As we begin our trek into 2026, I wanted to do something a bit different and reminisce about what happened in 2025, the good and the bad, and to hopefully set some realistic goals for the new year.

Sorry about there not being a Magic Super Cube post, life has kept me from working on it and delaying it until Friday, the reasons for which will be made known later on in the blog.

First let’s talk about the website and see what happened there.

Completing Website Goals

When I first started the blog, I set out with the mission of writing about a different Commander every day for a year, having completed that mission in October.

I’ll be honest, there were times when I really struggled with getting those blogs out there, but the fact that I was able to consistently get a Daily Commander out every day for a year is an achievement that I am incredibly proud of.

I have often set goals for myself that I only partially complete and feel bad about for not completing those goals. However, I managed to complete the goal without missing a single day, albeit not all of them were at the ideal time I set, but I managed to get it all done.

I also introduced some side blogs as well to help me vary up my writing a little bit, with things like the Weekly Round-Up, Casual Chat, Magic Super Cube, Magic Project: Omega, Blog Showdown, and the successor to Daily Commander, Weekly Commander.

Sure not all of those blogs were hits, but at the very least I tried something different to see what would work, what I would like writing, and what you guys wanted to see as well.

Speaking of Weekly Commander, I am feeling much better about writing those, since I am allowing myself some more writing and looking at cards rather than the Daily Commander method, which was draining towards the end.

While I haven’t been as reliable about Casual Chat’s, they still make up for being a more casual look at something or casual musings about life and things I want to talk about. I do want to get better about doing them, and that comes with me needing to schedule things better.

Magic Super Cube has been a lot of fun, especially with how I am needing to make some tough decisions on which cards to add to the Cube because of how I set up the rules of the Cube. Looking back I probably could have added some more cards per set, but hey we are in it for the long haul now, might as well see it through.

Blog Showdown has been an interesting experiment that already has started yielding some results, though again I’ll wait until all of the potential blogs have debuted and collected the results for how each of them was engaged to make a final result, but there is a frontrunner to be sure.

I’ve also done a bit of streaming and have a couple of those streams on a YouTube channel, which I have been really bad about keeping up with both, but I do want to do more in the upcoming year, but more about that a bit later.

Personal Accomplishments

Now moving on from talking about the website to talking about myself for a bit, I have done quite a bit this year.

The biggest goal that I accomplished this year was that I was finally able to go to Japan! That has been a goal that was seven years in the making, with two years of planning, four years of delay, and one year of getting everything back on track.

It was a goal that I was set to accomplish in 2020, but with how everything went I had to push my travel date further and further until I was finally able to go earlier in late February and early March.

I had such a fun time that I want to go again, currently looking at sometime in 2028 if all goes well, but for the moment I am content in having managed to accomplish such a major goal like that after so many years of delays.

Other than that I accomplished a professional goal at work. For those who may or may not be aware, this blog is a hobby of mine that I don’t make any money on, so I have another job that I do to pay the bills.

At that job I was able to help open a new location and train new employees, which was something that I had wanted to do when I learned about the opportunity to do so.

I met a lot of cool people and had a great time overall, learning more about the company I worked for and making a couple of connections.

The only “bad” thing about that experience was that it had happened shortly after I had come back from Japan, meaning that I only had a couple weeks home before I went out of town to help open this new location.

Even still, it was a pleasant experience that I enjoyed and everything was looking great…up until it wasn’t.

The…Less than Fun Parts

Going to Japan and the work accomplishments happened early in the year, and as we were approaching summer things started to feel…off at work.

Management was looking more harshly at hours worked and people’s times and while the summer was supposed to be one of our busier times, it just ended up being only slightly busier than normal.

Then came late August, when dramatic cuts to hours began because it was the slow season. I had a bit of a cushion to keep me afloat, but that only lasted until mid October because of how dramatic the cuts had been.

That was when I started looking for a second job, which I managed to find in late November, which is the biggest reason for the delays in some of the posts, I haven’t had as much free time to work on the blog. I have that second job because it gives more reliable hours for the week and the first job because of the benefits that they provide.

It’s been a rough couple of months in the second half of the year, and while things are slowly improving, things are still pretty tight on my end.

Looking Ahead

While things are still rough, I have not given up on this blog. At this point I have started the second year of it and I really like doing it, not just for myself but for you all.

If this blog only had one person other than myself reading it every day I would still do it, because it is something that they are interacting with and enjoying it, and I can tell you more than one person has been reading the blog.

I want to do more, and I want to do something more for the blog, as well as expanding what I want to do.

As far as the short term, I am going to be continuing the blogs as usual and once the Blog Showdown ends, I will be adding that to the list of blogs to do.

Insofar as the long term goes, I am planning to actually post some YouTube videos. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I need a bit of time to get those videos working, especially since I’ll be doing a lot of it by myself, unless someone wants to edit for free (please don’t edit for free, get paid for your work).

I have also thought about doing early access content for the blog, but that often comes with a paywall, and with the way things are in the world that may not really be worth it to some people. This is also why I’ve been skittish on doing a Patreon over a Ko-Fi despite it being more well known, I don’t like holding things behind a paywall, even if its for a short period of time.

If you guys are able to support me through something like that, then I can come up with something that is fair and would not make the blogs or other content I post completely exclusive.

I do value all of your opinions, so please let me know what you think of it.

New Year’s Resolution

This has been a tough year for everyone, not just myself.

But, the best we can do for right now is to keep moving forward and change what we can to improve. It’s easy to say, but a lot harder to do. It’s easy to sit back and say nothing is going to change or get better, but it’s a lot harder to make a change.

It can be intimidating to change or do things because of a fear of failure, not being happy with the results, or not being satisfied with the results that you are getting.

That’s why we keep working, we keep trying, and we change up what we do in order to get closer to the results we want.

Like I said earlier, I spent seven years doing my damndest to get to Japan. It wasn’t an easy task. I worked long hours, my social life was (and still is) in flux, I spent a lot of money that I could have used for something more practical like a house or a new car, I moved twice in that time span which further delayed things, and there were days when I wanted to give up and not go through with it.

I still did it.

Accomplishing that goal made me realize that hard work can pay off. As someone who has had self confidence issues for many years, having been able to not only set out the goal to go to Japan but accomplishing that goal has been a huge confidence boost and has made me a little more confident in setting new goals for myself and for this blog.

It’s not going to be easy, it never is easy. It’s not like someone is going to give me a ton of money off the rip so that this becomes my full time job and I can coast the rest of my life.

Its going to be hard work, it needs me to be more disciplined in properly managing my schedule, and it needs me to be more mindful of my own workload, which is going to get a bit more severe because of just how things are at the moment.

But because I am too stubborn, I am going to make it work.

My New Year’s Resolution is to improve and expand what this blog is and to improve myself in the meantime.

Thank you all for being here to read this goofy little blog about a card game I like, and thank you for all of your support.

Here’s to another year where things get better, not just for the blog or myself, but for all of you.

Thank you for reading.

Happy New Years!

From, J.M. Casual