User Manual...

All through 2015 I posted a "Things that Made Me Happy Last Week" post every single one of the 53 weeks. At times, I got bored and lacked motivation, others I felt fake as at the time of writing the respective post (usually on Sundays, I always write weekly posts in advance and program them to go live at 9 a.m. CET), I felt anything else but happy. All in all, it was a good opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the good things that happened in the past week. 

This year, I have decided to write a weekly post on the prevailing emotion of that week or whatever I feel strongest about at the time of writing. This does not mean that on Monday, when it goes live, I still am as emotional as when I wrote the post, which, after all, is about the past week. Who knows, it might once aide my memory whenever I will want to look back and see what was on my mind, say in the spring of 2015.

Week # 3 | Disappointment: Tipping Point

Sometimes the floodgates just open and what you have tried to hold back for months, years even, can't be held back or swallowed any longer. Up to a point you manage to keep up your chirpy front, cheering up others and pretending that it's all rainbows and unicorns, telling yourself hat you are resilient and have grown a solid enough protective layer over the years. Who was I trying to fool? Not feeling appreciated sucks. Every single time. Big time.

Week #2 | Gratification: Not an Impostor after all

Last week I was in Warsaw. The reason for the trip was an 2-day-event I organised. It was the third (and last, under my lead at least) and the participants were 25 people from 9 countries I have personally "hand-picked" over the course of 3+ years. We had so much fun and I got great heart-warming feedback. You could call it a success. I don't know about you, but I often suffer from impostor syndrome, not in the sense that it keeps me up at night or that I feel inferior, but I am am a) not ambitious and b) often feel guilty that several people I know who work their lovely little behinds off in their respective jobs earn a fraction of the number on my paycheck than yours truly who never replies with "stressed" when someone asks how work is going. I have immense respect for my friends who have "real" grown-up jobs such as doctor or solicitor, teacher even, whereas the field I work in tends to take abstract concepts extremely seriously and I sometimes can't suppress a little Whatevs thought. Adressing "my" bunch in Warsaw, seeing them get to know it other better, enjoying the fun activities I tought up for them and staying interested and engaged with their laptops closed and smartphones out of reach gave me gratification and made me think that, possibly, I wasn't an impostor after all.

Week #1 | Appreciation: Winter Wonderland

Let's not dwell on the fact that it is clearly a conspiracy, no less, of the Heavens Above that it snows only on the day I have to leave for Vienna, but I was grateful to wake up to snow on Sunday morning. Technically, this is a picture from last week, but it snowed in Vienna on Monday as well and I still welcomed it despite the fact that it quickly turned into that ugly city-specific grey-brown slush on the street that you carry into your hallway.

LAST Things that Made Me Happy Last Week: Week 53

1. Skiing for the first time this (snow-deprived) winter.
2. Having the Australian and Mademoiselle in town.

3. The beautiful winter landscape in Klagenfurt - trees and bushes were magically covered in frost and were a good second best to snow.

***

Week 53 is obviously the last week of 2015 and I don't plan to continue this little series. It was an interesting experiment of sorts to take a few minutes each weekend to reflect on the good things that happened during the week. Sometimes I struggled, others I could easily have listed twice as many. This year, I will try a variation of the theme: posting a "Best-of" the respective week. This can be a thing, a person, or something abstract. Bear with me.

Tall Dark Stranger

One of my (many) weird habits is "collecting" horoscopes, i.e. either tearing out the pages from magazines or simply taking pictures of them and then looking at them a year later to see if anything actually happened. As we know (we do, right?) astrology is not an exact science so this is quite a reliable source of amusement. Above, you see one of my (= Aquarius) horoscopes for the past year. Apparently, I met the man of my dreams "between June and October". Hm, somehow he must have escaped my attention or looked the other way when our paths crossed. Damn! There is hope, however, as apparently 2016 is THE year for aquarii and I am due to meet the man of my dreams 2.0 already in February. Can you please remind me to be extra alert during the period from Feb 13 through 26?