1.2.26 RAGNAR

HAPPY FIRST FRIDAY OF 2026!

I hope everyone made it through the holidays unscathed and feeling like they got some rest and felt some love.

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Thanks so much to the people who emailed about my 52 THINGS list from last week.

It took way longer than I expected (in the middle of a pretty busy holiday week), so it was nice to hear how much you loved some of the things.

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So I decided to skip resolutions this year.

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Sure, I’ve got stuff I want to accomplish in 2026, but I decided to take a different approach.

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Instead, I picked a word to hang my 2026 on.

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I’ve never done the whole word of the year thing, and my word came to me sort of out of the blue and ended up being sticky.

It kept sneaking back and tugging at my brain.

Saying yup…

I’m your word of the year.

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The 2026 word I landed on is RELEASE.

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I want to come back to it again and again in 2026.

As I’m deciding where I want to spend my time.

What I want to focus on.

Who I want 2026 me to be.

Creatively.

Personally.

I’m hoping my word feels like a single lit match in a very dark room. Or a lighthouse on the foggy coast that my brain sometimes resembles.

A simple single word to focus on when I get caught up in the weeds of life and the never-ending drift of distraction.

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Release!

It felt so great to get 52 FRIDAYS out into the world last year.

But it was the only thing I released.

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Sure, I sent out a year of DIRTY LITTLE FRIDAYS (no small feat!) but I also spent most (all) of 2025 waiting around on a couple of film projects.

It felt like being lodged in quicksand.

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The years before that, I had 2 films (SWALLOWED and THE PASSENGER) come out nearly back-to-back.

Films are monsters, and take sooo much more work than most creative projects to launch into the world. So getting to make and release two in rapid succession was incredible, and left me hungry for more.

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So I want to RELEASE a lot more in 2026.

Zines. Books. Films. Prints. Stickers. Trading Cards. Dirty used underwear I’ve customized from these shoots (?)

Who knows…

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But I also wanna release some of the stories that have taken root in my head.

Stories about myself.

Stories about the people I love.

Stories about the business of making things.

Stories about how things are done.

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Stories that I’ve heard or told so many times that they’ve calcified into some sort of truth.

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But just because I’ve been telling myself a story doesn’t make it true.

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So I wanna let those stories go. Release the narratives that aren’t helping anyone (including me) and look at things from a different perspective.

All while releasing more sexy, dirty ALL THE DEAD BOYS darkness.

RELEASE.

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Anyone have any experience with choosing a word for the year?

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I haven’t quite figured out how to keep it front and center as I wind my way through 2026.

I’ll write it on the inside cover of my morning pages journals for sure, but it’ll take more than that, I think…

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As usual, thanks for being here. I really do appreciate it.

Until next week…

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Carter

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P.S.

I didn’t put FILMS on there because (for me) that’s a given and at the top of my own forever and always list.

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P.S.S.

I’ll be hitting send on this email before I add more Ragnar images to the Patreon. Our first shoot is already posted there, but these new pictures will be up later today.

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COMING (RELEASING:) SOON…