Word of 2026

Wow, I actually wrote 2025 in my title before erasing it.

2026.

I don’t know if it’s hormones or that it makes me truly sad to write that. It brought tears to my eyes. I have been crying about ridiculous things all morning so there is that.

So I will spend time here reflecting on my word of the year for 2025 which was cultivate.

I liked it for several reasons but I wanted to pull my original thoughts

But I liked how I found a quote in my files that said “If we can’t give ourselves grace, then we won’t enjoy the journey” and I feel peace when I read that.

That quote still calls to me. A year later. And that feels worth paying attention to.

For 2025, I wanted to:

• meditate 3x a week
• work more on language learning – 10-15m a day
• writing 1,500 words a month on a personal level

For work, it was:

• finding an eCommerce mentor/buddy
• Develop my team more
• keep growing/learning/something about feedback that i never really made concrete

Because of that, I choose cultivate

To prepare, to grow, to improve. Essentially to nurture and help grow and develop.

That is exactly what I want to do this year. I want to continue to grow and develop. I want to build off my year of foundational strength and continue to nurture my relationships, my body, and my entire self.

Okay, let’s reflect.

I kicked ASS on my personal goals.

Meditation – I really felt like I kept to my goals here. In July, I switched over to testing out some meditations in Peloton and I am really enjoying Ana and Aditi. I have made sure to still turn on Tamara and Jeff from Calm at least once a week but I’m pretty happy with my 3x a week overall. Maybe there were a few times where I only did two but I’ve been consistent.

I never have to worry about my discipline.

The meditations do help me keep calm and reflect more. It’s all a very long journey and I’m really terrible at meditating but I can feel the stillness and calm when I do it. So I know that it’s making me slow down and just BE.

I did have to learn to not be attached to my charts. With Calm, it would hit on the calendar every time I meditated and if I don’t have a record of it, I don’t believe it…. so I had to let that go and just acknowledge that I don’t need a star chart for everything I accomplish.

I do PREFER a star chart though!

French – Damn, I was good. In 2024:

Continued with French (3 year streak – 2,749 minutes, 46 hours of learning this year)

For 2025, I learned for 4,74 minutes which was almost 80 hours of learning! DOUBLE! Almost… I’m at a French Score of 64, and I’m being VERY competitive trying to catch up to my Mom who is at 69 right now. I will put up my star chart now:

This is really cool though. I can FEEL how I’m hearing and speaking French in a much better way. Don’t get me wrong, I still would be terrified to have a conversation with someone but I’m understanding it more. I did upgrade to Duo MAX two months ago which has AI video tutorials where I speak with the AI bot for a few minutes every few days. It is SO IMPRESSIVE that it can do that. One of them starts in English and then does some Q&A with me in French about whatever lesson I’m on, and then asks in English if there is anything I wished I could say and then helps me say it.

It blows my mind. I love it. I definitely don’t see me doing MORE this year but I want to continue. I spend at least 20 minutes 4x a week, but there are some days where I just do a quick lesson if I’m busy. And I’m happy I upgraded because it takes the place of me spending $$ to go have coffee with someone every week in language lessons. And it’s affordable this way and I’m totally getting (mostly) the same benefit. The way I’m going I might need another 2 years to become conversational but it’s still so cool. And I may switch back to Spanish but I love French and it makes me happy.

Writing – Damn. I’m never happy with my writing but looking back at this blog, and my notes ap… I can definitely say I wrote this year. Again, something I want to continue because it’s hard, it’s worthwhile, it helps me grow, it helps me pause.

Someday I will write a book but that’s not on my list for next year.

But I’m happy I wrote. I needed it this year.

For work, I still need to hash out some of my work stuff. I already did my self-assessment for 2025 which I sort of half-assed for Workday since I’m fairly sure my boss will just skim it in the 3 minutes before our meeting… if we even have a meeting to go over it! But more for me, I will be sitting down with Anisha to brainstorm for 2026. We did this last year at the Montage and we are fully planning on doing it again but the calendar is ugly right now. I need to text her this weekend and see if we can sneak it in on Monday but my time is precious at the moment.

But for me, I have to say I did NOT find an eCommerce buddy! I’m okay with that though. Given that I am now “in charge” of two other companies eCommerce without them actually officially giving it over to me, even if they just keep repeating it in Townhalls!

What I did do was make sure I’m chatting on a monthly basis with S, the Dir of Ecomm at my parent company. And we really have a great relationship at the moment so that sort of counts. But I don’t get into any eComm ‘stuff’ which is what the point of it was. But that’s okay.

Develop my team more – Yayyy, I rocked at this! I just promoted A from a Marketing Coordinator, into a Marketing Specialist in March, and then we KICKED ASS and she just got accepted into another department as an official Marketing Manager.

I am being called a “People Developer” from someone in Zurich. haha – I love it so much. I’m so proud of her.

I have/need/get to promote 2 to 3 people on my team. For two of them, it’s been 4 years since they’ve been promoted so that is a long time coming. They never pushed me though, and I have mentioned and plan to work with them, on how I need them to speak up about opportunities and go through what the process looks like. For one of them, I may have to do it myself but the other two are eager to grow and I want to push them a bit.

I’m giving myself grace on not doing it earlier. Or I’m trying to at least.

