my 2026 reading list (so far)

As always, life came back after Christmas, and with going back home and starting work again, I could not bring myself to find time to spend on this blog, even though I enjoy it a lot. Part of it was the fact my girlfriend gave me Breath of the Wild as a Christmas gift and I haven't stopped playing since... and part of it was going back into an almost automatic routine that barely leaves any space for hobbies.

I have been talking to my therapist about how I'm doing better, and I no longer resonate with the note I made about "things to talk about in therapy" (which I wrote in a hurry on a day I was feeling particularly frustrated and never revisited or updated) that says "I have a problem with doing things that aren't productive – I struggle to play games because I feel like I'm wasting my time. I don't do things I used to love anymore because I feel like I have to do things that are worth something all the time". Reading that gave me whiplash. But I digress.

Since the year started, I have been participating in a Storygraph challenge that consists on reading at least one page every day. Back when I was in high school, this wouldn't even have been challenging. I used to read for fun. I used to pick up a book, get in bed, and spend at least half an hour reading every night. But then university came, and between having more of a social life than I had ever had and the fact I now had to read literature works for my courses, I found very little time to dedicate to reading as a hobby (and not as "homework"). So whenever I picked a book, it would either be a studying session or a guilty pleasure. And since I spent my day reading (either actual books or academic papers), when I got to bed at night, the last thing I wanted to do was read more.

If my 8-year-old self could've heard this, he would've looked at me in horror. But it happened, and for some good 6 years of my life, if not more, I've been relegating reading to a very brief time before bed, and some days, to nothing at all.

So I decided to join the challenge, because Christmas, and in general any holidays, always mean I go back to my child self – not worried about schedules or clocks, focused only on what I want to do next, and a bookworm at heart. Of course, coming back to real life has made it harder to maintain the habit, because I'm just so used to not reading here. But I've managed to cut out some time for reading during breakfast (instead of watching vlogs on YouTube) and to journal again before bed at night. Last year I didn't complete my Hobonichi because it felt exhausting to write at night sometimes, but this year I'm determined to write every day. But I digress again.

My 2026 Hobonichi

I wanted to share here my reading list for the year. In part because I haven't thought about what I really want to read yet, and in part because I'd like to come back at the end of the year and see how much I've actually read, and what was left on the shelf. This, as everything in life, is subject to change – but I wanted to put pen to paper (or finger to key) and plan my reading year to get excited about books again. Book shopping what I already have, so to speak.

My brand new Obsidian bookshelf, still very much a WIP

I've been slowly building back my bookshelf in Obsidian (I'm dying to make a post about Obsidian, so more on that later, hopefully). Back when I was a productivity junkie and used Notion when it was still a niche app, I created a big database with most of my books and used it as a book tracker and a place to bookmark books that had called my attention. Of course, I went through a minimalist spree and deleted it, along with most of my other databases and Notion pages. I built it again, tore it down again, you know the drill. I hope this time will be different!

So far I've only added a few books I got for Christmas and the book I'm currently reading, but I'm so excited to expand it and use it as a digital library! I love looking at it and scrolling through all the books I've added already and thinking about reading them... But this post is about actually doing the reading.

So, what am I planning on reading this year? In no particular order...

hello world!

Hello! It feels weird posting here, almost like coming back home.

I'm Jocha. I'm a twenty-something guy who misses the internet he grew up in, a lot. Thus, this blog was born!

I used to host a several blogs on Blogger many years ago, when I was just a kid and fiddling with the family computer was my idea of a fun time. A lot has happened since then, and I've gone through many, many different phases and interests, but the idea of writing a blog has always called to me like a siren song. In the year of 2026 (!!), the blog is no longer a place in the Personal Internet (™) but a weird thing that most of us have forgotten still exists.

As a teenager, I had an Instagram account, a Twitter account, a Tumblr account, you name it. The blogs I had died with my old Gmail account, which I deleted because it was weighing me down with past ghosts (and thousands of unread spam emails from free trials, newsletters I forgot to unsubscribe from, and the like). I was everywhere all at once. Now, you don't know this about me yet, but I've always struggled with the idea of being scattered. Though as I grow, I become less anxious about being wider, I'm still enamored with the idea of having a single thread to follow.

By opening this blog I'm doing the opposite of that – last year I created my own Neocities website, which is still (and will forever be) in development, I have several Tumblr blogs (among these my personal blog, my old fandom and editing blog that has been running for over a decade at this point – if you take into account the archive –, and my new gaming blog), I'm slowly getting into the habit of journaling and making spreads for things I like, such as movies or books, and I'm also building my own Obsidian vault, where I keep everything from recipes, to notes on academic papers, to beers I've tried, to gaming 'spreadsheets'. I still very much struggle with the idea that not everything needs to be contained in a single place. But I'm managing. I want to create about the very same thing from different perspectives, and abandon the thought I need to make The Perfect [Something] about it, the One And Only Thing About This Interest Of Mine.

I hope my blog is yet another place to explore myself. In 2026, I want to become aware of things I'd never noticed about myself, and most of all, slow down and actually pay attention to my days, to what I love, to what i think, to what grows within me when I interact with the world.

Part of the reason I disliked 'traditional' social media was the lack of customization. I felt constrained by the soulless profiles you can create, with only a profile picture (sometimes a banner) to express yourself. I think many people feel like this (that's, in my opinion, the very reason Carrds are so popular among teens nowadays, and why Tumblr is stubbornly holding on to life despite everybody from The Outside™ thinking it's dead). I've always been in love with my computer, and spending afternoons and holiday mornings crafting a new look for my Tumblr blog feels like such an intimate connection with the Internet, whatever it is now. This is why Substack never worked for me either (that, and the fact people seemed too interested in their engagement there. I really want the feeling of screaming into the void and only sometimes having the void scream back).

Lilly Ashton, who does not know this blog exists, is the reason I decided to open it today. On her Tumblr blog, she urged people to join the Blogspot resurgence of 2026, and just reading those words made me think back to all the times I spent my days writing entries nobody read, and how happy I was doing so. When I remember those days, now, they all have the same light to them, a soft light from the end of the afternoon, when the world is tender. I'm sure many days were darker than I recall, and many of them cold and unpleasant. But in my computer lived that light.

I hope to see this blog grow thick with entries about the silliest little things. Things that I love, that live in many, many places, in many, many different ways, because I'm very, very happy when I talk about them.

If you're reading this, did I succeed? How many years into the future does this blog still exist? How many love letters to the world have I written so far?

With love,

Jocha