2026: The Year for Creativity

2025 was the year of recovery. My Achilles tendon at gymnastics two weeks before the new year, and I spent the next twelve months healing and rehabilitating. My goal was to return to the “normal” version of myself. One year later, I think I can safely say I’ve achieved that goal. Here’s my look forward into 2026.

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In some respects, I’m still healing. The strength of the injured calf complex is in-progress. But for the most part, I’m able to do about 95% of everything I was doing before the snap. That’s a pretty exciting matter of fact.

This is the snapiversary recap.

In some ways, I’ve also gained strength and courage in different aspects of my life. Starting in July 2025, I spent the summer months curating all of my gymnastics-related blog posts into a book format.

By October, the book was fully edited (thank you, Shaundale Rena) and went through a preliminary beta read testing. Then it was time to get serious. If I am to publish traditionally, I need representation. Between October and December, I sent out 70 query letters to literary agents. Apparently, this is the way to do it.

Querying agents is a painstaking process. I liken it to my wannabe performer auditioning in NYC, pounding the pavement for employment (before I started teaching). The rate of rejection is super high, and you have to keep believing that someone out there will value you as an artist. As grueling as it is, the query process has helped me stay connected to the book and what I believe to be its importance in the midlife female space.

My hope is for someone in the industry to take interest and help me publish traditionally. However, knowing that may not happen, I am prepared to go the self-publishing route again if need be. I’m keeping my options open.

Focused distractions

There is definitely a mental toll when you pour so much heart into a creative project and it doesn’t move forward the way you want. Spending the second half of December with a renewed round of reaching out to agents who have no idea who I am took a lot of emotional fortitude and energy. Now that I’ve sent 70 queries, I’ve decided to step back, take a breath, and let some time pass.

It’s time to focus some attention on other things that will be more immediately fruitful.

Back to work

I’m grateful that the first quarter of 2026 will be busy at work. We will produce the musical ANNIE as our Thespian spring musical, so I will soon be neck-deep in rehearsals and show planing. It will be a good distraction as I give the query process time to play out.

Reviving old work

In early December, one of my Thespian alumni reached out, She’s a senior in college and was interested in having her college choir perform “Now?” a song I cowrote with another former student, Hernz Laguerre, Jr. It’s a featured song from a play I wrote called How Do We Feel Right Now: A collection of thoughts in the aftermath of senseless tragedy back in 2020. Thespians performed the play as our virtual fall drama . It was an exquisite experience.

“Now?” was a gospel-choir-style piece that begs the question: Despite centuries of suffering, you’re finally awake now? Hernz wrote a poem for the play, and I was inspired to create music and arrange it into a song. Together, in the heart of the pandemic, we filmed and edited the piece (video to the show is here). When the student who sang lead on the song reached out, I went back to the original arrangement and realized I had always intended to expand it. So, in December, I finished the new arrangement. Now, I’m looking forward to hearing the piece done live with a full choir.

Taking a new leap

Of course, I can never sit idly and watch time go by. In the past few years, since I’ve ramped up my social media posts about gymnastics, several people have encouraged me to start competing. For years, I’ve pooh-poohed the idea. I’m a recreational gymnast. I had no interest in diving into a pool so deep.

But after this Achilles recovery, I find I am stronger in so many ways. When your foot is unusable, and you want to keep going to the gym, you start working your upper body. I worked hard on my handstand and bars technique and eventually found I had made significant improvements in my skills. Once I was on my feet again, I was much wiser in my training efforts and focused on a lot of fundamentals.

All this improvement made me think, maybe I can do a competition, For adults. There are plenty out there, I just have to figure out how and where I fit into it all. My friends had encouraged me to put some bars skills together into a Silver Xcel routine. When I started practicing consistently, my form and confidence improved.

Then, I thought, maybe I can develop a floor routine. I made a list of the things I could do, compared it to the NAIGC Code of Points (one of the governing bodies behind adult gymnastics), and realized I could figure out an Xcel Silver routine for that too. I picked music, stuck a beep in the beginning, and did what I do best: choreographed a dance with acro.

From there, it was just about committing it to memory and polishing the skills. On the last Tuesday class in December, I started putting it on it’s feet:

Then, on New Year’s Day, I took a big leap. I decided to sign up for my first gymnastics competitive meet. I went to the NAIGC website and signed up for my very first competition.

I got on the group chat with Tammy and Lisette and said it was time to make this competition experience happen. No more hesitation or delay. We navigated through the registration process and we all signed up.

So, I now have plenty to distract myself from the stress of waiting for an agent to bite. I am looking forward to a creative, active, full-of-possibilities 2026. My mantra will always NO WHAMMIES, and I plan to use the entirety of my wisest mind with every step I take. One day at a time.