INTRO
Last year I wrote out a plan for 2025.
Ten focus areas. A whole list of things I wanted to improve. Health. Work. Money. The blog. The house. Life in general.
Then February happened.
A few days after I published that plan, I was in a hospital bed waiting on triple bypass surgery.
That has a way of changing your year in a hurry.
So this is not a polished yearly goal post. It is not one of those clean reset posts where everything is lined up and tied off neat. It is late March of 2026 as I write this, and life still feels like a rebuild in more ways than one.
I am back at work and back at the keyboard, but I am not starting from some clean place. I am starting from real life. A year after open-heart surgery. Bills still hanging around. The blog still being built. The house and yard needing more attention than I wanted them to. My strength and energy still not something I can take for granted.
That is the truth of it.
What 2025 Actually Looked Like
I want to go back through it — not to dwell, but because I think it matters to be honest about the gap between what I planned and what actually happened.
Before everything changed, I was in a decent rhythm. Working my overnight shifts at Walmart Wednesday through Sunday. Slowly building the blog. Working on replacing the floors in my house — a project I’d started back in 2023 that was taking way longer than I expected. Things weren’t great, but they were stable. I had a plan.
Then February 13th happened.
I went in for a routine stress test. Just a checkup. The kind of thing you don’t think twice about. It didn’t go well. They told me not to go back to work.
February 17th — heart catheterization. That went bad too. They called in another doctor.
February 19th — triple bypass open heart surgery.
Everything stopped.
For seven months after that, I was off work. No income except whatever disability I qualified for. Medical bills were piling up on top of IRS debt I already had, Missouri Department of Revenue debt, credit card debt. I was doing physical therapy. Cardiac rehab three times a week. Learning how to walk up stairs without getting winded. Watching my weight drop from over 200 pounds down to 178. Adjusting to new medications. New limitations. A new version of normal that I hadn’t asked for.
I tried to keep the blog going during that time. Posted when I had energy. Wrote when I could think straight. My Instagram and Threads kept growing slowly — mostly because I just refused to stop. But most of what I’d planned for 2025? Gone.
By September I was back at Walmart. Same shifts. Same low pay. Same overnight hours. But I needed the income, so back I went.
The house floors are still not done. I got the bedrooms finished. The living room floor is down but needs finishing and staining. The kitchen is mostly there but needs more work. Bathroom and laundry room haven’t been touched. And I can’t afford the cabinets yet anyway.
My blog made $0.84 on AdSense for the entire year. No Amazon affiliate sales. No email list. YouTube never launched. TikTok stalled at 746 followers and just sat there.
That’s the honest version of 2025.
So this is my 2026 post, updated for where I actually am now.
Not the fantasy version. Not the version where I pretend I can fix everything at once. Just the honest version. Just me working through things, a step at a time.
What 2025 Actually Turned Into
At the start of 2025, I thought I was finally getting some traction.
I was working my early retail shift. I was trying to get the blog into better shape. I had house projects moving, even if slower than I wanted. I had plans for fitness, for content, for getting my life pointed in a better direction after 50.
Then everything changed.
I went in for a stress test thinking it would be one more appointment. One more thing to check off the list.
It did not go that way.
A heart catheterization followed, and that is when things got serious fast. It went from one more test to hearing there were multiple blockages and that bypass surgery was the next step.
Then triple bypass surgery.
After that, 2025 stopped being about goals and turned into survival.
I was off work for months. Recovery was slow. Some days the main accomplishment was just getting out of bed. Cardiac rehab became part of my week. So did follow-up appointments, medication changes, soreness, fatigue, restrictions, and the mental side of trying to trust my body again after somebody had opened my chest and rerouted my heart.
The money side got ugly too.
Months off work will do that in a hurry. Bills do not stop because your chest got opened up. Medical bills kept showing up on top of everything else that was already hanging around. Some of them were big enough to make me stop and stare at the number for a minute. A lot of 2025 was spent trying to heal while also trying not to drown in the math.
The blog did not disappear, but it definitely did not take off either. I kept working on it when I had the energy and a clear enough head to do it. Some weeks that was not much. But I kept showing up.
The house projects slowed down too. Some of them stopped flat out. That was frustrating, but there are only so many fronts a man can fight on at once.
That was the real 2025.
Not pretty. Not inspiring. Just true.
What That Year Changed in Me
I do not think every hard thing comes with a tidy lesson attached to it. Some things are just hard. Some things just cost you.
But I do know I came out of that year seeing a few things more clearly.
First, health is not one category on a list. It touches everything.
When your body goes sideways, work feels it. Money feels it. Mood feels it. Sleep feels it. Plans feel it. Even hope can feel tied to whether your body is working with you or against you.
Second, survival counts.
I did not win 2025. I got through it. A year or two ago I probably would have judged that harder. Now I do not. Getting through a hard year still takes something. It may not look impressive from the outside, but it counts.
Third, I need smaller and truer priorities.
I still want to build something real with this blog and with my life. I still want progress. But I am less interested now in giant lists that look good on paper. I want goals I can actually keep.
And last — this one matters.
I am 54 years old. Most of what I have spent my time on was not really mine. Work. Obligations. Getting through. I do not know how many good years I have left. I want more of them to be mine.
Where I Actually Am Right Now
I think this part matters.
I am not writing this from a mountaintop. I am writing it from the middle of things.
