A vision board, not a blueprint

I didn’t make a vision board because I wanted to plan 2026.

There’s no shortage of articles about how to make goal-setting work. About specificity. About visualizing the life you want so it becomes easier to take steps toward it. Most of them are about changing yourself into someone more efficient, more disciplined, more optimized.

That’s not what I wanted.

After writing about 2025, I realized how little interest I have in forcing the next year into shape. I’ve done the goal mapping and careful planning before, and to be clear, it worked. That way of thinking helped me step into the Director of Design role I hold today. It helped us find and build our home in Colorado.

It created movement. It created change.

But last year made it clear that movement alone isn’t what I’m after anymore. I’m less interested in optimization and more interested in meaning. Less focused on shaping outcomes and more focused on shaping how my days feel, and what success looks like on my own terms.

That’s where this board comes in.

What’s on it isn’t about striving. It’s atmosphere. Texture. Color. Time outside. Walking. Reading. Shared meals. Creative work that unfolds slowly. A nervous system that isn’t constantly bracing.

Creativity, but no deadlines. Words like steady and enough appear more than words like more or next. What’s missing matters just as much. There’s no hustle language. No insistence on reinvention. No version of myself that requires exhaustion in order to be taken seriously. I’m not interested in a year that demands constant proof.

I want this board to reflect care. Taking care of my body. My home. My people. Prioritizing my health, whether that looks like comfort, rest, disconnection, or stepping back when I need to.

I hung it next to my desk so I see it every day.

Not as a plan. As a reminder. A way to come back to myself when I start rushing or reaching for something unnecessary.

If 2025 taught me how to notice, I want 2026 to be about how I live with what I notice.

That feels like enough to begin with.

“I do not want to be remembered as a woman who was always exhausted. I want to be remembered as a woman who works hard and rests deeply, who loves fiercely and lives peacefully.” — Nicola Jane Hobbs