My 2026 word of the year is…Rest.

This is going to sound asinine, but, did you know that rest is a verb? It’s an action word. It’s something you do. The definition of rest makes this seem oxymoronic, but, in the interest of actually following through on this promise to myself that I’ll be more thoughtful and deliberate about resting, it helps me to think of it as an action like any other things that seem less passive than rest does. In music, rest is as deliberate a part of the score as every note you hear. And if you don’t throw a rest in there every so often, your musicians will run out of oxygen trying to keep playing, and they’ll pass out, and then there won’t be any music to hear at all. So, rest is important in the balance of the whole symphony.

I have a tendency to overdo it. My autoimmune issues, chronic pain, rheumatological problems, and so forth have made it undeniable at this point that making myself slow down is no longer an optional thing. Living life at a breakneck pace, overcommitting my time and energy, it’s not sustainable. I do understand that, finally. And whether I feel pain in my body for diagnostically metric reasons, or psychologically traumatized reasons, or both…well, that’s rather irrelevant. Pinpointing the cause doesn’t change the effect. And the effect is that my body will tell me what I can and cannot do now, and if I don’t listen to it when it’s being polite, it will start misbehaving to get my attention. I’m done not listening.

And so. Rest. Not as a break from action, but as another action in my daily menu of choices. Sometimes that menu is long, with diverse options (like the Cheesecake Factory!), and sometimes is a pre fixe menu that only offers a couple of feasible possibilities. I need to read the menu and consider things carefully, and resist the urge to just barge into the kitchen and throw things together with complete disregard for what the menu dictates is available.

I firmly believe that life is about the choices you make. Rest needs to be one of those choices I make more often.

Happy 2026, everyone.

(P.S. I tried to find a photo of Cheesecake Factory’s amazing cheesecake display case for our cover image today, but no luck. I don’t go on Google to randomly pick cover images, as I want to ensure I’m not stealing any material; I use free photo sources such as Pexels, or occasionally my own photos. So, all that being said, I went with a display case of baked goodies indicating lots of options. Ya get it.)