What Are Your Pop Culture Resolutions for 2026?

The year is almost over. I have my cheese spread ready for Hogmanay. And my diary for 2025 is almost complete. Every year, when I get my new diary (thanks to my sister for providing the 2026 edition), I dedicate the opening page to my resolutions for the coming 12 months. They’re not legally binding, of course, but I like the reminder of something to focus on. I’m also pretty good at sticking to them, if only because I’ve learned my lessons from failed years of the past and aim for realistic goals. Pop culture ones are great for this purpose. It’s an opportunity to read that book you’ve had on your shelf for years or look into the movies of a filmmaker you’ve been recommended but never sought out. You can experiment with new genres and styles or push your boundaries beyond your comforting favourites. All that and it’s a good way to wean yourself off the nightmare of doom-scrolling. Here are some of my pop culture-related resolutions for 2026. Hobbies are good, actually! Let us know about your own resolutions for the coming year and we can all commit to 100% definitely doing each and every one of them! Promise!

Read a big classic Russian novel

Suing the estate of Fyodor Dostoyevsky for false advertising. Complete lack of sitcom hijinks!

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— Laura (@latriviata.bsky.social) December 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM

I’ve gotten into the habit of reading more classic fiction over the past couple of years. Post-university, such things began to feel like homework to me so I’ve enjoyed regaining the ability to find pleasure and satisfaction in something that would typically be categorised as a ‘challenge.’ One enduring blind spot has been Russian literature. Aside from The Master & Margarita, which I love, I haven’t even approached the lion’s share of this area of writing. No Tolstoy, no Dostoyevsky, no Gogol… The page counts are intimidating and reading fiction in translation can be a mixed experience depending on the edition and work involved. Years of trying to stick to lofty reading goals led me to gamify a lot of my reading, focusing on shorter books I could consume more quickly than ones that demand more of my time. Getting away from that was cathartic (this year, I read the longest book I’ve ever read - 1136 pages! - and wow, the rush from doing that was better than caffeine.) I’m still not sure which one I’ll pick for this challenge but I am tempted to take inspiration from Marilyn Monroe and try out The Brothers Karamazov.

Read a book - or related material - in French

me reading my Asterix comics

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— Green Bones Dommy 🎞☠⚓ (@greenbonesdommy.bsky.social) December 26, 2025 at 5:28 PM

This year, I set myself the challenge to start learning a whole new language. I’ve been taking Mandarin classes and it’s been a wild but nourishing experience. I also decided to try and relearn French, which I excelled at in high school but forgot almost entirely afterward. I naively thought it would all come back to me with ease once I started classes. Nope, not even close. But it has been nice to note that I’m able to read a lot of, for example, articles in French and get the gist of things. I don’t want to lose these skills and I need new ways to apply them outside of weekly classes where we imagine how to order Belgian waffles at the Christmas market. So, I want to read something heftier in this language. It might be a book or something else. I do love French-language comics so perhaps I could pick up Asterix in its native tongue. I’m not sure how this’ll take form yet. But as an apple-polishing nerd who likes doing homework, I’m sure I’ll figure it out. And no, I’m not ready to read something in Chinese. Again, not even close.

Learn to crochet more clothing

Crocheting at the speakeasy.

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— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 7:26 PM

I’m okay at crochet. I am excellent at things shaped like squares or rectangles but I cannot follow patterns to save my life. YouTube tutorials have dragged me up by my hook and helped me to make wearable pieces. For Christmas, I made beanie hats for all my friends and they actually liked them. It’s nice to have a thing to do while I watch films that isn’t f*cking around on my phone. But I also know there are only so many hats I can make, so I need to expand my horizons. Maybe some gloves or socks?

Try out some more cookbooks - and make gumbo!

I think it’s a pretty common experience: you buy a cookbook with plans to try out everything in it then it just languishes on your shelf until a new one joins it. I have a soft spot for pop culture-related cookbooks and ones by unexpected celebrities (guys, Kelis’s cookbook is awesome), but I never actually try out any of the recipes. Let’s change that in 2026. Side note, but I also want this to be the year I try to make something I’ve wanted to cook for years: authentic gumbo. I like cooking and I’m good at it but this is one I do not want to mess up. I see what happens to people online who don’t season things properly!