Notes on a Gregorian year

Culinary skills acquired:

• whetstone use (after a fashion)
  
• baby's first marmalade
  
• Kardemummebullar
  
• cheese-making! (paneer; an ambition for the next year is mozzarella)
  
• pasta (gosh but wrangling the machine is An Adventure)
  
• macarons (via the magic of Italian meringue)

Miscellaneous other skills acquired:

• finished the Duolingo Turkish tree
  
• seriously levelled up in hair-dying skills (including managing a pretty good rendition of this general principle on a friend with a hair type I hadn't previously bleached or dyed, but I'm also pretty pleased with a peacock-shades oil slick, and Adam's current rainbow gradient from roots to ends)
  
• submitted baby's first first-author paper, with Significant General Academic Progress, particularly with respect to Having Boundaries
  
• acquired a physio/exercise regime that works for me (and then promptly let it lapse, but having acquired the principles I can come back to them)
  
• substantially levelled up in technical writing on a reasonable and sustainable schedule
  
• so. much. emotional. regulation.

Intentions

I did not do a very thorough job of explicitly writing about last year's one-word intention -- or even necessarily of keeping it consciously in mind -- but I think I have, in a variety of ways (identifying my desires and boundaries and limits; choosing to have difficult conversations honestly), done pretty well at it.

And I've been feeling drawn to connection over the last few weeks, so there's something for 2018: social time and thoughtfulness and maintaining relationships.

[food] Macarons

Adapted from Hannah Bond's blog for my workflow.

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