The work project. The year. Anything else that I wanted to do in 2025, I guess.
Goodbye 2025. You weren't all bad, but you sure were stressful.
I forgot to mention in my round-up post that we did add a cat to the family this year, bringing us up to a perilously dangerous ratio of animals to humans. Nova is almost nine months old now and fitting in well. She's stopped eating toes, at least.
Hello 2026. I'm not placing all my hopes in you, nor am I really setting a lot of goals/resolutions. I just want to... maintain? I have a workout routine down, I regularly practice piano, I'm clearly writing and reading. Keep all that going into my 40s and I should be good.
I want to learn guitar, or at least get as good with it as I am piano and bread: that is, able to pull it out and play a song or two. I have an app and a list of video lessons that reddit recommended, so my goal is to do those somewhat regularly.
My only really big, lofty goal is: I want to write a song. Nothing fancy, but enough to show that I understand music. Playing instruments, putting together lyrics and a melody and a beat, all of that is a lot like bread was for me: indecipherable. I mentioned recently that writing feels as easy as breathing and it's difficult to wrap my head around the fact that some folks just can't write. Well, music has always seemed completely magical, and something I could never do.
Now, I don't want to become a musician. Far from it. But I want to better understand the craft and care. I want to listen to a song and maybe get what they're doing, what they're crafting, instead of just going "this sounds nice and I don't know why." I want to appreciate the skill, I guess, and to that end I have to at least dip my toe in a little.
Going to that concert last spring really re-awoken something in me. I like live music. I know this town has some really good bands, and even hosts an internationally-known music festival. I want to take advantage of that. Lady isn't really a big music person, and I've let that steer me away from it as well. But I like it and the kids are old enough that I shouldn't feel bad about leaving her on her own with them. Heck, maybe I could bring CG with me.
Maybe I could commit to one show every other month or every season. That would be easy enough. Either way, I want to do it and I almost feel like I need to.
So yeah: write a song, for which I just need to finally understand the basics of music. No biggie.
Welcome, fish friends, to the first week of Be A Goldfish: A Multifandom Multimedia Microbang 2026-A. Cannonball! The water's fine. Let's kick things off with a prompt to jump-start your creativity:
New Year, New Fandom
Confetti, fireworks, sparkling beverages: 2026 begins! Let’s get this party started. Create a work for a fandom for which you have never created a work. Get out of your comfort zone. Paint a picture of a brand-new blorbo! Write meta for a fandom you’ve only ever lurked in! Anything will do so long as it’s new, or at least not yet shared.
Feel free to brainstorm, discuss, make friends, or let us know what you're cooking up in the comments here or on tumblr. We're excited to see what you create. Stay curious!
Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts. Refer to our Welcome Sticky or FAQ for posting guidelines.
That's right folks, it's finally time! Be A Goldfish 2026-A is officially underway!
In case you missed it, you can find relevant info, community posting guidelines, and links to even more relevant info in our Welcome Sticky. We hope you're as excited as we are!
There is now a suggestion post right here for anyone who has ideas for prompts for future monthly prompts!
There are no word count restrictions, or art/podfic/craft restrictions, although I do ask that you post everything either through a link or under a cut. There are no ratings restrictions, as long as your creation follows the comm's rules.
Het, slash, femmeslash or surrogacy, any kind of pregnancy is welcome here!
This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It was inspired by a remark from fuzzyred. It also fills the "Deep Blue Sea" square in my 5-1-25 card for the Colors Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
"Ruling from Beneath"
Kraken had always contained enough scientists to understand observation changing experiments.
They realized that ruling from beneath would cause less ripples, less risk of rocking the boat, than trying to be the shadow behind the throne.
Nobody would ever look for world leaders underneath the deep blue sea.
Hi everyone! I'm running a round of Crack the WIP during the first half of 2026. If you want to start the year by finishing off some old projects, and maybe need a deadline and some company or encouragement to push it across the finish line, come join us!
How it works:
Sign up below and tell us a little bit about what you're working on if you want! You can always change your mind later and drop or switch to a different project(s) as your plans change -- signing up isn't a commitment, just an idea of what you might make.
Then when it's finished, post your completed work to the AO3 collection. Note: Important change for this round is that the AO3 collection does NOT keep works hidden. So you can add your works to the collection as long as the work is complete. The collection is moderated and only complete works by people who have signed up will be accepted into it.
Throughout the creation period, we'll have regular (optional) check-ins (and round-ups/celebrations of any newly-finished works), and a final round-up of works at the end.
Sign-ups:
To sign up, copy the text below, paste it into your comment, and answer the questions. If you want to sign up to make more than one thing, just answer once for each thing. Anon comments are turned on, so you can sign up even if you don't have a DW account.
Schedule:
The deadline for WIP-finishing is June 30 this year. Sign-ups are open until then. After that date, the collection will be closed!
I am loving the blurb from Victoria Holt. Yes, I do suppose readability is the most important quality for a book. Much as edibility is the most important quality for a food.
If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.
What did I do in 2025? Hell if I know. A lot of people asked and about all I could say is I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and spent a bunch of time learning Chinese. I caught up with one set of friends and friends-of-friends for New Year's, and had a great time. I had non-dairy pizza, and non-alcoholic cocktails, and listened to people's opinions on the best superhero, and talked to a guy about Heated Rivalry and then his boyfriend played All the Things She Said during his DJ set.
I rung in the new year dancing to 3am! Something I am apparently still capable of doing! I am... very sore now, though 🤣
Happy new year, friends, and I hope 2026 treats us all well
This is a new post to track goals that I want to set for 2027. During January, the 2026 list will remain relatively fluid. I might add a few things to it later on. Toward the end of the year, however, I usually start thinking of goals for the following year. Previously, I started putting those at the bottom of the 2024 goals list. So I figured it was time to make a separate post for this purpose. That should make it easier to compose the goal list for 2027 when the time comes.
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