Let me be one of the first people to welcome you to the new year!
Believe it or not, we find ourselves in 2026. And as another year begins, it’s time to reflect on 2025 and look forward to what we hope will unfold in 2026.
As I’ve done for several years now, I want to take some time to review last year and talk about what I’m hoping to accomplish this year. And spoiler alert: last year was a more positive year, thankfully. While I didn’t quite get to everything I set out to do, I moved the needle in the right direction and built momentum I hope to carry into the new year.
So let’s begin, shall we?
What are Yearly Themes?
So before we begin, I need to take a brief detour to explain what yearly themes are.
Everyone sets New Year’s resolutions. But how often do you actually follow through on those resolutions? They probably don’t even last into February.
The solution to that problem is to set a yearly theme instead.
I was introduced to this idea through a CGP Grey video in 2019, and it’s been a big help for me ever since.
The idea is not to focus on specific goals, but rather to set a theme for the year to guide you and help you actually accomplish them.
For example, with a New Year’s resolution, you might say, “I want to read 30 books this year.” But what happens if you only get through 25 books when the previous year you read fewer than 10, and you faced several challenges throughout the year? Technically, you failed your resolution, even though you read way more books than you did last year.
But if you instead went with a yearly theme of “Reading”, it’s open-ended enough to make you feel like you succeeded.
A year is too long a period to set goals, especially since so many things can happen in that timeframe to derail them.
So instead, I like to use yearly themes to help guide me through the year. And, as you’ll see later, I’m experimenting with even using seasonal themes for better guidance throughout the year.
Look Back at 2025
Okay, let’s start by looking back on what I was able to do in 2025.
As I mentioned before, while I didn’t quite get around to everything I wanted to accomplish, it was much better than 2024, and I feel like I got the flywheel going on developing products and services I want to launch in 2026.
My theme for the year was Year of Taking a Leap with seasons of Learning and Building, Process, Outreach, and Growth. Honestly, it would have been even more successful if I had done a Year of Learning and Building rather than just a season.
I’ve become extremely comfortable in the Laravel ecosystem, and honestly, I enjoy developing with Laravel more than I did with WordPress (although admittedly that might be recency bias). In fact, at the university, we migrated our main website from WordPress to the Modern Campus CMS. Some of the site’s features couldn’t survive on the new platform, so I built a Laravel app to replace them and improve them in the process.
Also, while Digital Shopfront CMS isn’t really where I’d hope it would be at this time, I have built out ArtisanPack UI, which is an ever-growing group of Laravel packages that can really help cut development time for other developers and me.
Plus, I’ve got a plan for Jacob Martella Web Design, Digital Shopfront, and other freelancing adventures ready to go for 2026.
And that’s the benefit of using themes over New Year’s Resolutions. I might have fallen short of what I hoped to accomplish in 2025, but I still made a lot of significant progress and feel like this year was a success, which is way better than how 2024 went.
Look Forward to 2026
Okay, so what am I looking forward to accomplishing in 2026?
Well, I kind of want to run it back and try another Year of Taking a Leap, although I’m calling it the Year of Momentum.
I want to keep up the momentum I built up in 2025, and especially the last couple of months of the year, and bring that into the new year. I feel like I might be on the verge of something if I just keep pushing through, especially in the first half of the year.
To break it down more deeply, here are my ideal outcomes for this year of momentum.
- Launch Digital Shopfront CMS
- I’ve written about this before on the blog, but I want to launch a CMS built explicitly for small businesses.
- Launch the new JacobMartellaWebDesign.com and all services
- I’m reorganizing and will launch Jacob Martella Web Design with more clearly defined services and a brand-new website.
- Close Crosswinds Framework
- After much thought, I think it’s best to close down Crosswinds Framework. I’m just done with the WordPress world and don’t think it’s worth continuing.
- Move all remaining WordPress websites to the Digital Shopfront CMS/Laravel
- Along with closing Crosswinds Framework, I’m going to move the rest of my websites from WordPress to Laravel.
- Continue building ArtisanPack UI
- I’ve got ideas for more packages, especially for forms, analytics, and ecommerce, and to improve the current suite of packages.
- Processes for every part of development
- Alongside learning Laravel, I’ve been exploring DevOps and want to integrate those practices into my web development workflow wherever possible.
It’s definitely a lot, but I think it’s doable thanks to the work I did in 2025.
And I’ll have quarterly updates on my blog as I work through the Year of Momentum.
What is Your Theme for 2026?
So that’s what I have planned for 2026.
But I’m curious: what is your theme for the new year? Be sure to leave it in the comments section below!
