Mid-Year Notes 2026

I've been waiting to write this post for about a while because there are so many small things that I've been working on which show progress over multiple months that I want to talk about. Monthly wrap-ups are great but they don't quite work for larger goals or habits, you know?

This is my 6th Mid-Year Notes in a row. It has become a way for me to check in with myself about the things that make me happy and the goals that I'm working on. It's easy to lose sight of where you want to go without such check ins and reflections. Mid-year is a great time for it because if we forgot about something, we still have half the year to work on it.

I'm not sure how long this post is going to be since I have no notes for it. I'll just write what comes to mind as if we're catching up over a drink in a pleasant evening. So, grab your drink and settle down, let's talk about 2026 so far ☕️

notes on reading

As always, let's begin with my #1 hobby. I read 61 books in the first half of 2026. It's a bit more than my 2025 number and a bit less than my average during 2020-24. I'm pretty happy with the amount. I don't have a numbered goal this year so I don't mind whatever it is. It would be nice to cross 100 anyway, I'm not worried about it looking at my pace now haha.

In my Goals for 2026 post, I mentioned that my reading goals is to read intentionally i.e. a bit more of specific genres and out of my comfort zone, less random reads on KU, and pick only books that I really want to read. I'm happy to say that I'm doing pretty well on my goals! I lost touch for a while in the middle but I've been great at reading intentionally lately.

Here's how I'm doing at each of those sub-goals:

• Less random reads from KU: I stopped my KU subscription for a while to forcefully drop that habit. I have it again now only because I found that it has a couple of books which I really want to read. About 14 of my reads were through KU.
• Read a few fantasy series: I read the Crescent City (3 books) and Cursebreakers (3 books) series. I started a couple of other series but I'm not very interested in continuing them right now.
• Read more non-fiction: I read 3 non-fiction books. I really liked 2 of them.
• Read more paperbacks: 17 were paperbacks! The % is so much higher than in 2025.
• Read out of my comfort zone: I've been doing pretty good at this! I can say that at least 12 books were out of my comfort zone, some of them were books that I definitely would not have gravitated towards before this year.
• Reread out of my comfort romance books: This is the only one that I'm not "doing well" in. But it's alright.

Joining the library near me and regularly attending a new book club's meetings have made the most impact on my reading. The library doesn't have everything I'd like but it has enough, so it forces me to pick something just based on browsing the shelves and helps with my paperback count. The book club is a really informal one with weekly in-person chats, not just a "read a book together and discuss" thing, so it has introduced me to so many new books and has encouraged me to read out of my comfort zone more.

Other than my goals, I'm doing one reading challenge. My friends roped me into joining them for 52 Book Club's reading challenge. I didn't join them last year and I passively agreed to do it this year. It's got 52 prompts—some are broad and easy, some are niche. So far, I've been fitting my reads into the prompts without actively reading for those prompts. It's been going pretty well! I'm done with 32/52 prompts already. My out-of-comfort-zone reading has helped massively haha. I'm actually pretty excited for some of the prompts because I found new books that I'd like to read which fit them. There are a few prompts I'm dreading (like #45 and #46), I'll think about them in December haha.

books that stood out

I've already written quite a bit about these in other posts so I won't rehash it. You can check out my thoughts by clicking on the covers!

notes on blogging & writing

My goal this year is to blog whatever, whenever, & maybe lesser. I don't want to follow a rigid schedule and follow my moods. I want to spend more time doing other things and try random posts too. I'm embodying the goal and it's going great.

Sure, a result of it is that I haven't posted as much this year. However, I still posted 17 times in the first half of 2026! There was no schedule or no real regularity or pattern. I'm just writing whenever I want to and not thinking about it otherwise. I've been posting immediately after writing and not scheduling anything. I'm not trying to fill a schedule or post by a specific time, and hence I'm only posting what I really want to talk about. I like more of my posts because there's no expectation to post anything.

