Every year I do New Year's with friends. Same ingredients: drinks, dancing, good food, late nights, winter air. That atmosphere does something to you. It turns the year into a reset button.

This year we're in Salt Lake City. It's not as snowy as it should be, but people are snowboarding anyway, coming back flushed and buzzing, and the house keeps rotating through stories.

Usually, I'm the one driving that rotation. In past years, I would have been in the center of the room cracking jokes, interrupting with my own stories, or wrestling the phone away from someone to hijack the playlist.

But not this time.

At one point everyone was trading gossip and travel highlights in the living room. I had just finished cooking salads and meat. I was in the kitchen wiping counters, refilling plates, and listening to a stranger explain why he moved to Austin.

It wasn't normal for me.

The Old Me

I used to be the loud one, trying to be present in every conversation at once. Jokes, noise, momentum. It worked, and it was fun, but it came with a cost.

Sometimes I'd say something that went a little too far, a little too sharp, and I'd spend the next day wishing I could pull words back into my mouth. And I know how it looked from the outside too. The loudmouth. The joker. The guy who's always "on." Maybe not to my face, but I've earned that label before.

That version of me wanted attention more than connection.

The New Me

This year I wasn't trying to be entertaining. I was trying to understand.

I met a tattoo artist who'd just moved to Austin and I kept asking questions, not to fill silence, but because I was genuinely curious. Why move? Was it clients, lifestyle, saturation? What does day to day actually look like? How does money flow? How do you handle bookkeeping? Is it the shop or each artist?

He talked about market dilution and having to move where there's room to breathe. He talked about branding.

Different industry, same game.

The Shift

Part of me wondered if I was being transactional. Like I was collecting patterns instead of just vibing.

But looking back, it wasn't manipulation. It was a different kind of attention.

The old me treated the party as a stage. The new me treated conversations like a window into how people actually live and work.

The tattoo artist said something that stuck: "At some point, you stop being just an artist and you have to build a name that pulls work toward you."

He can't build a name if he doesn't put ink on skin. He can't improve his portfolio if he doesn't finish the tattoo.

That line clarified what I've been feeling for some time now, and why some of my previous projects failed. I was acting like an amateur: polishing in private, obsessed with craft, avoiding the market. I was "just a builder," hiding behind the work instead of shipping it.

That ends in 2026.

The Protocol: Proof Over Planning

2026 is not a year of planning. It's a year of proof.

Proof means something a user can touch. Not a plan, not a refactor, not a vibe.

The Rule: Every day, build one small feature. Shipped by midnight.

A feature is something a user could point at: a button, a screen, an automation, a shipped improvement. If I cannot demo it in 10 seconds, it does not count.

"Not perfect yet" is not a problem. Not shipped is.

So that's my New Year's update.

I'm finally excited about my future.

This year, I will build.