You Should Be Reading (Respectfully) to Think
Happy New Year! Happy 2026! Welcome readers.
Welcome once again into this space, Twenttynine.com, a space where I have cultivated and written some of my thoughts and imagination. A very personal and insightful look into my chaotic mind.
We love it here.
In this space, I’ve created at the tender age of 29, I have developed this confidence in my writing ability. This confidence to express myself and not critique the small things in writing and in life.
The objective for me and this website was to express myself through writing, yes but to also crank out written work. Practice. It is so important for a writer to just write. Get the ideas rolling whether shitty or not.
Before this website I had gone through a period of not writing for a long time and that was sad. The act of writing means so much to me as an individual. It is an activity that has many benefits to my mental health and happiness!
Oh, how I love writing.
Almost every blog post I write is lessons of wisdom I learned or continuously learned and want to share. Or it is just me writing my thoughts out from real life conversations and experiences.
Affirmations!
I try to speak life through myself and to others through my writing. In my writing there is an air of seriousness but also lightheartedness. This year I would love to continue that and expound more on the comedic, lovely, audacious side of my brain.
For this blog post, I was speculating and asking myself, what is a message I would want to hear right now that would help me and anyone who reads this. What is the head space I want to expound upon in this first half of the year and for the rest of the year…
On a break walking at work the idea popped into my head on what I wanted to write about.
Cartoon lightbulb.
The habit or advice I would highlight to myself and to others at the beginning of 2026 is simply to pick up a book or two. Get to reading and read often. To think often.
I love books. I’m an avid reader and have been in book clubs in my life. I’ve read or listened to books often, but I still have periods in my life where I fall off of reading.
Towards the end of 2025 and now in the beginning of 2026 I’ve been reading multiple books in the same time frame.
Two self-help books and one fiction.
For my message, to read more, the contents of a book do not ever matter.
The activity of reading is the goal. For the goal sprouts ideas. The goal gets the thoughts and connections to fire and bounce off each other.
I believe your thoughts have so much power and an activity that gets you to think more is the move for this year and onward.
We need to be thinking people!
Your thoughts are going to take you to places. Think and Swim! I could not help but use that brokerage company slogan. It is such a powerful statement.
In this world there are many activities that null your brain and thoughts. Brainless activities! These phones, social media, can hinder you from hearing your thoughts. Hinder your ability to create new great thoughts without influence.
Reading helps with thinking.
It is an activity that has always helped me change my mindset or think new thoughts.
I do believe that all the answers you need in life can be found within, hence meditation and listening to your thoughts are ideal. The next layer or stage to mediating and listening to your thoughts is inspiring yourself to think of things differently through the thoughts of others.
I think experiences and different environments can inspire action. Everything in life can bring inspiration and thought, however there is something special in the act of reading.
There is something so powerful about reading to which people have tried to ban books and the act from other individuals. Reading and writing can do wonders.
In a book you are peeking into the thought process of someone else’s mind. Where else do you get that opportunity to obtain the thought process and wisdom of someone who was alive a hundred years ago or someone who went through an experience you have not gone through.
The data and downloads from reading sets this activity at the top of the to do list for any individual and I will preach to anybody to get into it.
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”- René Descartes
“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”-Fran Lebowitz
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader”-Margaret Fuller
“Books are uniquely portable magic”-Stephen King