I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2024 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
Happy New Year 2023!
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2023 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
Happy New Year 2022!
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
Neil Gaiman
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2022 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
What I’ve Learned This Year
It’s that time of the year, so I’ve just completed my annual personal review. This is something I do every year, although in a slightly different form. I was thinking about publishing it here, but it felt too personal. I couldn’t. Maybe next year.
(I use this Year Compass form which is excellent; it supports multiple languages, and you can choose whether to complete it online (PDF) or print it and work on the hard copy. I recently found this one which seems good, too. I had already completed this year’s when I saw it, but I’m thinking of combining them next year, taking the best of both in one customized version.)
In the meantime, I thought it might be worth sharing some of the insights of this second annus horribilis. I think we all hoped that things would go back to some kind of normal this year, especially with vaccines available. But, unfortunately, it seems we were mistaken.
No matter, no matter; new year, new prospects, I always say, the ever optimist. So let’s get to it, shall we?
Top Three Things I’ve Learned This Year
- I Need Meditation and Yoga to Feel Good.
This year, I struggled a lot with attention, or rather, the lack of it. Not being able to focus when working on a book (or doing anything, really) is stressful and anxiety-inducing. As I mentioned elsewhere, I had already reduced social media and news intake drastically but, obviously, not enough. So, I did an app audit and reduced the number of apps on my smartphone, deleting both the ones I seldom used and the attention stealers (you know which ones, don’t you?). I also took a time-out from social media (I’ve been sober for six months now!) and stopped reading the news. They have a way of trickling through anyway (especially the bad ones), and, fear not, I haven’t missed the news of the first woman to become Prime Minister in Sweden or the Omicron variant. I pruned blogs and newsletters as well, keeping a few core ones only (Austin Kleon, Seth Godin, Oliver Burkeman, Mason Currey, for instance). No TV except on Fridays and Saturdays.
And yet, I struggled. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t meditated or done any yoga in some time. Like, in a long time. A very long time. So, I’ve just taken up mediation and yoga again, and I’m almost back on track! The wild monkey mind is not easy to tame, but I feel good about where I am at the moment.
If you haven’t meditated before, Pema Chödrön’s wonderful book Meditation: How to Meditate is an excellent place to start. It’s short and simple and beautifully written.
As for Yoga, Adriene Mishler has this wonderful YouTube channel called Yoga with Adriene, where you can pick and choose from a variety of yoga sessions, and they’re all free. If you don’t know where to start, she has a series of videos for beginners.
This is by far the most important lesson of the year. It’s incredible how these practices impact my mind (and body), something I tend to forget. I’ve now included yoga and meditation in my daily tracker to make sure I don’t fall off the wagon again.
Related
- Tim Ferriss: Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead
- Chris Bailey: How to conduct an end-of-year productivity review.
- To Nap or Not to Nap? Naps Win. Of Course.
Partially related to the above. Whenever I could, I would nap after lunch since in high school (I’m not kidding). I don’t seem able to function optimally for a whole day without some rest. I don’t necessarily have to sleep, but I do need to lay on the bed for half an hour someplace dark and quiet. I did this at work, too, whenever I didn’t have any meetings or calls around lunch. I would eat a quick lunch then go and lay down for 30 minutes (the perks of working from home, long before Covid-19 taught the world how to).
What did I do this year, knowing all this? In my search for efficiency, I started skipping my naps. More time for me and my book, yay! Only it became “nay”! The result was that I had more awake time, but I was too tired to do anything worthwhile (my house shines, though, there’s that). If naps were good enough for Churchill and Einstein, I guess they’re good enough for me, too. And I’m not alone to think that. I’m back to my post-lunch nap now, together with my cat, who seems to be the wiser of us.
(By the way, I love that nap line from “The Darkest Hour” movie when Churchill is asked to meet the King at 4 pm, and he replies: “I nap at 4.” I was SO tempted to tell that to my boss sometimes when he wanted to have a meeting at 1 pm). There are so many great lines in that movie, brilliantly written by Anthony McCarten; here are a few more.)
- Connecting with Friends in More Meaningful Ways
I think of myself as a person who values friendship and friends; in fact, being a good friend is one of my core values. I thought I was a good friend; I know I’ve tried. But how was I a good friend?
If we take birthdays, I would always make sure to send a message to a friend on their birthday. Note I said “send a message” (as in DM), not send a card or make a phone call. We’re all busy, I was busy, and I thought my friend was busy too, so a short and quick message to congratulate her was an efficient way of dealing with that.
But was that a good way of keeping in touch? Since many of my friends are scattered on four continents now, social media is the only way to keep track of what’s happening in their lives. I could see their updates and would occasionally comment on something, and then I’d, of course, send a DM on their birthday. Even at Christmas! I was a good friend, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?
