Another year went by…This is my 8th Year-in-Review and as in the prior years, I’ll go by the alphabet.
Altenberger Dom Advent Market
For the first time, my online shop tiny little joys went offline on a Christmas market. It was more stressful than I had anticipated but I had amazing helping hands and there was real joy in creating a beautiful booth, full of light and full of love and in communicating with wonderful shoppers directly. There was a couple, who bought a sachet of stars for their bakery lady, who always gives them extra treats. A tall tattooed man bought a tiny lasting red rose for the woman of his life. Not as a Christmas present, as they did not do Christmas Gifts but to give her that evening and show his eternal love. There were many customers, who returned a second time to buy even more gifts or to bring along other people. The temperature was around zero degrees, but the atmosphere was warm and cozy. Right after the weekend, I wasn’t sure whether I would want to do it again but with a little hindsight I say yes, this has to be repeated!
Freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin — inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night. — John J. Geddes
Blau-Gelbes Kreuz
The War in Ukraine put a heavy stamp on 2022. What happened there is sheer unbelievable and worst of all — it is not yet over. Before 2022 the Blau-Gelbes Kreuz (Blue Yellow Cross) was a small non-profit organisation, organizing amongst other things vacation trips for children from the East-Ukraine. During the past year, they grew above and beyond themselves. I wished I could’ve been of more help there but sometimes even volunteering isn’t that simple and the best intentions aren’t always fruitful. We do what we can in our own little ways and together with a group of women, we raised 5.000+ Euros with the sale of Peace bracelets. Most of this money went to the Blau-Gelbes Kreuz. A part of it went to Tetyana, a woman from Lviv, who helped my cousin on his way out of Kyiv. I’ve written in more detail about this as well as posted my cousin’s updates on my site www.titiatournois.com. Beyond that, I launched a colouring for peace website, which was probably not the most impactful thing I did. Nevertheless, I still send out colouring cards with every order, as even though it will not change the war it might just spark a moment of mutual awareness and sympathy. I’m a big believer that also tiny actions matter.
I cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do.
― Jana Stanfield
Colleagues
One of the most valuable things about having a job again is that a job generally comes with colleagues. I love having wonderful colleagues. That support each other, encourage each other, and bring out the best in each other. Being remote means we don’t see each other daily but we meet up often enough to feel a connection beyond mere tasks. One of the prerequisites of connection is openness and a good dose of humor. With those ingredients, all the sub-optimal shit (that honestly comes with any job), loses its edge.
Great colleagues are those who make work seem like play.
Determination
The line between stubborn and determined is fine. Last year before easter, looking for creative inspiration in some old booklets I bought as a teenager, I found an Easter Egg, made entirely of tiny paper rolls. As soon as I saw it, I couldn’t resist wanting to create such an egg. My first attempt failed miserably. Five hours in, I broke the egg into multiple pieces. I could have stopped there but then again I couldn’t. As I started over from scratch, I took more time, I was more precise and more cautious. Three days and 15 hours of precision work later, the egg was there. It’s a fragile piece. It probably contains less than an A4-sized piece of paper in total. Feels like a tiny little masterpiece…
You can find inspiration from others but determination is solely your responsibility. — Dodinsky
Eighteen
Parents are often reminded that “kids grow up so fast”. It’s a cliche but it is also damn true. My son turned 18 last December. The poor guy was sick as a dog and spend the week before and after his Birthday, drinking tea and broth and suffering like only man can. Not a nice way to celebrate your eighteenth birthday but it was a milestone nonetheless. We got him a huge inflatable 18. We had to go to three shops to finally get what we wanted. When we walked out of the shopping mall, the balloons shrank so heavily that they looked ill too, it was just the cold air outside, as soon as we entered the house they recharged. Every time I pass them, I’m a proud mom of two teenagers that are both turning into fine adults.
You may outgrow my lap, but you will never outgrow my heart.
Fifty x 3
Talking about growing up/older and birthday parties. Three dear friends celebrated their fiftieth Birthday in 2022. Two of those parties were on the exact same weekend. We weren’t quite sure if we still had the stamina for partying through the night, two days in a row. But we did ;-) Each of those parties were wonderful events with friends, dancing, drinking, and lots of catching up. Fabulous being able to do that again.
The night is not just here to sleep.
