Month-in-Review Highlights: December 2019

I had a fuzzy-socks shortage crisis in December, which we solved on a visit to a supermarket in France with a limited selection. Panda bear fuzzy socks, anyone? Lausanne, Switzerland. December 18, 2019.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends, reflecting on what happened in general and, more specifically, in the context of my goals. Though I don’t share all my insights here, I have made it a practice to share at least one key highlight or insight. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

By the time I look at how I progressed in December according to my goals for the year, I’ve outlined my goals for the following year (and am often at least a few days into it).

Reviewing December becomes a review of the year in full and a self-assessment of progress against global goals for not just the year, but for the long term. (All these monthly and annual goals funnel into a bigger-picture plan, you see.)

So how did I do in December—and in 2019 in general?

French Comprehension and Communication

In December, I kicked French-class tail, despite the workload at FrogDog (and to the detriment of this site’s content upkeep).

I had a goal of reaching a certain level of French proficiency by the end of the year and, though I don’t know that I reached it entirely, I managed to make the last few months count. I feel a modicum of progress (finally, albeit with no small measure of frustration in the mix).

For me, living in a francophone region, reaching the point where I can manage at least a decent conversation in French is key to my happiness and general mental health. French language—comprehending it and speaking it—aren’t nice-to-haves, they’re must-haves.

Otherwise, no cultural events for me. No lectures. No readings. No theater. No museums (unless the subject matter is purely visual or I can rent an English-language audio guide). No networking events, whether for business or creative pursuits.

Over the year, I’ve seen so many interesting activities advertised—and realized that I could not viably attend because of the language barrier.

On a deeper and more personal level, no friendships. Finding one’s people in a new place is hard enough without narrowing the field only to fluent English speakers.

Also, no ability to communicate with most of Arnaud’s family—meaning I will continue to spend every visit with them as a deaf-mute, unable to understand what’s said, say anything, or connect with anyone, marinating in the feeling that I will never get to know these people and they will never get to know me. I had my loneliest Christmas in Normandy in 2018 because I felt so isolated in my own head.

Friendships and Local Connections

My lack of French-language speaking ability and comprehension and a hectic year of unpredictable and stressful travel and life events made my goal to build local friendships unattainable. I tried to participate in social activities where I could, but I couldn’t do them with enough consistency to foster deeper-than-surface connections.

Late in the year, I found a writing group; just spending a brief two-hour stint with other writers (mostly in silence, granted) reminded me that I need to find more creative spaces and more creative people in the new year to feed that side of my social network and serve one of my true passions. (Of course, for this, I’ll really need to speak and understand French.)

An Intense Year of Evolution in Business

Over the past year, we experienced an intense and exciting evolution at FrogDog. Among other chaotic happenings, we went through a process of complete reassessment of what we do, how we do it, and how we can best present it to the world.

Toward the end of the year, we launched an entirely new website based on this rethinking that’s still getting final touches made even today. Also, we solidified further our grounding as a team after our transition to a distributed workforce structure in the second quarter of 2018, shortly after which some of us moved outside our original geographical location (including me) and new people joined the company who’d never worked with us in an office setting.

We’ve still got a few things to navigate on these fronts in the year ahead, yet the results of a year of hard reevaluation and resetting feel good.

How about that Writing?

Thanks in large part to the writing group, December gave me the opportunity to accomplish a little more planning work on a fiction idea that I’ve had clunking around my head—but I came nowhere close to meeting my objective of having the concept fully outlined by the end of the year.

However, managing anything whatsoever with fiction nearly shocks me to acknowledge after a few years spent very, very far away from creative writing.

Fiction aside, I did manage to get back into writing in a big way last year. One of my goals and one of my happiest accomplishments in 2019 was reviving this site. Sometimes, I struggle with feeling that this site doesn’t have much real value and that I should expend my creative energies elsewhere (including on my professional work). However, life has gained so much vibrancy for me through regaining this creative outlet that I remind myself that simply creating and putting what I’ve created out into the world, even in the smallest of ways, does matter—even if only to me.

Onward to 2020

I had a minor-milestone birthday this year and a few other reminders that life is shockingly short and that I’m not at the front end of its span. (You can read my assessment of the 2010s for a deeper dive into this subject.)

As I look ahead into the next year—and the next decade—I hope that some of my accumulated life wisdom, even though far more modest than I might have expected by this point in my term on this earth—helps me further boil down to the necessities and focus on what and who matters.

Let’s make the year ahead count, my friends. For ourselves, for the people we love, and for the world around us.