I thought about this and realized it was a superficial way of being a friend, more like a social obligation. So this year, I’ve started creating personalized birthday and holiday cards (now you know where that Freebies section came from) and writing e-mails with a few more lines than “Merry Christmas”! Handwritten letters would be much nicer, of course, but I need to be realistic. I feel that what’s important is writing more than a DM and more than once or twice a year. And making phone calls as we used to, despite the logistic challenges of different timezones.
Does this make me a good friend? I don’t know; you’d need to ask my friends. But I think I am a better friend at least.
As I’m planning 2022 now, I’ve added reminders in my calendar to reach out to friends every now and then, not only during holidays.
… and Three Tiny Thoughts
- The more I write, the more inspired I am.
- Perfectionism is a subtle form of arrogance.
- Sometimes optimism is just wishful thinking (if not plain stupidity).
Related Posts
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The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
- Welcome To The Zone!
- The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
- The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
- The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
- The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
- The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
- The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
- The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
- The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
- The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
- The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
- The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
- The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
- The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
- The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
- The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!
Happy New Year, and welcome to the first edition of The Zone this year! New Year’s Resolutions, Adam Grant on procrastination, new books & movies, the ultimate e-mail structure, and more in The Zone No. 12.
- No new year was so much longed for than 2021. We made it; we survived 2020! This fact alone means that we’ve got a good start in 2021. I’m not one to set New Year’s resolutions; I never was. But if you are, you can get some advice on New Year’s resolutions from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Bonus: The Science of Keeping New Year’s Resolutions.
- And there’s so much to look forward to in 2021 (in addition to the Covid-19 vaccine), new books coming out this year, for instance. Literary Hub has the list of the most anticipated books, and who doesn’t love a book list? I keep my eyes on The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2021, of course. And there are many movies worth waiting for as well, a good chunk of them being shuffled to 2021 because of the pandemic. Oh boy! (rubbing hands in anticipation). Bonus: How Film Production Has Changed Due to the Pandemic.
- Good reads at the beginning of the year: Ryan Holiday’s The Secret to Better Habits in 2021 and Jessica Abel’s Against grit: Why setting the bar low is the key to making real change in your life.
- Tom Whitwell’s list of 52 things he learned in 2020 is so interesting! Some of my favorites:
- When Ibn Battuta visited China in 1345, facial recognition was already in use. All visiting foreigners had their portraits discreetly painted and posted on the walls of the bazaar. “If a stranger commits any offence… they send his portrait far and wide” [Ibn Battuta]
- Euro English is an evolving pidgin English used by EU administrators, for example: using ‘Handy’ to mean mobile phone (from German), ‘Non?’ to turn any sentence into a question and unusual plurals like ‘expertises”. [Lindsey Johnstone]
- In Warsaw’s Gruba Kaśka water plant there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off. [Judita K]
- Adam Grant: “Lower your standards for what counts as progress, and you will be less paralyzed by perfectionism.” – Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate
- You can now take an interactive tour of Jane Austen’s house.
- This NASA video shows how the moon will look from the Northern Hemisphere this year.
- I still remember the shock of seeing Notre-Dame cathedral engulfed in flames, hands shaking, texting my sister. There was comfort in shared pain. Restauration work will take time, of course, and it now reached the grand organ.
- A well-thought-out email structure I found on Reddit. Here’s the entire text:
Dear Person I am Writing To,
This is an optional sentence introducing who I am and work for, included if the addressee has never corresponded with me before. The second optional sentence reminds the person where we met, if relevant. This sentence states the purpose of the email.
This optional paragraph describes in more detail what’s needed. This sentence discusses relevant information like how soon an answer is needed, what kind of answer is needed, and any information that the other person might find useful. If there’s a lot of information, it’s a good idea to separate this paragraph into two or three paragraphs to avoid having a Wall of Text.
If a description paragraph was used, close with a restatement of the initial request, in case the addressee ignored the opening paragraph.
This sentence is just a platitude (usually thanking them for their time) because people think I am standoffish, unreasonably demanding, or cold if it’s not included.
Closing salutation, Signature
My Zone
A Quote I’m Pondering
Recognizing that people’s reactions don’t belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
Elizabeth Gilbert
From My Photo Archives
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To read more The Zone posts, click here.
The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
- Welcome To The Zone!
- The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
- The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
- The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
- The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
- The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
- The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
- The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
- The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
- The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
- The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
- The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
- The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
- The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
- The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
- The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!
