The year of more

Everyone told her to slow down. To simplify. To embrace stillness. She went the other direction — and she has a theory about why that was exactly the right call. After years of loss, physical setbacks and the particular kind of quiet that settles in when you've been working from home for too long, Sam Shaddock decided that balance wasn't about cutting things out. It was about adding more of what actually matters. More music. More movement. More connection. More crashing waves. This is what a gutsy broad looks like when she stops retreating and starts reclaiming.

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It’s the last day of the year, and my social media feeds contain a predictable glut of posts about setting intentions for 2026. The prevailing theme I see is to slow down, to simplify, to embrace stillness.

I think this is good advice for a lot of people, but not for me. Not this year. I’m done with quiet reflection, which too often turns mournful for me. After a decade of working from home, I’ve about had it with solitude. After being physically bound to my house, I’m itching to explore. After all the silence, I’m ready to make music again.

So many New Year’s resolutions center on cutting things out — sugar, booze, toxic relationships, overworking — in the name of health, happiness and balance. I think these are all fine aspirations, but I have a hypothesis that this approach won’t work for me. I perceive my life as imbalanced not because I’m doing too much of the bad stuff, but because I’m not pursuing enough of the good stuff.

Take work, for example: I have always been obsessive about my jobs. Even back in my newspaper days, when we copy editors worked strictly defined shifts, I never left it at the office. The rest of the night and into the morning I’d be thinking about how I could have better edited a piece, or how just one different word could have improved a headline. Years later, I’ve built a career in an entirely different discipline and industry, and I still never fully disconnect. My brain just doesn’t operate that way. I have a busy mind and always will.

And I’ve decided that’s OK. The trick is to feed my brain a balanced diet. And for me that doesn’t mean less of any one thing — it means more of everything else.

So, in 2026, I’m going to stuff my life to the gills:

• More travel

• More fiction

• More puzzles

• More games

• More real conversations

• More piano

• More singing

• More guitar

• More dancing

• More connection

• More altruism

• More gratitude

• More sunshine

• More crashing waves

• More winding roads

• More patios

• More hard pants

• More nail polish

• More vegetables

• More adventuring

• More photos

• More plants

• More hugs

• More novelty

• More writing

I can’t wait.

Originally published at samshaddock.com on December 31, 2025.