Colleen is always ahead of me with her selection of three words for the coming year. It’s usually when she’s told me that she’s picked hers that I start to think about what mine could be.
If you’re keeping score (and I hope you’re not since that’s not the point!), my 2025 words were Connect, Organize and Renew. I did my best to manifest them, although Organize fell a little bit short.
Here are my three for 2026:
- Beginnings – I don’t mean the song by the band Chicago (please don’t listen to the single edit!) but the concept in general. For the coming year, I really need a few. December 2025 unexpectedly marked the 348th and final edition of my monthly model railroad “column” (you can’t really call a 20 to 30 page newsletter a “column”!), at least for now. I don’t know if it will return in some form later in the year, but as I write this I need to make absolutely sure that I replace that labor of love with something else, which would mark… a beginning. Maybe more than one.
- Experiences – A plural here too. If I bent the rules, I would put the word “positive” in front of that. I’d rather not have an experience like the COVID-19 pandemic again, thanks. Our lives are made up of experiences, and I’d like to have many more before the sand runs out of my hourglass. Due to circumstances largely beyond our control, Colleen and I have visited only one new state together in the last three years, and that was for a dear friend’s wedding. It is getting more challenging—it’s over nine hours to the nearest one we’ve not been to as a couple—but we are hoping for more experiences like that.
- Caring – Something that we all need more of, and that applies to ourselves as well. I seriously thought about being selfish and making that third word “self-care” only. I hope that there is room for caring of and about others as well, if they will allow it. It really doesn’t take much: remember “a kind word at the right moment”? Taking care of ourselves does make it possible to take care of others, though: “Put your own mask on first” isn’t just for airline safety instructions.
It’s not even 48 hours into 2026 as I send this off to Colleen, so there’s plenty of time for you to think about what words you’d like to center your year around. Give it a try!
