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just life

2021 books

looking at my goodreads, these were the 14 books i made my way through last year:

some themes definitely pop out — there’s a bit of china stuff, some productivity or time-management, the green brothers new books… and some trashy stuff too that i made my way through as well, in a time when i was just craving distraction. not featured are the many, many fanfics i read in the wee hours of the morning, when i couldn’t sleep.

my trusty old kindle still does the job, and most of these were read on it. a couple were audiobooks, and the get together book was a hardcover freebie from stripe. i’ve just finished the first book of 2022 (meet me at the museum), and i hope this “new year reading energy” lasts for a bit!

Categories
weeknotes

weeknotes 1/22

– the first week of a fresh new year! a quiet week, with lots of planning and also lots of catching up for work. there’s always so much to do, and too few hands to do it… so one of the mottos for the year is to try to get better at delegating.

– doing wordle in bed with the boy in the morning. :)

– back to doing exercise… mostly in the form of riding my bike to the salt ponds and shooting some photos of birds. still counts, i think!

– taking notes on this unexpectedly nice list of 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying.

– i received a really nice and unexpected gift from a postcrosser, a set of cyanotype kits to make prints. i’ve been meaning to try these for years, but never got around to it. on the parcel, the person included a quote by writer iris murdoch: “one of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats”. sounds like a brilliant idea, and i plan to make an effort to dispense more small treats throughout the year.

– last summer, i collected seeds from carob trees that had fallen by the sides of the road. i soaked and put these on a tray before going north, and they are now sprouting. the guerrilla reforestation project is on! 💪

– i’m reconsidering my participation on the volunteering group, after some haughty interactions this week. what do you do, when faced with attitudes that you cannot stand for? do you leave, or do you stick around and try to improve the group? on one hand, i think life is too short to put up with this and i should just quit… but on the other, how are things going to improve if everyone leaves? so in the end i stayed and spoke my mind, but the whole thing left an unsavoury taste, and cast a shadow on the experience. :( i’m not sure where to go from here.

Categories
weeknotes

weeknotes 52/21

– returning home safe and sound on the last week of the year, after being thoroughly avalanched in christmas sweets… felt great! i had a nice time with the family, but i was definitely ready to come home, think about the year ahead, and have a quiet entrance in 2022.

– i ate so many persimmons these past two weeks! it was brilliant! my parents have a tree that had lots of them this year, and were happy to load my trunk with some for me to bring home. they were amazing, so ripe and juicy! probably one of my top 5 fruits.

– the fireplace has been going full speed ahead, making the living room a cozy corner where we hide in the evenings.

– we had a new year’s walk in the salt ponds and spotted 2 new birds, which i think was a good omen! one was a common snipe, and the other was an eurasian stone-curlew. both are super funky birds, but the stone-curlew definitely takes the cake, with its angry looking “eyebrows” and a very yellow eye. :D

– this misty morning view in cabanas. shortly thereafter, the clouds lifted and it was quite hot for a winter day.

Categories
one second everyday

2021, one second everyday

a full year in the span of 6 minutes still feels a bit like magic to watch. 2021 wasn’t very different from the previous year, and in my head, it got classified as a “pandemic part 2” of sorts. we huddled and hibernated in the first part of the year, then gradually opened up and ventured out of our shells.

there were vaccines, volcanoes in azores, and much time spent with family. there were sooo many video dinners but also some real dinners with friends, long walks and new birds spotted. there was much bread baked too, board game nights, some knitting and some volunteering. the walking desk had its brilliant debut, and the old phone drowned and got replaced by a shiny new one. we bought our house and got a new fireplace! plus, we didn’t get sick, which is a blessing i do not take for granted.

so many things happened, so much joy and laughter shared! i’m really glad and thankful for every one of these days. this could have been a really depressing year if we chose to see it that way, but instead we did what we could to make the best of it. still crossing my fingers we’ll be able to go to taiwan at some point… but until then, we’ll just enjoy what we have right now.

bring it on, 2022!

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just life one second everyday

one second everyday — december 2021

december at last!

long walks, guests, volunteering, traveling north, spending time with the family… a bit of everything thrown in the mix. :)