2026: The Year of Fulfillment

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that every year I choose a word that I believe will define and encompass the upcoming year. Last year my word was manifest, which could not have been a better choice. I want to spend some time walking you through how manifest played out in 2025 and then explore why I have chosen the word fulfillment for 2026.

Reviewing a Year of Manifestation

The reason I chose manifest for 2025 is because my intuition told me this would be a pivotal year in redefining the trajectory of my life. My intuition turned out to be correct, but if you had asked me in January to anticipate where I would be today, my crystal ball would have been way off.

January of 2025 was one of the lowest points of my life. Although I wasn’t fully aware of my mental state, I was in the midst of a deep depression. This was due to several factors:

1. ProSocial, the company I had been working on for the last two years, was fully stalled.

2. Kokoro, my web series into which I had poured hundreds of hours, had bombed.

3. I had procured a job teaching college World Religions, but the administrative onboarding process was too slow for me to start on time. I would have to wait until the fall semester.

I had been considering the possibility of going back to school to earn my high school teaching license to teach history. I figured, before taking out student loans, substitute teaching would give me a sense of whether the environment and students were the right fit. We also desperately needed some extra income as we were eating through our savings.

Unfortunately, the district office had yet to respond to my application even though there was a substitute shortage. I had never felt more useless and incompetent.

I had left my job as a pastor because I was deeply unhappy. Even though I was well-suited for the pastorate, I felt the role no longer aligned with my priorities or my values. The goal was to reinvent myself, but somehow, I was more unhappy than ever before.

I was floundering in a deep dark hole of my own creation, and I couldn’t envision a way out.

Substitute Teaching   

Eventually, the district office “found” my application, and I was fully onboarded at the end of February.

My first few assignments involved subbing for gym teachers, which I discovered is the assignment most subs avoid religiously due to the high level of truancy. The moment the students see a substitute gym teacher, they sneak out to wander the building. Personally, I enjoy subbing for gym because I get to play games with the students who stick around.

By contrast, in standard classes like English, science and math, I’m nothing more than a warm body. Almost all learning takes place on their iPads. The instructions provided by the teacher are generally a few sentences about which folder the students should access on the network.

After conveying the instructions, I just sit there. No teaching involved. My role is to be an adult presence in the room—demand focus; quell conflict.

Often, they will finish their assignment in 30 minutes or less in an 80-minute block. The rare student might spend the remaining 50 minutes working on other assignments. The majority will waste time on their phones or straight up take a nap.

One day, the entire class finished early and I said, “I know this might sound odd, but would you all mind if we had a discussion? I’m very interested to learn about your lives. I want to understand what it’s like for you to be a teenager right now.”

Many of them eyed me warily, but a few of the more outgoing students spoke up and said, “Sure! What do you want to talk about?” Dozens of different questions were flittering through my mind, but one lit up like a neon sign on the Las Vegas Strip. I blurted out, “What has been the happiest moment of your life?”

I went around the room, asking every student to provide me with a response. Many of the answers were surprisingly poignant. Later that evening, while my wife and I were discussing our day over dinner, I recounted the students’ stories.

After listening intently, she stopped me, “These came from high school students? That’s unbelievable. What grade were you subbing for today?”

“Sophomores.”

“You need to write these down. Really, there’s some incredible wisdom in these answers. I would have never expected teenagers to be so reflective and, frankly, profound.”

The next time the opportunity for conversation presented itself, I was subbing for an AP Environmental Science class of mostly juniors and seniors. The answers from this group were even more personal and reflective than my first class.

In fact, the answers were so profound that I became convinced that my wife was right; it was time to start writing down their responses.

For the remainder of the school year, I would ask this question of more than 300 students, writing down approximately 150 answers. Over the summer, I spent time reading through all their stories and I realized I had stumbled upon something extraordinarily unique: These students had inadvertently handed me the key to happiness.

I immediately understood I needed to write a book about happiness utilizing these stories.

