Happy New Year, y’all.
What will the New Year bring you?
Whatever you focus on.
If you do one thing in 2026, internalize these two words: pay attention.
Not as mindfulness fluff.
As agency.
As authorship.
Last year, I worked on showing up.
Relentlessly.
For 365 days straight.
On X.
LIVE.
Unscripted.
One hundred percent me.
Why?
Because when I first floated the project past my parents, they responded in eerie unison:
“Why?”
That synchronized Why? triggered a Why not!? so strong I went and did the damn thing.
Yes—My Living Xperiment started as a classic Don’t Tell Me What to Do spite project from a woman in her fifties. But it turned into something else entirely.
I learned a lot living out loud.
Mostly how to forgive myself—constantly, in real time.
For losing my train of thought.
What was I saying? What??? Black-screen brain again.
For transposing numbers.
Did I just say I quit drinking in 2026 instead of 2017? Dummy.
For bad hair days.
For looking stoned.
For realizing I’d spent my entire life defending the label “crazy”—and deciding, finally, to drop it.
For crying on air because my mother had just died. Literally thinking, I better do my MLX now before the meltdown. (I am an ugly crier. I am also vain. Now the world knows.)
Forgiveness, it turns out, isn’t a virtue exercise.
It’s a practice.
One you have to return to—again and again—to stay coherent.
All told, I created about a hundred hours of content.
(You’re welcome, NSA.)
More importantly, it taught me who I am when no one rescues the moment.
Talking to yourself out loud teaches you about yourself.
Recording it publicly adds the test: How well do you really know yourself?
Are you who you think you are?
Am I?
Turns out—yes.
And also… always still discovering.
I noticed the themes I kept returning to: living alcohol-free, fasting, goal-setting, Stoicism, knowing yourself, knowing what you don’t know, cooking, philosophy, drama, community.
And the realization that drama is the byproduct of community. It’s baked into its success.
People only fight about things they care about.
And figuring out what you care enough to fight for is half the battle.
I tested my temperament, my skills, my mindset, my confidence.
Basically, I tested my moxie—to keep plunging ahead no matter what.
And when you distill it, that’s life.
Which brings me to the crux of the experiment:
How you spend your time is how you govern yourself.
And how you govern yourself is who you are.
The more you align your thoughts, your words, and your deeds—mind, body, soul—the more coherence you find.
And coherence isn’t just personal.
It’s the prerequisite for any free society.
My word for 2026 is broadcast.
“Not just because I’m a broad and I’m casting a spell,” I joked—air-sprinkling imaginary glitter over the audience at the Free State Volunteer Appreciation Party a few weeks ago—but because it’s time.
Broadcast doesn’t mean louder.
It means truer.
Time to raise our voices and attract those awake enough to hear.
Time for politics to be downstream from culture.
Time for New Hampshire to shine as a beacon for conscious builders everywhere.
The beauty of the Free State movement is how intentional it is.
You have to choose freedom.
Take action.
And show up to defend that choice—
Every.
Single.
Day.