2026 new year resolution

surrendering

I reviewed my 2025 new year resolution, and realized I’ve made great progress on almost every field!

Here is what I’ve achieve:

✅ Pass written test for driving in California. ✅ Stretch goal: Pass the driving test.

✅ Keep track of my spending. 🟡 Stretch goal: Save 10% of my income starting in June.

🟡 Learn how to fight

✅ Actively practice setting boundaries with work: I quit. Twice :)

🟡 Consistently working on my education vision every week. Stretch goal: Apply for more incubators: I did it for half a year and it failed

✅ Go on a camping trip. ❌ Stretch goal: Go on a camping trip myself

❌ Define my version of being in love

✅ Nurturing relationships in the city: Svitlana (only?)

❌ Put in more intentional effort on partnership. Intentional effort I mean writing notes like a student, not daydreaming and mind wandering: no dating at all

✅ Be a curious observer about my desire for relationships

❌ Go to Columbia for a bachata dance week and navigate through my Spanish

🟡 Rest my eyes from the screen

✅ Cook healthy meals for friends and myself: I even started selling.

✅ Go on a health inspection to understand Esther’s body

✅ Keep Writing. ✅ Stretch goal: Write more in Mandarin

🟡 Ask for more help

Since graduating, my focus has been on education and my vision, pouring all my energy outward into the world. During Vipassana, a ten-day silent meditation retreat, I could feel a tide of transformation moving through me. I don’t yet know what it will become, but I’m choosing to embrace it.

Core learning in vipassana

I’m gotta change a lot this year, and here is some direction.

Cultivate femininity

Invite sexual liberation

Investment mindset & spend more experimental money

Embrace darkness

Working on Extraordinary Visa

Aside from the O-1 visa, everything else remains open and undefined. These are not goals to reach, but blanks to fill in. They are spaces for exploration, an openness to change. And I have to be almost goaless to reach that radical openness. This year, I am a blank page, allowing myself to flow with the tides of life.

No matter I like it or not, I’m aspired to surrender.

Who will Esther become?