These are my favourite posts so far:

• Celebrating 10 Years of Blogging || What Changed, What's the Same, & Why I Am Still Here
• Popular Book Genres Seen As "Easy Reading" || Literary Inbox
• Top Ten Book Titles That Describe Me/My Life

I didn't plan to disrupt my newsletter schedule. However, I was really busy a couple of months and I ended up taking an unplanned hiatus from the newsletter. I haven't written any newsletters for three months now and I don't miss it. I know that some people like my newsletters but I'm not finding joy or value in it. It's changed so much from my initial vision and I don't know if I want to continue it anymore. For now, I'm staying on the unplanned hiatus. Will I return? TBD.

notes on social life

I felt pretty lonely after moving to a new city and job last year. However, it's also my fault because I didn't do much to create a social life for myself here. After hearing it without any sugarcoating from a friend, I realized that it's in my hands and nothing will change if I don't change anything.

So, I actively worked on building a social life here. I made plans with a couple of friends I knew from before but had lost touch with. I went to a few book-related events and made a handful of friends. I found the book club which has been really nice too. I grew a bit closer to my teammates and we're doing fun things outside of work. Due to my efforts, I can confidently say that I have a bit of social life in this city now.

I still miss my friends in Bangalore and I visited a few times to hang out with them. But it's hard to only lean on them because I barely see them once a month and it's only if I travel and run myself ragged meeting everyone over a couple of days. It is nice to have good company in this city. I can say that I have a few friends here. I'm having fun.

notes on health

I won't do into detail because I don't really want to share it on the internet, but I basically started the year with a health crisis which changed a lot of things for me. It put me into a sad mental state for a few weeks. It really shook me up and forced me to make changes to get better.

Health has been my #1 priority this year and I have been ON it. I'm honestly quite proud of myself. I've been meticulously taking my medications, changed my diet and strictly followed it, cut off a lot of unhealthy foods I'd been eating, took a few months off of working out and slowly returned to it, started going to the gym for the first time, and more. This is not even counting all of my usual ongoing efforts to manage my eczema and other health issues. I've been doing a LOT.

I won't lie, it does add a lot of mental load to keep track of everything and to stay on the plan. It adds a lot of restrictions for social plans and eating out. But I stayed true as much as possible. It shows in results too, my reports look so much better now. Even my doctor was surprised by how quickly they turned. Fingers crossed that things stay good and on the upward trend.

I've been actively working on my mental health too—journalling fairly often, talking to friends regularly, being kinder to myself if I make mistakes, taking days off to rest, and more. Physical and mental health is so often intertwined, any steps to take care of either helps the other too. And similarly, one can't only work on one side of things.

notes on other goals

My remaining two goals, which I didn't speak about above, are to do more hobby projects and educate myself on finance.

I haven't been able to do much of hobby projects. I started knitting a scarf but had to abandon it when the summer heat began because even working with wool was too much. I will return to it once the weather cools down a bit more. I did not pick up any other project because I was working on my health and social life.

Not a hobby project as such but I started a new personal project—learn to read and write Tamizh. I learnt the alphabet several years ago but I didn't progress beyond that due to college course work and other things. I got motivated to pick it up again a couple of months ago and I devoted quite a bit of time to it! I'm able to read now, albeit slowly and a bit of struggle. I practiced writing by writing a few journal entries in Tamizh. I have a new 2026 goal: to read one Tamizh book this year. To keep things easy, I picked a short book to start with. I already started reading it. Being ambitious, I already bought another novel to pick up after this one, but we'll see how far I get haha.

On finance, I've been slowly working on this and I am doing okay. I'm at least staying informed about various things and learning about different concepts. I'm finally knowledgeable about basic investing. I had a couple of "money dates" during which I sat down to figure out my net worth, where my money is, and where to put new earnings.

Finance is an ongoing thing. My system is not "perfect" yet and I don't have all of the necessary things too. But I'm getting there.

chat with me!

How has your 2026 been so far? What are your mid-year notes? Are you working on any personal or hobby projects?