I postmortem each month shortly after it ends. Previously, I used these posts to hold myself accountable on progress toward my annual goals. Starting in January 2023, I broadened these posts to address more generally my observations and experiences for the month. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

As I always aim to do, I start drafting the year-ahead’s goals over the Thanksgiving week, and I did that again this year. Which means that checking progress on my current-year goals at the end of November, even though the year still has one more month to go, always feels like looking into the wayback machine.

Speaking of which, how did I spend Thanksgiving?

Decadently!

I considered inviting a few people over for dinner or even going to a restaurant somewhere, but decided to take the weekend entirely selfishly, regaling myself with a delicious lunch complete with cheese plate and bread from my favorite local bakery.

Let’s circle back to the top of November, though. I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Early in the month, I took the train to Milan to see friends passing through the city on their way back to the United States after they visited some friends who have a home in Umbria. While in Milan, I had lunch with a woman I’d met during June’s yoga retreat in Greece who lives there while my friends took a guided tour of the city. Seeing my friends from the States and reconnecting with Giovanna all in the span of a couple of days was a treat.

Early in the month as well, I finalized my choice for the novel theme I’ll plan out in 2024 while I revise the novel I drafted this year. Also, as I’d finished the first draft of this year’s novel at the end of October, I late in the month returned to the initial pages of the novel manuscript I completed last year, which I decided needed some adjustment before I go back out to market with it next year. (Those first few pages make or break a book’s chances.)

All this to say: Good progress on the writing goals this year and even in November.

My goals for 2023 included trying to really bolster my connections here in Lausanne; I’ve continued to join social events and activities toward that end. What a process, making friends, even if it’s a worthwhile one.

However, I don’t feel like I’ve had nearly as much opportunity to use my French as I’d have liked this year. Given how much time and energy (and money) I spent working to get my language level to its current state, I feel frustrated and stuck. Getting native speakers to hang with nonnative speakers for more than light activity on occasion is incredibly difficult. You add a language hurdle—or, as it stands now, mainly an accent hurdle—atop the eternal friend-making hurdle and, well.

I do have one Swiss-French acquaintance who puts up with me every few months; at midmonth, we went to an event that combined regional-food tastings with an iconic local museum, the Palais de Rumine, on a cold and rainy November Sunday. (At least we were inside once we got there.) In addition to seeing parts of the museum I hadn’t ventured into before, I got the chance to go back to the parts I love to visit, including the museum’s incredible and extensive cabinet-of-curiosities collection of taxidermied and preserved-in-jars animals and insects and, well, creatures.

Let’s see what December holds!