Emacs Carnival: This year I'll...

The theme for the January 2026 [[Emacs Carnival]] is 'This year, I’ll…':

What will you do differently in [[Emacs]] this year? Or will you just get started? Why?

What are you excited about to explore and tinker with? What do you want to perfect?

Are there any large projects in front of you that you’ll emacs with confidence?

This year there's a few different areas I'd like to do things in: learning about and trying new Emacs techniques or packages; using techniques or packages that I already know about, on new things; improving my use of Emacs; and participating more in the Emacs community.

So, this year I'll…

Try…

… an org-roam alternative

I'm still getting on fine with [[org-roam]], and development did seem to pick up on it again recently. But I'd quite like to try Org Node or Vulpea and see how they chime with me.

…EXWM or something similar

I'm a pragmatic person and don't feel the need to use Emacs for everything, if it doesn't make sense. But lately I'm feeling that it could make some sense to try EXWM or something similar as my window manager. As I use Emacs for 90% of what I do daily at work anyway.

Use…

…Literate configuration on my Doom Emacs config

I've made quite a few customisations to [[my Doom Emacs config]] now. But mostly ad-hoc, not really documenting, and not published anywhere for sharing for others to see. So I'd like to do the same as I've done for [[My Spacemacs User Config]] and use [[Literate configuration]] to manage and share it. (See also [[Emacs Carnival: org-babel]]).

…the latest versions of Emacs and my Emacs distros

I am perenially behind on the latest version of Emacs (currently 29.4.5). As well as Spacemacs and Doom.

Partly because whenever I upgrade something seems to be break and need fixing. I need Emacs for work and life constantly, so I can't afford to have it broken, and I often don't have the time to spend fixing it, either. But - it's good to stay up to date, so I'd like to find a good process ofr updating with minimal disruption. I'm pretty sure that there are likely Emacs environment managers I could make use of?

Improve…

..my use of org-mode for Getting Things Done

I've been using [[org-mode]] for many years now. And I thought I'd been kind of doing Getting Things Done ([[GTD]]) principles with it. I've been learning recently that I wasn't really doing GTD, just maintaining unwieldy to-do lists. So I'm slowly making better usage of [[org-mode for GTD]]. It's working great already, but there's still much room for improvement.

…my mixing and matching of Emacs distros

I use [[Spacemacs]] on desktop, and [[Doom]] on Termux. I've used spacemacs fora n age on desktop, but when [[setting up Emacs on mobile]] I used that as an excuse to try out Doom. And everything's working fine on both devices. But it seems a bit of an unnecessary overkill to use two when I could be using one across both. I'd like to make a conscious decision to either switch entirely to Doom, stick with Spacemacs for both, or even just decide that the mix of the two is useful in some way.

…the publish process of my website

I write the majority of my website in Emacs and publish it to the web via Emacs (org-publish) too. ([[How I publish my org-roam digital garden to the web with org-publish]]).

It is just about creaking along and still working, but it's very arcane and archaic and tied together with shoestrings. I'd like to revamp it all. Occassionally I look at different [[options for publishing an org-roam-based digital garden]] but have yet to leap to anything else.

…my website in general

The whole look and layout of my website is also feeling a bit old now. Half of it is Wordpress, half of it is published from Emacs. The Wordpress part was to get familiar with Wordpress for my job way back when, but that's no longer needed. I'd like to go all in with Emacs for the site, and revamp it in the process.

Participate…

… more in the Emacs community

The [[Emacs Carnival]] is a great way to do this, which I'm managing to do once a month since October 2025. Always right at the end of the deadline though! I've also set up [[Org Social]], though haven't been actively using it. I don't use social media much in general, as I tend to prefer [[the garden to the stream]] (and to be honest don't have much time for either right now). But - I'd like to be sharing more and learning more from others too.

It would be nice to contribute to the code ecosystem of Emacs too, If I can. I don't write a lot of code these days, but perhaps my contributions could be documentation of how I use Emacs. Or perhaps non-code contributions to packages (e.g. documentation).

(See: [[Emacs Carnival: The people of Emacs]]).

Learn…

… more about the ethics of LLM and how I want to use them with Emacs (or not)

I am torn between the clear utility of LLMs and the massive environmental and social repercussions of them. (e.g. [[Generative AI has a ferocious environmental impact]] ,[[Generative AI is further concentrating power with Big Tech]]).

If I want to do half of the things I've got in the list here, with my limited time for this kind of thing right now, then I could only actually do it with some AI assistance I feel. Perhaps a local LLM might be an option. I've also had a quick play with gptel in Emacs, but I see there's plenty of alternatives to it to.