Today is a day for posting retrospectives, so I will play along. It’s been a good year, if a tiring one.

I just remembered that the year started with a real professional highlight: I was on the Drew Barrymore show in early January! She was so sweet, and called herself an uber-fan, which was really exciting to one of my kids who kept pointing out that she is the girl in ET. The girl in ET read mom’s book! Nice.

I had done a pilot version of the Tranquility by Tuesday project in fall 2020, and (happily) got statistically significant results. So I ran the full Tranquility by Tuesday project in the spring with what wound up being about 150 people. Participants answered questions about their time, learned nine time management rules over nine weeks, answered questions about the implementation, and then reported back at the end of the study (and a month later, and three months later). I wrote the manuscript of the book, and am now on the second round of edits. As I’m reading various “best of” lists for 2021, I’m aiming to write one that will make it on to some 2022 lists. So that is a goal.

2021 was another year of the Before Breakfast podcast — a new episode every weekday morning. And Best of Both Worlds! We launched our Patreon community, and I have really enjoyed the monthly meet-ups.

I feel like much of the year has been consumed with home renovation stuff. We got our permit and our historic commission approval early in the year. We passed inspection (thus closing out the permit) this week. So all clear to move in! Phew, since I booked the movers for next week….I’m trying to keep the mindset this will be an adventure, rather than total chaos when no one can find anything and we have boxes and only half our furniture for a while…

The house really does look nice. There are a few things that are not done. Our shutters aren’t on, so the outside of the house doesn’t look finished. The oven arrived, and was dented, so it was sent back, thus putting us into supply chain chaos to get a replacement, so no oven until February. We can probably make do since we have a stove and a microwave. If not I guess I can get some sort of toaster oven? Our dishwasher also didn’t arrive, but we had kept the old one in the garage from before the renovation so it got reinstalled for the next few weeks. The fridge arrives — fingers crossed — and will be installed Monday. In time for the move Tuesday.

Due to a measuring snafu, there is no carpet in the playroom. That is coming in late January. As is wallpaper in another part of the house. Various pieces of furniture are back ordered. Some stuff that would have been junked will be moved, used for a few months, and then junked. (Or donated if possible…but some stuff is in pretty lousy condition.) Eventually things will be done. Or at least at a sustainable level of un-doneness. By the time I am writing my retrospective for 2022 I want to be feeling very at home in the new home.

I spent yesterday taking down kid artwork in the current house. Some pieces had been on the wall since 2013 or so, which was really giving me the nostalgic feels. This house has so many memories. I am excited about the new one though it is strange to think I only have a few more nights in this current one. And all this art my babies created! And now they are teenagers/pre-teens texting me. Well, some of them. I do still have a baby who will no doubt create his own art that can go up on the walls at the new place.

Even if we didn’t wind up moving during the calendar year of 2021, the year still brought a lot of transitions. One kid started high school, another started middle school, and another started first grade at a new school. It has not been 100% smooth, but we are muddling along.

I feel like I have put a few good systems in place. We now have a good meal system of doing Sunbasket kits on Monday and Tuesday, breakfast-for-dinner on Wednesdays, and make-your-own-pizza Fridays. That only leaves Thursday for figuring out (well, and weekends) but that all feels a lot more manageable.

It was not my best year ever for athletic endeavors, but I do keep running. I ran with a friend on the last Saturday of every month, which we kept up the whole year. We celebrated our streak by stopping (a few days before Christmas) at a brewery that we run past every time — it was quite tasty!

It was also not a particularly distinguished year for reading. There was one big win — I finished War and Peace after reading one chapter a day for the whole year — but I felt like I lacked the mental energy to tackle much else. I read some books on the natural world (a few titles on birds and hummingbirds in particular) and some books by podcast guests and that’s about it. I am not particularly proud of this low tally because I know I had a lot of time that I could have used for reading, including some brainless stuff if I had wanted, and I just didn’t. I spent a lot of time scrolling around on Twitter while nursing the toddler and trying to get him to sleep and such.

On the other hand, I did build a lot of Lego sets with the kids. And I did a number of 1000-piece puzzles. So there’s that.

Anyway, everyone is healthy and reasonably happy so on that measure the year has been a success. Much transition, many long projects shepherded through, and hopefully in 2022 I can start enjoying some of those things!

Happy New Year to everyone! Thanks for reading this blog this year. I really appreciate it.

In other news: I track my time and so I know how I spent all 8760 hours of 2021. If you’d like to find out where the time really goes — just for a week — I’ll be running a time tracking challenge from January 10-16. You can sign up here. I send you motivational emails each day, and I’ll be posting here about it too.

Photo: Empty pantry, ready for us to fill it…probably a metaphor in there somewhere…

We got the windows clean, the roof fixed (hello Hurricane Ida…), mums planted and — not coincidentally — photos taken of the outside of the current house for its upcoming listing. I’m a bit scared about the inside photos as there is just a lot of stuff. Seven people living in a house will do that, and in nice real estate photos, the rooms don’t even have waste baskets. But we will go room to room I guess and move stuff out and stage it and move it back.

In the meantime, the week also featured soccer, baseball, karate, math tutoring, Science Olympiad practice, gymnastics, my choir practice, alto sax practice + lessons, and the discovery that my daughter chose the trumpet as her instrument for school band/lessons…she was so torn between that and the clarinet. Here’s hoping she chose well. (Any advice from trumpet players out there?) I also bought presents for and planned her upcoming birthday.

In any case, we are now barreling into the last three months of the year. The fourth quarter of the year is a festive one (Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas!). It’s also an opportunity to end the year strong. On the work front, this is especially true for any organizations that do end-of-year-performance reviews. It should not be the case that what happens in October matters more than what happens in February but…we’re human. We naturally remember recent things better. So the next few weeks would be a great time to figure out a professional goal that is doable and get it done. Landing one big new client. Writing a white paper. Organizing that (virtual) brown bag lunch learning session. In my case, I plan to finish editing Tranquility by Tuesday during Q4, including (hopefully!) doing a short writing retreat that will allow me to focus on it for a few days without dealing with the window cleaning, kid shuttling madness that follows me around at home. We will see if I attempt NaNoWriMo. That might be biting off more than I can chew.

On the personal front, there is still time to achieve a goal or two that would make the year feel great. If you’re looking for a reason to run or walk more regularly, you could sign up for a turkey trot style 5k and definitely be in better shape for it just shy of 8 weeks from today. In general, three months is a lot of time. It’s not infinite, but it’s enough to do a lot. I hope. I plan to list this house (I won’t set a goal of selling it because that’s not within my control), finish with the renovations at the new one, and start the process of moving in.

I will finish War and Peace. I’m on page 1172 of 1455. I’m really enjoying this slow pace of reading one chapter a day. It matches up well enough in places on the calendar with the action in the story that I wonder if Tolstoy had that in mind. September’s chapters featured the invasion and burning of Moscow and the aftermath…and that is when it happened. So the early fall landscape descriptions seem incredibly apt.

My husband was traveling some this week too, and so I had a few solo mornings (well, solo until 8, but the morning often starts around 5:30 here). I have been really happy to have older children in addition to a toddler. This morning the 12-year-old built forts with him while I took a shower. It was so much more relaxing than trying to shower with the toddler in the bathroom. We take our victories where we can get them. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Photo: Progress on my fall-themed 1000-piece puzzle