I am working early shifts again. I am trying to rebuild my health in a way I can actually keep up with. I am trying to get the blog into better shape so it can become something real over time. I am trying to stop the financial bleeding instead of pretending it will fix itself. And I am also dealing with real-life house and yard problems that do not care what was on my original plan.
That is the part yearly goal posts usually leave out.
Life does not wait its turn.
The house still needs attention. The yard still needs attention. The fallen tree moved some of that up whether I planned for it or not. There is cleanup, repair, and figuring out what can be saved or reused. Some of that tree may become raised beds. Maybe more. I do not know yet. But it is all part of the same bigger story now.
That is why my 2026 plan is not really a neat list of goals.
It is more like a list of realities I need to keep moving in the right direction.
What I Am Focused On in 2026
I am keeping this simpler than I would have in the past.
Not because I do not care. Because I do.
1. Protect My Health
This stays first on purpose.
I am over a year out from surgery now, but that does not mean the story is over. It just means I am in the part where the emergency is over and the daily choices matter even more.
For me, that means staying on top of appointments, paying attention to my body, and not drifting back into the habits that helped get me here in the first place.
It also means respecting the reality of my schedule. Early shifts make sleep harder. Stress makes everything harder. So the basics matter more than ever. Walking. Some form of regular exercise. Eating in a way I can actually stick to. Keeping an eye on my weight. Not ignoring symptoms. Protecting sleep as much as I can.
Nothing flashy there.
That is the point.
Health is no longer something I will get to later. It decides whether I get to do anything else.
Build the Blog Into Something More Real
This Old Man’s Life is not just a hobby to me now.
It is my creative outlet. It is where I document what I am learning and what I am living through. But it is also the only long-term path I can see that makes real sense for me if I want a future that is not built only on a physically demanding work schedule.
I am grateful to be back at work. After everything that happened, I do not take that lightly.
But I also know I cannot count on brute force forever.
So 2026 is about treating the blog like it actually matters. Getting the main pages into shape. Tightening the parts that still feel half-done. Writing better, not just more. Giving it a real shot instead of treating it like a someday idea.
That is it. No complicated plan. Just doing the work.
Stop the Financial Bleeding
This is the part I least enjoy writing about, which is probably a good reason to write it.
I am not in a season where I can fix everything fast. That is just the truth.
What I can do is get honest, stop making it worse, and make the next right decision in front of me.
For 2026, that means tracking what is coming in and going out, not pretending the small leaks do not matter, making peace with boring money decisions, and dealing with debt directly instead of just dreading it.
I do not need some glamorous money plan right now.
I need a real one.
A lot of rebuilding is less dramatic than people want it to be. A lot of it is paperwork, restraint, repetition, and not looking away.
That is where I am.
Get the House and Yard Back Under Control
This one moved up whether I planned for it or not.
The house was already on my mind. Then the tree came down, and now the house, the yard, and even the old Blazer all feel tied into the same chapter.
So this is not some vague future project anymore. It is part of life right now.
I am not talking about some big renovation fantasy. I mean the real things in front of me. Cleanup. Repairs. Getting things stable again. Figuring out what can wait and what cannot. Using what I can from that fallen tree instead of wasting it.
Raised beds may come out of it. Maybe some borders. Maybe other things later.
That feels fitting, honestly.
Taking part of the thing that caused damage and turning it into something useful feels a lot like the rest of my life right now.
What I Am Not Doing This Year
This matters as much as the priorities do.
I am not trying to do everything.
I am not pretending every project belongs on this year’s list.
I am not chasing every shiny idea just because it feels productive in the moment.
I am not forcing YouTube before the writing side of the brand is steadier.
I am not trying to muscle through house projects I cannot fully afford or fully focus on.
And I am not building giant goal lists just to feel like I am doing something.
Cutting things off the list is not failure. Right now it is the only way the important stuff has a chance.
What Rebuilding Looks Like Right Now
Most rebuilding is not dramatic from the outside.
It looks like getting up early for work and still trying to write when I am tired.
It looks like trying to eat better on the days when junk would be easier.
It looks like walking when a harder workout is not there yet.
It looks like keeping appointments and paying attention.
It looks like updating old pages instead of always chasing new ones.
It looks like trying to make the next sensible money decision, even when it is boring.
It looks like doing what I can afford, not what I wish I could afford.
It looks like picking up a guitar again. Getting back to drawing. Finding the parts of myself that got buried under all the getting through.
It looks like showing up without applause.
That is the kind of year I want 2026 to be.
Not a performance.
Not some fantasy reinvention.
Just a steady year of real work in the right direction.
Closing
I used to think a yearly plan needed to sound bold.
Now I think it needs to sound true.
So here is the truth.
I am still here.
Still working.
Still rebuilding my health.
Still trying to get my money handled more honestly.
Still trying to build this blog into something that can carry some weight.
Still trying to get the house and yard pointed back in the right direction.
Still trying to bring the parts of myself I lost track of back online.
Still trying to live better, not just longer.
That is enough for me to work with.
If the last year taught me anything, it is that life can tear up the script without asking. So I am not writing some big polished script for the rest of 2026.
I am writing a smaller one. A truer one.
- Health.
- Work that matters.
- Money handled honestly.
- A house and life slowly put back in order.
- Time that is actually mine.
- One step at a time.
- That is my 2026.
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