The rest of my team is coming along and I will be hiring an entry level person in January and I’m super excited to dive into things with them. I hope I can continue my streak.

I also kept up such a good relationship with Anisha as she moved into a people manager this year and I feel that I’ve helped support her and help her grow. She said as much to me anyway!

I don’t know if I officially had a 3rd thing but in the parts of keeping growing and learning, I did listen to so many SO MANY podcasts and read 4 books.

Let Them by Mel Robbins, Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and Crucial Conversations by… like 3 people. I could have sworn I blogged about ONE of those but I guess not…

Actually, maybe I talked about Crucial at some point but I’m too lazy to go find it. Fine, I ended up searching something else.

All of these books were so helpful in the moment and I feel like they are rattling in my brain and help me be a better person at some percentage level. Somewhere. At the very least, typing in frantic things to AI before big meetings and saying “give me ideas in line with the crucial conversations framework!” and that at least lets me START OFF conversations in a better way, even if I revert back to my big mouth five minutes later.

I wish I could sit and write and retain all the amazing podcasts I’ve listened to. Sigh. I have a notes ap filled with… well notes, and they are so good. But darn if I can remember them in the moment. Ang and I need to have a podcast club where we just obsess over all the growth we need to do after listening.

I have also been in the middle of the book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ for at least 4 months and that will be my goal for 2026. I may need to switch over to Audible for that one. It’s a slog but I’m fascinated by it.

But all that typed out – dang, I’ve been here at least thirty minutes, go me – I totally cultivated this year.

Not said, but something I pushed myself to do, was setting up bi-monthly and monthly meetings with leaders at my company. It’s something that is SO HARD for me but I did it. And the first conversations were good even if I stress about what exactly we are going to talk about and if they want to end the conversation early. I cultivated that.

And I’ve continued/started my friends dinners. I’ve made better relationships with some of my friends, or just continued my lovely acquaintances to enjoy life with people. I never think it’s enough and I always want more but I did such a good job.

I’m still a little off on what I want to accomplish this year. I feel like I still need to go over all the high and low points from the year, which is another post for me.

But overall, I want to continue to find the moments of joy.

“Finding the good in every day” or “Choosing my peace”.

One thing that pops into my head is that I want to be better at taking my medication every single time during my days. I have to take it 4x a day and when I look at my Health Medications calendar, it’s fairly dismal.

So I’m writing it down:

• Take your meds 4x a day!!!

My other big one is spending time with G. He will be launching this year and going off to college. Where that will be is a mystery. He’s submitted to 8 schools (so far, ha!) and got accepted into one and I have to believe he will at least get one more! Of course! So he will be going somewhere because he certainly doesn’t want to live at home and go to Fullerton.

• Launch G into college

I almost feel like that is ENOUGH to even write down. That feels like so much because launching G is keeping in mind that he’s turning 18 and wants a big party, he should achieve Eagle Scout Rank and that is a party, and he’s graduating… THAT is a party! We have so much travel already booked. And I want to spend all the time.

I am so happy and proud of all the time I’ve been spending with him right now though.

And I freaking know I’m going to want something to look forward to when he leaves. I need to figure that out.

I may have to come back and edit this post if/when I figure out something else. Because… I dunno. Should there be?

Edit: Ooh, I want to stop multi-tasking during phone calls and meetings. I asked and got some fancy pens for Christmas and I used to always doodle during meetings. Therefore, I want to try to do this… I don’t know. At least when I pick up my phone, I will then grab a paper and one of my many pens and start drawing instead of being on my phone.

• Doodle “more often” instead of multi-tasking on my phone!

For work, I still need to think about this too!

We are officially launching the DXP and I’m not as concerned about it. I just feel like it will do what it needs to do but the one thing I am pushing is my promotion to Senior Director. That is in the works but will need a push. I’ve been given a huge project that had a ton of visibility in the last few weeks of this year that is paying off. I’m added to another super sensitive project. That is helping.

Actually:

• I want to develop my new hire

I want to have a kick-ass person who is eager to learn and helps me and the team do some awesome things. Probably around leads and the website.

• eComm development with the two new companies and/or India, Lithuania, and Turkey

This is a hard one because a lot of this is very slow work. I can work with these other companies but I don’t have authority over anyone yet. A lot of this is, or will be, dotted-line working together as whatever happens will happen. I have to push it forward and I’m not sure what will be the easiest thread to tug.

I think I will leave it like that for now.

That leaves me for my word of the year. I had a few I was thinking of.

Thrive was calling to me. But it felt a little ambiguous.

Choice was so strong. I still feel strongly about choice. It is my choice to be here. At work, with relationships, etc. I am not being held hostage. And while that word can work in some of my resolutions or goals for the year, I feel like I’m already trying to live it.

It is a reminder. To make the choice to speak up, usually. To make the choice to ‘do the thing’, whatever it may be.

So maybe I needed focus. Maybe I want to be gentle with myself through this year. Or, ‘allow’ things to happen.

But the word that was really hitting me and made me cry was Compassion.

I was typing some of this out two weeks ago trying to figure out why I was so freaking disciplined yet still upset at myself for not getting anything done in the day and exploring some words and then I burst into tears reading this:

I am always blaming myself. Why couldn’t I? Why didn’t I?

I don’t know how to change my voice as I evaluate my choices.