Happy 2026, with or without multiple sclerosis!

Here we go again. Everything is a New Year’s resolution, everything a wish we hope won’t fall apart after just a couple of days.

So, happy 2026!

Six days in, I hope your resolutions haven’t derailed your own carefully crafted dreams just yet.

Surely someone must be able to stick to them.

Sadly, my list of New Year’s resolutions already feels doomed—comparable to all the posts in my draft folder that I keep meaning to finish, but don’t. Default excuse: “They only need another round of editing and searching for images that fit the narrative, so I presume there’s some kind of writer’s block going on.”

You see, in my head, I soothe myself by saying my resolutions have borne plenty of success… in the past, not necessarily right now. In reality, crippling fatigue and facial nerve pain have halted even more tasks, projects, and mighty dreams, yet LGO*.

*LGO: Life Goes On.

Fact is, during my mother’s Christmas holidays here in Ireland, we sang along to my vice: The Lion King (2019 version). Plenty of vocal time, sadly, caused 20 hours filled with trigeminal neuralgia, facial numbness, and burning nerve pain. Had eggs been on the menu, they would have turned into one mighty omelette when cooked on my eye and cheek. It was kind of worth it, though; I’d do anything for the king of the jungle.

Yes, I do have an almost child-like feeling of wonder when The Lion King roars. I guess Simba is like Mr Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, young, dashing, and oh so mighty.

In short, if I were to talk and sing less, it could help shrink my long list of family, friends, and other humans I keep meaning to call, but haven’t. Honestly, if some would tell me they forget what my voice sounds like, I wouldn’t hold it against them at all.

Added to this, my vocabulary plays hide-and-seek games, turning mighty memories into degraded chips of broken-down hardware. Say, for example, “How about we watch ‘The Enigma Code’ with Bumbercatch, but I can’t find it in the Netflix/Prime/Google TV catalogues.” (Obviously, Benedict Cumberbatch played in The Imitation Game).

Even more concerning, my short-term memory feels like it’s running on limited RAM, riddled with fleeting memories, leaving me lost mid-sentence. My ant-sized brain is filled with sawdust, and god only knows what will fall out of it in 2026.

As for the other MS symptoms that have been with me since 2004, well… you get the idea. Combining these with New Year’s resolutions often feels like a “So what scenario” scenario; symptoms persist, and the list never really gets any shorter.

So, in 2026, expect to see more of these updates. If you’re curious whether I can still function in a world of shaky geopolitics, wobbly legs, and chronic pain, reach out. Because 2026 promises to be a challenging year wherever you are, and we’ll truly need to lean on each other. Best Blog Post, Ireland Blog Awards by Ashville Media Group, Dublin, Ireland