depth analyses on my favourite books of all times. 

5. Get Short Stories Published

So, last year, I made this spreadsheet of 100 magazines I wanted to get published in and a list of 200 indie magazines. And I WAITED for them to open their submission windows and when they did…I had a writer’s block. So, I’m going to try a different approach this year. I have around three pieces already written and I’m currently working on seven short stories. They’re mostly dystopian fiction and within various stages of writing. 

So, now the plan is to finish these and once I’m done, I’ll start submitting to magazines that work best for these. Fingers crossed!

6. Get A Full Manuscript Request

Here’s the deal: I’m going to start querying in April. And I know this was the plan last year too but I had final edits of my manuscript to do which I left off until literally December because my mind wasn’t there. 

Now, we’re done with the manuscript and waiting on feedback. This time around though, I think the edits will be minor. Last time there were major issues. I think I should start submitting to literary agents after I’ve gotten feedback and thought about it. Because the literary agent may or may not have the same feedback.

And it can take a while to get the right agent so instead of saying stuff like “I want to land a lit agent,” I want to focus on actually getting a full manuscript request. Because if I get rejected after that, it means more work has to be done. And I get that.

Traditional publishing is hard._.

Let’s Move

And that’s it! I’ve got my resolution in, got the memo out and now let’s go back to the usual programming. I’m going to write a blog post in the next couple of days where I talk about more writing stuff.

So, thank you for reading!