Sunday ☕ : Finding My Big Fat Secret Goal for 2026

While most of America is wrestling with foul weather like it owes them money, I’ve been gifted a week that feels stolen from June’s pocket. This morning I woke up to 60 degrees with promises of 80 — weather so perfect it would be criminal to watch football indoors. The dogs are giving me that look. You know the one. The “We own you and you will take us hiking” look.

Resolutions Already Broken

By now, most of us have already broken our New Year’s resolutions. Mine typically last about as long as a snowball in the Sahara. I usually make them 10 minutes before midnight, fueled by champagne optimism and the delusional belief that tomorrow-me will be a completely different person than today-me. Spoiler alert: He never is.

Different Prayer Tonight

But lying in bed the other night, caught in that peculiar place where your mind wants to solve world hunger while your body wants to return to that dream about winning an argument with your high school English teacher, something shifted.

My prayer was different this time.

“God,” I said, “I’ve prayed thousands of times. Always asking for things — protect my family, help my business, make this deal work, fix that problem. It’s been ‘The Me Show’ for decades. But tonight, tell me what YOU want me to pray for. What do you want me to do with whatever time I’ve got left?”

Now I’m listening. Really listening. The answers tend to arrive with perfect timing, usually when I crack open my Bible app between checking email and doomscrolling.

Time Plays Tricks

Time has become a trickster lately. It moves like honey when you’re in a meeting about meetings, but races like a greyhound through the good stuff. Friends and peers keep checking out early, like they got insider information about a better party somewhere else.

A Dose of Reality

The other day, I walked into a restaurant restroom. Brand new sneakers, still sporting that “I just left the store” grip. Or so I thought. Next thing I know, I’m horizontal on wet cement, my dignity pooled around me like the water I’m lying in, right next to the “Caution: Wet Floor” sign that might as well have said “Hey, Eric: This Means You.”
My shoes, apparently trained in Olympic ice dancing, had other plans than walking.

I credit not breaking anything to my workouts — turns out lifting weights prepares you for more than opening pickle jars. But as I peeled myself off that floor, ego bruised worse than a dropped peach, reality hit harder than the concrete. One wrong angle, one bad landing, and I could’ve been another cautionary tale. “Did you hear about Eric? Taken down by a bathroom floor. The floor won.”

Meter Always Running

Here’s what nobody tells you about time: It’s not that it speeds up as you age. It’s that you finally start paying attention to the meter running.

Legacy Means Nothing

I’ve been thinking about legacy lately, that peculiar human obsession with being remembered. Friends talk about leaving something behind for future generations, like we’re all writing cosmic IOUs. But let’s be honest — I watched a movie recently that referenced someone “immortally famous” from the 1980s. My kids looked at me like I was speaking Klingon.

I can name maybe 10 presidents. You probably can too. Out of 46.
So much for legacy.

If being remembered is a lottery ticket with worse odds than Powerball, what’s the point? Maybe the point isn’t to be remembered, but to do something worth forgetting yourself for. Something that serves others so completely that your name becomes irrelevant to the value created. Maybe it’s time I finally realized my prayer shouldn’t be about serving me, but serving others.

Twenty Million Transformed

Twenty million people have learned to paint through our platforms. Twenty million souls who thought, “I can’t even draw a stick figure,” discovered they could capture light on canvas. That matters more than any plaque on a wall because it brings joy and peace to otherwise stressful lives, and they are likely to pass it on.

The Unscratchable Itch

But there’s this itch I can’t scratch. After decades of meetings that feel like déjà vu with worse coffee, after building and rebuilding and reinventing when COVID tried to fold my hand, I keep wondering: Is this it? Or is there something else waiting, something bigger that requires everything I’ve learned so far?

The question that wakes me at 3 a.m. isn’t “What do I want to do?”
It’s “What am I supposed to do?”

Here’s what I know: I have skills. I have experience. I have battle scars from business wars, multiple startups, and triumphs from risks that shouldn’t have worked. I know how to build things, how to teach, how to paint, how to market, and how to connect people to their creativity.

But knowing what you have isn’t the same as knowing what to do with it.

