2017: A retrospective

Every year around christmas there comes a day when I sit at home on my sofa, wrapped up in a blanket with a Marshmallow-hot-chocolate in my hand, and reflect on the past year. What my mind does in those moments is essentially something we do at work every second week: a retrospective. At work we sit together with the team and think about what went good or bad in the past two weeks and what we can try out in order to keep improving. The methodology behind this is called “keep – drop – try” and seems to me very suitable for private use as well.  So how about 2017? What is there to keep, drop or try out next year?

∞ Keep

Karaoke

I have always sensed that karaoke could be loads of fun and now – since I have awesome colleagues who are as keen on chanting awkward pop-songs with questionable lyrics into sticky microphones as I am – I can finally do it on a regular basis. I don’t know what it does to my brain, but it has a therapeuthic effect on me:  I always feel happy afterwards.  Besides Zumba and riding rollercoasters, karaoke is my personal guarantee for an endorphin rush and therefore definitely a keeper for 2018.

If you are planning to sing your heart out you can do in the Melody Karaoke Bar in Frankfurt or at the Hallertor in Nuremberg (beware of the stickiness!).

Taking impulsive decisions

I remember the moment distinctly: There were only a few tickets left and they were  insanely expensive. Upon refreshing the browser they were suddenly sold out – my heart stopped. I refreshed once more and – shock – the tickets were available again and so I hit “Buy” without thinking. After five months of sheer excitement I finally went to the Rolling Stones concert and it was worth every single penny. This concert is something I will still talk about when I am as old as Mick Jagger is now. And the whole incident taught me that there are some experiences you cannot put a price upon.

Reconnecting with old friends

Since my not-so-new-anymore job requires me to travel to Nuremberg regularly I got the chance to reconnect with an old friend from elementary school. We were very close as kids and fortunately have managed to reestablish this closeness as adults. I remember a particularly nice evening with her at the open-air cinema. It was 10pm, thirty degrees and we were watching a very bad chick flic with Scarlet Johnson seated in beach loungers that got very uncomfortable after a while and one specific joke got us laughing so hard, that tears were streaming down our faces. I definitely want to have a night like this again in 2018.

↓ Drop

Over-economizing

I tend to spend my money very carefully. Which is good on the one hand, but it sometimes gets in my way as far as memorable or even life-changing experiences are concerned (see “Taking impulsive decisions”). Why not book that flight to Singapore? Who knows what might happen in the future and whether I am still able to do all that I want to do when I am older. So maybe I should cut myself some slack and drop the over-economizing on everything. Because surely a mind full of happy memories is worth more than a full bank account. (And yes, this is coming from somebody who works at a bank.)

Finish reading books I don’t like

I really do love books and whenever I occasionally grab one that does not speak to me at all (try reading “The best of Adam Sharp” by Graeme Simsion – I expected a romantic love story and got a weird weepy main character that ends up having a threesome with his lover’s husband) or that is simply too sophisticated for me (did anyone actually understand “Unterwerfung”, the scandalous oevre by Michel Houellebecq?) I feel a strange inner need to finish the book no matter what. This has to stop! At a birthday party last week a former German literature student pointed out to me that life simply is too short for bad books. And she was right. What applies to bad relationsships, unenjoyable food or stupid movies is valid for books as well. Next year I will drop this habit and only focus on books that engage my brain in a positive way.

♥ Try

Climbing and advanced hiking

To try out climbing has actually been on my to-do-list for 2017 but I messed it up somehow. So 2018 is definitely gonna be the year when I grab some gear and climb up a so called “Klettersteig”. Since I have always wondered whether I am afraid of heights this should be a good occasion to find out. Also, after discovering my love for hiking in 2016, I am now planning to try out some of the more advanced trails. The book Wanderlust, which I bought at the Frankfurt book fair in October, provides awesome food for thought as far as hiking is concerned. My number one destination for 2017 is the Malerweg in Saxon Switzerland.

More cooking and baking

It’s not that I don’t cook or bake, but I definitely do have a certain respect for rather complicated recipes. I am afraid of messing it all up – but then again, why would that be such a desaster? Most things in life are trial and error and only practice makes us better. So I am gonna try it all: the badass chocolate cake and the pumpkin risotto. The Spanish paella and the Portuguese pasteis de nata. I already started last week by preparing an awesome pumpkin and chestnut tarte that involved kneading dough, caramelizing chestnuts and cutting pumpkin – the latter being a challenge by itself for somebody with no measurable arm strenght. How it turned out? Delicious and worth every minute it took to prepare.

2018: I am ready for you 🙂