I am bad at personal retrospectives. While I’d like to say it’s because I generally don’t do them until my birthday (vs. at end-of-year like most people), that’s not the entire story.
It doesn’t matter if it’s late December or late January – I’m just bad at them. In possibly related news, I’m also bad at celebrating. Like, everything. Especially those accomplishments and moments in time that are worth celebrating.
I’m working on it.
So here we are now, it’s NYE 2017 (a.k.a. a year that made 2016 seem Not So Bad) and I want to think about some good things from this year. Here goes:
I made myself a list of gifts I gave myself this year. Standouts are a Dyson stick vacuum, Helen (my pink Brompton bike), a few pairs of amazing Fluevog boots, and Lambert the kitten. Ooh, and an awesome “spin your makeup brushes dry” device — my makeup brushes are now super-clean. Highly recommend that one.
Lambert is still on the list for freaking cuteness, even though she peed on my new backpack this morning for some unknown reason. I liked that backpack.
Work-wise, we also had some pretty impressive accomplishments as I look back over 2017. We built first the preview/pilot of Compaas, and then the platform version. We joined an accelerator and raised a bit of money to help the company grow. Compaas came out of beta at our first conference, and we even added our first customers.
Those accomplishments are worth a bit of celebration.
I finally started regularly listening to podcasts, drawn in by MFM and NPR Politics. I set aside Selfish Sundays to help me plan the week ahead while sheet masking my skin. I made many pizzas of varying quality, and eventually stopped pulling holes in the crust every time. I relished the newfound joys of DryBar blowouts and Fenty lipgloss.
I tentatively started trying new recipes in the InstantPot. Butter Chicken was good. My first cheesecake, kind of weird. That’s a work in progress.
SHB and I had a weekend away in there somewhere. It was a very good weekend away. I was glad for it.
I want to say next year will be better, but the best case is that it will be another mixed bag. If I’m very lucky — and I do so hope I’m very lucky — 2018 will be a mashup of personal and professional successes lumped in with terrifying externalities.
I hope we are all very lucky.