My Secret Goal

So here’s my big fat secret goal for 2026: to discover what I’m supposed to do with all of this — not for legacy, not for ego, not even for success. But for service. For meaning. For whatever assignment of God’s has my name on it.

Maybe you’re wrestling with the same questions. Maybe you’re lying awake wondering if your busy is the right busy, if your important is actually important, if your legacy concerns are just ego in a three-piece suit.

Would You Continue?

Let me ask you this: If you knew your name would be forgotten in 50 years, completely erased from history, but you could do something that would ripple forward for centuries — would you still do it?

What if the point isn’t to be remembered, but to be useful?

What if the real question isn’t “What do I want?” but “What is wanted of me?”

I don’t have the answers yet. The outcome of my search isn’t clear. But I’m listening now, really listening, with the kind of attention I should have been paying all along.

Dogs Don’t Care

The dogs are getting impatient. They don’t care about legacy or meaning or cosmic purposes. They want their hike. And maybe that’s the first lesson — sometimes the most important thing you can do is the simple thing right in front of you.

Even if you’re wearing treacherous new sneakers.

What’s calling you that you’re not hearing because you’re too busy being busy? What would you do if you knew you had exactly five years to do something that matters — not to your ego, but to the world?

The meter’s running.

But here’s the secret: It always was.

I’m Not Going Anywhere

PS: Before the competitors start crawling out from under their rocks thinking I’m hanging up my brushes: Relax. I’m not going anywhere. When someone asked me recently what I’d do if I sold everything, my answer shocked her: “I’d start up exactly what I’m doing now. I love the people, I love spending my time around art and helping artists, and I love growing as an artist.”

The truth is, I want to do MORE. More in-person events where I can actually meet and hang out with you. More online events where we can reach people in 30 countries who think they “can’t even draw a straight line.” More transformations. More joy delivered to stressed-out souls who discover they can create beauty.

Speaking of which: Watercolor Live is coming up in a couple of weeks. Massive numbers of people from every state and 25-30 countries, all learning together, all discovering what’s possible. The transformations are extraordinary. You should try it. Or come back if it’s been a while. www.watercolorlive.com

My Hilton Head and Savannah plein air Winter Art Escape retreat in February is sold out (sorry! Join the wait list), but there’s still room in my June Adirondacks adventure if you want to paint where the Hudson River School masters found their inspiration. www.paintadirondacks.com

And the Plein Air Convention in May? Five days of painting with the absolute masters. It’s basically a giant family reunion where everyone happens to paint. www.pleinairconvention.com

Who Is This Guy Eric Rhoads?

Eric Rhoads is the founder and publisher of PleinAir Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine (both on newsstands nationally), author and host of six Art Marketing instruction videos, writes a blog on Art Marketing, and is the author of the Amazon bestseller Make More Money Selling Your Art. Additionally, he produces the weekly e-newsletters American Watercolor, Fine Art Today, Inside Art, PaintTube ArtNotes, Pastel Today, Plein Air Today, and Realism Today. Eric hosts the in-person Plein Air Convention & Expo, the Fine Art Trip for art collectors, and painting retreats including Paint Adirondacks, Fall Color Week, and the Winter Art Escape, as well as online virtual events Acrylic Live, Pastel Live, PleinAir Live, Realism Live, Watercolor Live Digital Painting Live, Gouache Live, and Art Business Mastery Day. He is also the producer of the PleinAir Salon Online Art Competition and art instructional courses through PaintTube.tv. Each weekday Eric hosts Art School Live, a YouTube show featuring free demos from a variety of artists, and he is host of the PleinAir Podcast and Art Marketing Minute Podcast. Eric is a plein air, landscape, and portrait painter with works at Castle Gallery. He is heavily involved in the radio industry as founder of Radio Ink Magazine as well as Radio + Television Business Report, the Radio Forecast Conference, and the Hispanic Radio Conference. He is the author of the bestselling book Blast from the Past: A Pictorial History of Radio’s First 75 Years. Eric lives in Austin, Texas, with his bride, Laurie, and they are the parents of triplets. Learn more at EricRhoads.com, or see Everything We Do.