Hopes or Maybe Daydreams

A list for the new year

December 31st, 16:02: The sun is starting to set, long fingers of light that were flooding the room earlier are beginning to recede. In a moment, it’ll be time to go downstairs, make a cup of tea, light the fire, roast some chestnuts. In a nod to pomp and circumstance, I bought cream-filled meringues at the pasticcieria this morning, a special occasion dessert that most of the family loves. We’ll have those tonight, after seafood risotto and a little salad made with creamy white radicchio and fat wedges of Sicilian oranges. If I’m lucky, we’ll be in bed by 10:30 pm.

It was a relief, years ago, to admit that I don’t like staying up late, that I don’t need to set off fireworks or want to kiss and clink glasses at midnight. There was a time in my life when I did and now I don’t. In Berlin, it’s almost impossible to avoid Silvester, as the Germans call it (Silvester, a 4th century pope, died on December 31st, which subsequently became the feast day of St. Silvester). The whole city explodes at midnight and it feels almost sacrilegious to turn your back on it (auditorily also a bit difficult). Most people I know in Berlin sort of dread Silvester and make plans to evacuate the city for the night or at the very least shelter in place with earplugs. In Italy, it’s easier to have a quiet night and I’m grateful for our escape.

But New Year’s festivities aside, I always feel introspective on this day, thinking about the year to come and in what ways I can make the most of it. I love the pregnant silence of New Year’s Day, so full of possibility and hope. I luxuriate in daydreams about the new year in the days leading up to December 31st, what I want to experience and prioritize in the year to come. I’m not good with rigid expectations, though, so my resolutions, if you can go so far as to call them that, are more hopes, or maybe daydreams is most accurate. I let my mind wander so that it figures out what felt good and bad this year, what’s important to me, and what I might need to remember as the weeks of the new year progress and turn into the bustle and humdrum of everyday life and the softness and clarity of these quiet days recedes.

Here, in no real order, is my modest list of what I want to do in 2026. I feel weirdly shy about sharing these, but the truth is that I love reading what other people want more of, what they hope for, what they think important enough to put on this kind of list and I always end up finding inspiration from them. I think it will be nice to come back to this list in a year and see what worked and what didn’t, what I was able to make reality and what stayed a daydream.

My hopes and goals for 2026:

• I’d like to have friends over for meals at our place more often. Even if it’s just for breakfast or a pot of chili on Sunday night.

• I’d like to go deeper with the cookbooks I own. More meal planning. Less panic cooking. Is this the year I start a cookbook club?

• I spent most of this year in physical pain, thanks to a chronic back issue that went into overdrive in April and still hasn’t resolved itself. But in other ways, I’m so much healthier than I was a year ago, thank goodness. My fervent wish this year is to not only prioritize remembering all the vitamins and supplements and medications that help me feel good, but to also make my daily stretches and back exercises as much a part of my day as teeth-brushing. Your late 40’s are a real treat, guys!

• I want to write more letters to my friends, you know, letters you put in the mail, with stamps and everything.

• More visual art, please, made by me—watercolors and collages and bookbinding—and looked at by me. Just because.

• More reading, always! Can I get back to more than 50 books this year? Of course I can. Is this the year I read all of Jane Austen’s books (besides Pride and Prejudice)? A worthy goal¹.

• I skipped my beloved Seville orange marmalade ritual for a few years and have regretted it bitterly, no pun intended, each time. This year, I’m thinking about ordering fruit directly from a grower rather than waiting for them to appear at the market.

• If we want good-quality film-making to have a fighting chance against Big Tech, we need to get our asses back into movie theaters. I’m aiming for one movie a month this year.

• Finally, I want this to be the year I get better about planning things ahead of time, especially the madness that is December. My ADHD brain makes this very hard, so this is probably the most challenging thing on this list, but it’s also the one that is most important to me². I am determined to get better at this in 2026. If you have any tips, please let me know in the comments!

  Thanks, as always, for reading, dear friends and readers. Wishing you all the best for the year to come.

1. Who am I kidding, this is already way too specific and I’m shrinking from the challenge!

2. I’m not putting “finish my novel” on this list because admitting that is like staring into the sun. So I’m hiding it here instead. Rational!