Welcome to this special, end-of-the-year edition of The Zone! Banksy‘s perfect illustration of 2020, various ways to exorcise 2020, books of the year picked by Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, and others, the lost day of Kiribati, and more. Happy New Year!
I think we all agree that the most merciful thing you could say about 2020 is that it is over. There were glimpses of light and moments of joy, of course, and those we should cherish. Here’s the last list of the year. Have a wonderful weekend, stay safe, and be kind to one another. I’ll be back next year!
- A perfect illustration of 2020: Banksy Ends 2020 With New COVID-19 Street Art
- This year has seen so many seismic events that Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its word of the year to encompass several “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: “I’ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we’ve just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time. It’s both unprecedented and a little ironic – in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other.” You can download the report here (it’s fascinating, at least if you’re as interested in languages as I am). Bonus: From COVID to curbside, 2020 changed our vocabulary too.
- How to exorcise 2020. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking about exorcism these days. I’m tempted to use the Colombian tradition of burning the “old year” (año viejo). It seems fitting, somehow.
- Good News Stories That Will Help Restore Your Faith in the World. We have to remember that there’s much more in the world than the terrible news television and newspapers are feeding us. And that people are good.
- National Geographic‘s special issue 2020: The Year in Pictures (January 2021). The magazine has never singled out a year for such a retrospective in its 133 years. But then, 2020 was special, wasn’t it? Bonus: Nat Geo’s most compelling images of the 21st century and best animal photos of 2020.
- The most striking images of 2020, selected by BBC Culture. It’s fascinating how one year can be gone so quickly and so slowly at the same time. We happened to be in Australia during the devastating bush fires, and we believed that would be our most dramatic memories of the year. All that seems to be so far away now; bush fires merely an inconvenience.
- 1,273 People Share Their Best Life Lessons from 2020. From Mark Manson’s excellent newsletter Mindf*ck Monday. He asked his subscribers: “What have been your biggest lessons from 2020?” And 1.273 people answered. It’s fascinating reading. I found that the best blogs and newsletters (and Manson has both) have great readers, and very often, their comments are as interesting as the article.
- Austin Kleon and Seth Godin‘s end of the year book lists. These men are responsible for many of my book purchases. It’s a good thing. Austin Kleon has a great newsletter, too, by the way.
- Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead says Tim Ferriss, and I agree. This is something I do every year, although in a slightly different form. I was thinking about publishing it here, but it felt too personal. I couldn’t. Maybe next year. Ferriss has a short (five items) but always interesting newsletter. Bonus: Chris Bailey‘s How to conduct an end-of-year productivity review.
- I can’t resist a book list containing the words “ultimate best books.” Literary Hub compiled their Ultimate Best Books for 2020-list. Bonus: the award-winning novels of 2020.
- Associated Press: Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but ‘books are resilient’.
- The Smithsonian Magazine‘s editors picked 25 favorite articles from the year we’d rather forget.
- The Farnam Street team lists their favorite posts of the year.
- There Is No Such Thing as Normal— So Stop Waiting for It. Ryan Holiday about wishing for things to go back to normal.
- Speaking of Ryan Holiday, here’s his list of the best books he read in 2020.
- Two Widowed Penguins Overlooking Melbourne Skyline Together Wins Best Photo of 2020. Beautiful and heart-wrenching.
- Two Tenants Received Children’s Santa Letters So They’ve Been Answering Them the Last 10 Years. Awww.
- 31 December 1994 was skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands changed time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13 and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively. Huh! Imagine being born on that day!
My Zone
Most Popular Posts in 2020
- A Leap of Faith
- The Unexpected Desolation of Getting What You Always Wanted
- The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
- What 2020 Taught Me…So Far
- The Christmas Tree Is Up
- Great Books I Read in 2020
- The Zone: No. 8 – December 3, 2020
- Garden Life
- The Zone: No. 9 – December 10, 2020
- How To Take Better Photos With Your Phone
A Quote I’m Pondering
Yes, I’ve always been a dreamer, and yes, I have always tried. And dreams are special things. But dreams are of no value if they’re not equipped with wings and feet and hands and all that. If you’re going to make a dream come true, you’ve got to work with it. You can’t just sit around. That’s a wish. That’s not a dream.
Dolly Parton, in an interview in Bust magazine
From My Photo Archives
The red walls of the Lidingö Boat Yard reflected on the ice.
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2021 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
Any New Beginning Is Forged From The Shards Of The Past
Any new beginning is forged from the shards of the past, not from the abandonment of the past.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
Neil Gaiman
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin
With the new year comes a refueled motivation to improve on the past one.
Gretchen Bleiler
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art—write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
Neil Gaiman
May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For,
May your arms Never Tire.
D’Simone
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