All I Want
January thoughts from my journal
In 2026, I want to write in ways that feel good.
What if we didn’t expect so much from our writing? What if we allowed the process itself to hold us, carry us, sit with us like a friend? What if we didn’t try so hard to control what comes out and just let it flow?
Writing is a chaos machine, and I hate losing control. I hate feeling like I need to watch where I step. Even after all these years, I still have minimal tolerance for feeling like I’m out of my depth, and drafting nearly always feels like that. Loving writing feels like loving a somewhat difficult cat, one who wriggles in your arms and tries to escape and sometimes you just have to let it go and let it approach you instead.
Secretly I think the thing about novel-writing is that sometimes—for me, at least—it’s more tempting to want to be perceived as someone who writes novels than it is to actually, you know. Write the novel. Whereas now I’m at the point in my writing practice where it actually feels kind of pleasurable to not really know what I’m doing, and what the final goal is. I know that eventually I will probably want and need one, but right now this feels good.
Or rather, it feels good to the part of me that likes to move slowly yet playfully, experimenting within this creative voidspace. The part of me that wants to know what exactly I’m working on and wants to know it yesterday is definitely freaking out.
Can I step into a state of mystery and just being ready to receive wisdom when it comes? Can I be okay resting in the not-knowing?
Some intentions for 20261:
I’m ready to grow beyond always reaching for the escape hatch in my life. When has being safe ever truly made me happy? I will not find happiness in avoidance.
I want to know trees and birds and my local biosphere. I want to pay attention. I want to be open, and I also want to honor my own and others’ opacity2. I want to get clear on what actually truly matters.
I want to become more comfortable with silence as a companion.
If writing starts to feel like a punishment, I will stop and reevaluate the process and/or project as needed.
I want to send letters to friends.
I want to experiment with at least one new genre and/or form this year.
I want to care less about the end goal and more about process, how it feels, and what I learn.
I want to continue to cultivate a process that’s supportive and flexible enough for dwelling in the unknown—which is to say, writing.
What is it that you want this year?
Most of these intentions begin with “I want,” which for some reason puts me in mind of Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want” from her 1971 Blue album.
See Édouard Glissant, “For Opacity,” Poetics of Relation.