2026 Word of the Year

For at least five years now I’ve chosen a word of the year instead of making any New Year’s resolutions. I’m fully committed to this practice that gently influences the year that follows rather than setting rigid, unsustainable goals that often fall away after the first month of the year. Choosing a word sets the tone or mood for the year that is beginning. Intentional yet flexible, a good word is able to hold up to all of the unseen challenges and joys that await us.

I’ve been writing about how I choose my words for almost as long as I’ve been choosing them. Last year I even wrote a guest blog for my incredible friend Alison who inspired this yearly ritual and has a custom print business where I order a definition print of my word each year.

After a challenging end to 2024, I was especially intentional as I chose my word for 2025. At the time the year began, I was reflecting on how how to hold space for both the unexpected obstacles that are inevitable in any given year and the optimism that is a part of who I am. I was thinking deeply about how to focus on building an interior life that would support my health and work.

Resonance was my 2025 word, and I felt that it held space for all of those things, and even made a nod to a core element of flute playing that was certainly a part of my daily life. If I could keep resonance in mind, I was sure it would help to guide my actions in 2025.

But even with all of this intention up front, life demands our attention in ways we can’t predict and presents distractions and hurdles around every turn. As I entered the spring of 2025 ready to take on new projects with resonance, I started to loose my focus on what mattered to me most. Distracted by all the tasks at hand, their timelines, and the outcomes I was aiming for, I set resonance aside and dug in. In the process, I fell out of vibration with myself.

During the spring and summer I became very task oriented, and those tasks overtook other routines that were central to my life. Meditation, yoga, even simple fundamental practice on the flute, all had to wait for whatever task was next in a growing pile of commitments and things that needed done. I find it interesting, but not surprising, that I felt my resonance on the flute wained alongside the resonance in my life. Everything is connected.

On a more practical level, my word was out of sight. Not placing my definition print somewhere I could easily see and reflect on it often had a very real impact on its influence in my year. Gentle reminders go a long way toward creating new ways of being in our lives.

No matter how realistic or lofty our goals are we remain, as humans, imperfect. My objective in 2025 was to focus on the sustainability and resonance of my life, work, and health. I ended up doing essentially the opposite. Life is funny like that.

I had reached a fever pitch of burnout during the fall semester and started to think about what it would be like to quit. Maybe just one job, or maybe everything. What I knew was that I had done so much for so many years that worked against the resonance I desired to find in my life that something was going to have to change.

By the end of 2025, I was wildly out of tune with myself. It was as if my life was steering me, rather than the other way around. Looking back at the way I was bogged down with work, over-commitment, and a schedule that was way too full helps shed light on where my priorities went awry. There is always something to be learned from our experiences, and I feel a renewed (if not slightly tired) sense of commitment.

At the end of the year a friend I was discussing my feelings of burnout with said to me that it sounded like what I needed was clarity, and a little bell went of inside my head.

Clarity.

Yes, I still want to find resonance inside my days, the balance of my activities, goals, and tasks. But more than that, I want to have clarity about what I even want those activities, goals, and tasks to be, why I’m doing them, and what importance they do or don’t have in my life.

Perhaps it’s age, or maybe it’s simply having enough work experience, but I feel like I am at the beginning of a new phase of my life. This is the part I wasn’t picturing when I was a young college student vividly imagining what being a working musician would be like. I had no real picture of how life would feel and unfold once I actually was a working musician rather than just someone who was trying to be one.

Of course clarity is what’s needed here. It seemed so obvious after that conversation with my friend.

What do I hope to find in this phase of life? What are the creative things I would like to do? How might I like to change my trajectory, knowing what I know now about working as a musician? What do I want my day to day life to be like? How do I want to feel?

2026 is the year to ask these questions. To take a step back from achieving or attaining or running faster on the same hamster wheel I have been on since I finished school. Nothing is going to vanish if I take a step back to consider where I’m headed, which was a very real fear in my early career. It seems obvious now that the dissonance in my life and work is coming from this lack of clarity about what I’d really like to be doing now in this new phase and for the next few decades.

clarity (n.): 1. the quality of transparency 2. sharpness of mind 3. A knowing of purpose and direction

I know this is the right word for my year because it ignites a sense of optimism in me. A functional curiosity and a feeling of looking forward.

Creating this type of clarity in my life and following through on it has the potential to be uncomfortable. It may mean pivoting away from things I have been doing or working toward for a long time. But on the other side of change lies great adventure. I’m ready.

What word is shaping your 2026?

Placing my definition print in a prominent spot where I can see and reflect on it often this year.