An Early Childhood Memory

When I was in first grade, our teacher gave us an assignment to write a story. Perhaps you remember those sheets of green newsprint practice paper with the huge guidelines for helping younger students to learn how to write? The assignment required us to fill the front and back of one page of the green paper.

I took my sheets home and wrote a story that was eight pages, front and back. When I came back the following day, I turned in the full story. The teacher was so impressed that she proudly announced to the entire class the extra work I had undertaken. One of the students in the class asked, “Do you want to be a writer?” Without barely a thought, I said, “Yes.” I was seven years old.

Anyone who has been following my work for the past several years knows that I have self-published three books—Restorative Faith, Restorative Beauty and The Forest.

What you may not know is that I do not consider myself an author. When people ask me what I do for my profession, I never state author. The simple reason is my books have never sold enough copies to make a sustainable living. In fact, I’ve never cleared more than $1000 of revenue in a single year from my book sales.

After developing the concept for my book about happiness, I realized I was onto something special. Unlike my other books, I determined that this book on happiness deserves a real publisher with a marketing budget behind it.

On a warm summer evening in August, I was walking with Courtney and shared the memory from first grade where I was asked the question if I wanted to be an author. I told Courtney, “I think I’ve figured out what I want to do with the second half of my life. I want to be a published author who travels around the country speaking about my books.”

A week later, I was telling a friend about my concept for the new book and she said, “I know someone who works in the publishing industry. I’m sure he’d be willing to talk with you.”

When I sat down with him and explained the concept, he loved the idea and gave me a lot of fantastic advice about how I should write my book proposal.

Although he couldn’t guarantee that his publisher would pick it up, he agreed to personally pass my proposal along to his non-fiction editor, a huge help given that they receive hundreds of submissions every day. I gave him the complete book proposal at the beginning of December.

Manifesting My Childhood Dream

I stated at the beginning of this post that my intuition told me that 2025 would be a pivotal year in redefining the trajectory of my life. This year manifested my childhood dream of becoming an author.

If you had told me the catalyst for this shift would come from working as a substitute teacher, I would have said, “Impossible!”

From the first day I entered the classroom, I quickly determined teaching high school is not for me. I love the students, but the politics, bureaucracy and lack of intellectual freedom feel far too constricting for my personality.

Conversely, I love being a substitute teacher who can enter a classroom for a brief moment, get to know the students and move on. I know I’m making an impact because I’ve had students approach me in the hallway and tell me how much they enjoyed talking about their happiest moment.

I also know from teaching college courses that I don’t want to make that a career. There’s a lot of joy imparting knowledge to students, but the repetition can be frustrating. You can change the methodology, but my ultimate responsibility is to teach the same information every semester. A good job for now, but not forever.

Sometimes knowing what you don’t want to do is just as valuable as identifying your calling.

The Year of Fulfillment

I’m calling 2026 the year of fulfillment because I believe that this year will see the fulfillment of those dreams that were manifested in 2025. I believe in 2026 I will be well on my way to becoming a published author who is preparing for speaking engagements to promote my book.

I also believe that my dream of changing the world for the better by helping to create meaningful community through ProSocial will be closer to fulfillment.

This past September, I became part of an entrepreneurial incubator program. Since my efforts with ProSocial had stalled, I figured working with a group of business professionals could be the spark required to resurrect my business. I was paired with Dr. Jack McGourty of Columbia University. His insights have been a major gamechanger for the direction of ProSocial.

I now have real data to understand how ProSocial can facilitate meaningful connection and community that is currently missing from the world. During 2026, I will be testing a pilot program at various businesses in the Chicago area.

After beginning the year with major depression, I’m ending with major hope. I’m claiming my future as an author and I’m excited to finally have a viable product for ProSocial.   

Life is looking up in 2026.

If selecting a word of the year is a common practice for you, please share your word for this year and why you chose it in the comments below. I look forward to letting you know the results of fulfillment in January of 2027. Until then, Happy New Year!