Words Allison Smith, Editor-in-Chief
One year ago, we launched our “new look” after many hours of collaboration and hard work. Over the last 12 months, we’ve tweaked and finetuned here and there but the response from our community has been overwhelmingly positive, so we knew – since our readers are our best and most important critics! – that we’d “done good.”
Last year, our New Year’s resolution at Seaside was simple – that our supporters would enjoy reading the magazine as much as we enjoyed creating it for them. This year, without the all-consuming focus of the rebranding taking up my time, I’ve had space to stop and reflect on what I’d like my life to look like over the coming year.
Early in 2025, I got an app to track my reading, and set myself a (I thought unreachable) goal of one book per week for the year. I simultaneously set myself a very conservative time limit for social media. Well, between not having hours of Facebook and Instagram sucking my time away and, I admit, getting somewhat addicted to tracking my reading, I far surpassed that goal and look forward to reading even more this year. So that’s one resolution met and repeated for 2026. An easy and fun one, I admit!
Back in November, I wrote about starting to feel like I might finally have the time, as my daughter gets older, to volunteer with some worthy local charitable organizations, so exploring this is definitely also on my resolution list for 2026.
As for the magazine? At the end of every year we meet as a team and discuss the magazine as a whole. For 2026, you’ll continue to see the majority of our regular columns, and will be introduced to a couple of new ones. Former MLA Adam Olsen will be contributing regularly, West Coast Garden will be in the magazine more often and we will be launching a new column looking at different aspects of mental health. We look forward to sharing these with you!
As always, we love to hear from our readers with all feedback. Please email me at allison@seasidemagazine.ca with story ideas and any thoughts on what we are doing right, or could be doing better! Here’s to another great year at Seaside, in this beautiful place we call home.
Happy New Year to all!
This dog has found a family, but there are many animals waiting for their forever homes at www.victoriahumanesociety.com.
Photo Janis Jean