Game
Over the years, I’ve collected tons of questions and turned them into “half sentences”. With those sentences, I created a game named “Ergänze mich” = “Complete me”. It’s a game where players do not play against each other but with each other. There are three levels of prompts. The one-star prompts are fairly easy ones like “My favourite ice cream flavour is…”. The three-star prompts can be harder to complete. For example: “My first memory…” or “The most important decision, I had to make…” or “The most beautiful compliment, I once received …” The cards can be used as conversation starters and work for families as well as friends or colleagues. I played it with several groups and enjoyed it tremendously. It was also lovely selling this card game on the Christmas market.
Sell what you Love and Love What You Sell
Harbour
A home should be a safe harbour. On December 31st, we weren’t quite sure how our dog would cope with the sounds of the fireworks. Last year, firework sales were forbidden so there was a little noise but not very much. This year it felt like everyone was so eager to make up for last year that already the day before New Year’s Eve firecrackers were heard on the street. Hazel didn’t fancy her walks these days. Yet inside the house she was perfectly fine. We had friends over and headed out as the clock turned twelve to toast with the neighbours. I was eager to get back to the house to see how Hazel was doing without us. When I got back, she was in her cozy basket and as always wagging her tail to tell me she was happy to see me. She was not particularly anxious, she did not tremble. She felt safe. Considering she’s a shelter dog and still is anxious in many situations, this was heartwarming. She has found her safe harbour.
Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them and filling an emptiness we didn’t ever know we had. — Thom Jones
Illness
Just before Christmas my mom was diagnosed with stomach cancer. There are still tons of questions unanswered, especially around the severity and the option to operate. Hopefully, she’ll have more clarity soon. For sure this has changed our conversations. I asked her if there was anything on her bucket list that has not yet been ticked off. No, she said. There’s nothing left undone or unspoken. Isn’t that beautiful? She lives a rich life. Not in the financial sense. But rich in friends, children and grandchildren, hobbies and interests, and rich of an openness to life, that I wish for everyone to have. She would like to live another ten years or more. But she’s not afraid of whatever comes. That’s inspiring and it makes me proud as well.
Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.
Juice
For many years one of our neighbours organises bio-organic oranges imported straight from a Spanish farm. They are wonderfully sweet and tasty. They’re almost too good for juice. I brought two of them along when I visited my brother and my mom laughed at me. It reminded her of my father’s sister, who’d bring along an apple and present it as the greatest gift of all. All I could think was, isn’t that just lovely? I’m a big fan of tiny little gifts.
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness. -Richard Bach
Knives
Christmas 2021, my sister cut her finger as she cut the bread she had brought along. We spoke about quality knives that evening and in 2022, one of the first resolutions I stuck with, was to get a set of quality knives and an elegant, plain, black, knife block. Most probably my best investment in 2022.
Keep it simple in the kitchen. If you use quality ingredients, you don’t need anything fancy to make food delicious: just a knife, a cutting board, and some good nonstick cookware, and you’re set. — Curtis Stone
Leendert
Even though my dad is no longer right here with us, he was with us many times and many moments. He was with us while we spend our family weekend in a lovely big house in Limburg, he was with us at the Christmas table, he was in our thoughts, in our dreams, and in our anecdotes. One day last summer, when I walked along the fields in Groede, a heron stood at the side of the road. As Hazel and I approached the heron, it stood there patiently, waiting for us to come closer. The heron looked at us as if he wanted to say hello, then he spread his enormous wings and flew off. Just like the heron that flew right above our head, the day after my dad died.
What we once have enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes part of us. — Helen Keller
Mud Angel Run
Wet, muddy, pink, crazy, and exhilarating. With a group of global ladies, I ran the mud angel run. It’s a women-only obstacle run drawing attention to breast cancer. Our group spirit was plain awesome and I’m so happy and grateful that I joined the group. It was a cold day but even the outdoor cold shower, to get at least some of the mud off, felt refreshing. It might have helped that I carry a few extra kilos ;-) Plus we were smart, the Therme was right next to the event location and after our cold shower, we spend a wonderful few hours warming back up and relaxing.
Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with. — Robert Brault
Neighbours
After a three-year pause in 2022, our bi-annual Fauthstraßenfest took place again! We live in a U-shaped street with a wonderful “Wendehammer”. One of those German words for which there is no English equivalent. It is a turning area for cars, where the road only continues by a full turn. This “Wendehammer” is the perfect location for a “Bierwagen”. Ha, another typical German word. A portable bar really. A trailer with a roof, and a bar, beer from the tap, a fridge and water tap to clean glasses. Add a large grill, about one-hundred neighbours of all ages, a popcorn machine, music and you have the event of the year. Together we formed the number 2022 with our bodies and got a great drone group picture to memorize our great neighbourhood.
No one is rich enough to do without a neighbour. — Danish Proverb
Outline
I’ve been working together with a friend on a book project for quite some time now. We kicked off 2022 pretty effectively with a great outline. After that, we got distracted by all sorts of things. With the big worldly things, like the war in Ukraine, but just as well with the small everyday stuff like a Thermomix Dinner Party. We haven’t made much progress last year. Revisiting the outline though, this book project is not something we should stall on. The idea is too good. We still have a long way to go, yet we also have come further than we might currently appreciate.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. — J. R. R. Tolkien
PMO
PMO stands for Project Management Office. It is all about managing multiple priorities and projects. I hadn’t come across this term before but I was immediately intrigued and believe every mid-size to large company would benefit greatly from such a focussed effort to put the dots together and see the bigger picture. Way too often we succumb to the error of viewing projects and efforts in isolation from each other. I had a chance to take an excellent seminar on the topic matter and help initiate such Project Management Office at my current company. This year will show how fast the new team can move and bring about a cultural change as multiple-project-management touches many interacting disciplines. It’s never easy to go head-on deep into a subject and then pass it on, to other hands and let them work the magic. The good thing is, one never stops learning, about subject matter as well as about oneself.
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught. — Winston Churchill
Quite
Isn’t it interesting how one and the same word, can have quite a different meaning, and nonetheless, we know quite well, what is meant when we read the word as part of a sentence? Quite can mean wholly, entirely, completely, absolutely, just as well as, a little, not very much, fairly, somewhat, a bit, or something in between all of those. Last year was quite lovely. Neither the best year of my life, nor the worst. Even though, I couldn’t quite tell you, which one of my years would fit either one of these labels. In the end, no year is quite like the other and still not quite that different either. Looking back, things tend to blend. When did I become the me I am now? Oh, getting into quite a philosophical mood here ;-) It’s rainy today, as I am writing up bits and pieces of this review. Quite, quite often, gets confused with quiet, yet it’s quite something different. If there’s one thing, I missed doing the past year, it’s taking some quiet time and playing around with words. Not in a desperate need for anyone to read them. Just to play with them.
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. — Neil Gaiman
RFM / Riesen
I’m breaking rules. I’ve decided the double up on the R and kill the X.
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency and Monetary. It’s a common framework to classify and cluster larger customer data sets. I had a blast last year, tag-teaming with a fabulous colleague, developing an RFM skeleton to be pretty damn proud of. That feeling of doing something worth doing in a way that ticks off all the boxes of a job well done, that’s what we aim for!
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize that it is play.
— Alan Watts
Whereas Riesen, well, those are chocolate-covered caramels, or as my husband calls them “Plombenzieher”. They are certainly not the best thing to eat. Neither are peanut M&Ms and Toffifee, my other two “sins” where I just can’t quite find the right doses. Yet, what would life be without guilty pleasures?
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
― Oscar Wilde
Sleeping
So many people have sleep issues, and there certainly have been times when I’ve battled with the night myself. 2022 though was a near-perfect sleep year. Perhaps the dog gives my days, the structure I need, to sleep like a dog ;-)
People say, ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ as if it were nothing. But it’s really a bizarre activity. ‘For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I’m going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.’
If you didn’t know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you’d seen.
They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the ‘mind adventures’ got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren’t unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.’
So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you’re in a science fiction movie. And whisper, ‘The creature is regenerating itself. ― George Carlin
Temperature drop
They say weather-wise April does whatever it wants. Last year, from April 2nd to April 3rd there was a 20-degree drop in temperature, from one day to the next. Crazy. When I browsed my picture library, it went from snow to pure sunshine. In 2022, for the first time, I joined a Fridays for Future walk. That by itself is surely nothing to write home about. I’m not a great example of sustainable living. I have hope in and for humanity though. I listened to the audiobook “What we owe our future” by William MacAskill, but it feels like it went in one ear and out the next. Around me, I’m seeing people taking a much clearer stand. They give up flying, they no longer own a car, they buy more unwrapped food, … the beauty of a review like this is that it makes me recap, not only about what I did but just as well about what I did not do.
Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope, but I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is. — Greta Thunberg
Unnützes Wissen
Sometimes it takes a while for an idea to come to fruition. Already in 2020, I made an advent calendar full of unnecessary facts. It was a first simple draft, printed on my home PC, each card cut by hand. It took two years for this prototype to get back onto my table and this time I got a small sample of just fifty calendars professionally printed. They sold out in two days. I ended up re-ordering three times and sold 600+ of them. If you imagine, this is just a side job and I package and sent everything out myself, this is a large number. My office is still in what I call “creative-chaos-mode”. My list of wanna-do’s is long but one of my mottos is and will always be; I’m not in a hurry. I have enough time. There is no wrong or right moment.
The maximum success is reached when you are never busy.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Vacation
Looking back at my photos from 2022, I realise how fortunate we are. The morning shots I made in Serfaus while walking the dog before we went off skiing take my breath away. The sky, the mountains, the sunrise. Okay, I must admit, one morning, Hazel decided to roll and roll and roll on the field that had just been fertilised with compost. She stank so heavily we had to bathe her from top to toe. But even that memory makes me smile.
The summer in Italy was hot. We stayed at three different locations, each having their own beauty and their own pitfalls. Like always. The first location was gorgeous but hard to reach. We scrammed our brand new car because the road was awfully narrow. The second location we had a parking spot right in front of the small hotel, no car issues but before we even got to our room, we saw the pool as well as the hundreds of Italians who all came just for the day. Oh well, the evenings were nice and quiet and the food was incredible. At the last location, the host forgot to tell us which door would be ours and we had to ring more than ten doors in this big apartment house, before Mary, a lovely old lady, was able to help us find the door that belonged to our set of keys. Next to the sun, the ocean, snorkelling, and the Italian food, our dog actually swam, and this time completely voluntarily ;-)
Oh, the places you’ll go — Dr. Seuss
Workaction
Besides vacation, this was also my first year to have an official Workaction. For three weeks, I rented a small house in Groede, close to where I grew up in the Netherlands. Our daughter worked at a local restaurant and I worked my normal job from there. Hazel loved the beach walks and we were very happy to learn that if she sits in the front of the car, she’s much happier and no longer pukes. My mom cooked and we were able to spend a lot of quality time together. On her Birthday, it’s also the wedding anniversary of my aunt and uncle and we treated ourselves to big delicious fresh lobsters. To be repeated!
One of the secret benefits of using remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone’s performance. — Jason Fried
Yeast
Already in my last year-in-review, I wrote about Babka, the chocolate bread loaf I tried to make every month. Well, it requires yeast and what I like about yeast is putting the dough in the fridge at night and then taking it out in the morning when it is more than twice the size. It’s such an astonishing transformation. I can’t help being fascinated by these things. Like the process of making Kefir. Last year, I did that for the first time. One day I walked the dog and passed by a lovely acquaintance. She carried a paper bag and Hazel — who is usually shy with strangers—, was more than attracted to this paper bag. I asked what was in it and she said: “A bottle of homebrewed Kefir, it’s actually very good for dogs”. She passed me a jar with milk and a Kefir grain and gave some good instructions. And indeed Hazel loved it and so did I. As the summer came it became harder to keep up the process and now the grain is still in the freezer. It’s about time to get it back out and restart making Kefir!
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It’s just the same with you — and just as vital to nature. — Marcus Aurelius
Zopf
On our way to Italy, we stopped in Switzerland to visit a very dear friend. I told her during our car ride, I read Der Zopf a book by Laetitia Colombani. She not only knew the book but had several other books from her as well, which she happily passed on to me. During our two-week vacation, I ended up reading seven books. Der Zopf (In English The Braid) remained the most impressive one. It’s a story about three women, on three different continents, with very different lives and different problems to tackle. Along the way, all three storylines get interwoven, braided together like a Zopf.
Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world. — Jeanette Winterson
