MORE AND LESS 2026

I was introduced several years ago to the annual MORE/LESS list by Julia Rothman, Was quiet with my list in 2025, but have found it to be such a lovely way for me to engage with my northstar at the onset of the Gregorian year. It feels both intentional, and giving, an opportunity to give vulnerable acknowledgment to my own wants without a judgmental pressure, just a back and forth with myself carried with gentle support, “Hey, Anis, what do we want to be aware of in this year, what do we want for us?”

So, 2026. And this, by no means is my end all be all for the coming days, weeks, and months, but some of it, an ongoing aspect of it.

LESS
hesitation
holding on
hustling for peace
masks
clutter
prolonging a finishing
spinning out
assumptions
shrinking of my self
wanting
punishing myself for others
giving time to worrying about not giving time to others
Instagram

MORE
grace given (to others and to self)
“practicing kindness all day to everybody” *
crossing seas
Family
connecting with friends
NO, and YES
good sleep
less stuff
being, being “here”, attention
listening to my body
finding the Want in the have to do
desire
painting
getting up while still dark outside

More fires. More building something outside of myself, more purposeful aloneness, more intentional togetherness, More painting, more not caring in how the marks may fall. More laughter. More boldness. More 2016 Anis, and less Anis of 2015. Less ‘97 and more ‘01. A kind stranger named Julie wrote to thank me for my work and before sharing a poem of hers for her now passed partner of 43 years, wrote that she hopes I sleep well and am kissed every day. More good sleep and kisses.

Still and always a less explaining or a smaller need for such. Less tiresomeness, less holding tight and tethered to whatever heavy question to solve. Less solving. Always, less holding on—to expectation, perceived need, unfulfilled want, a fear of absence made by a going.

Letting go is the always thing I am trying to learn, over and over, continually–my seemingly all life long longest lesson & largest point of growth, around which everything else connects.

So less holding on, more releasing. With many things, both tangible and experiential, whether held loosely or clutched tight, whether flung or fallen, with sorrow or trepidation or loud joy, with all of it.

This, and also wanting to be alright with just holding love not just “doing” love. One thing bell hooks gave me, is recognizing love as action. I’ve sought over the years to steer my heart in accordance with this, to not let love for others sit in me unused and still.

I also want to remember: I own my love. It’s mine. As D. Kauffman** the imagined bard of Adaptation, said: “I can love whoever I want” which also means however I want. Love is not one shape. But nor is action purely a motion—I can love others quietly and in stillness and from afar, holding and protecting this love, and should my life be in movement–as our lives always are–so too is my love, even if only by carrying its warmth. Loving others isn’t just for their sake, but our own, and I want to hold both these lessons of loving ever present in me, in these days now more than ever. And in doing so, release too, myself.

More good sleep. More kissing. More the way out, than a stuck in.

*from a letter from Jack Kerouac to his first wife Edie Parker

** Donald & Charlie