A glance back at a year full of lessons

One more year is ending, which is my favourite time of every year. It’s my personal Thanksgiving period, the last ten days of the year. It’s the time I recap the past 355 days and make tentative plans for the next 355 days. But this year has been special because the last time I learned so many things, not necessarily new, must have been at high school, which was quite a while back.

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A Profound Look at the Future

That the past twenty or so months have been hard on everyone except billionaires, who got richer, is hardly news. I guess many of us didn’t know exactly how hard these months will be and perhaps only the best among us, pessimism experts, foresaw how long the hard part will last. What was news to me, was just how deep you could descend into the pit of pessimism.

A Profound Look Back at the Week: January 25-31

This week’s profound look is late, for which I apologise, but work has this tendency to pile up sometimes and I value my free time, so it was bound to happen.

A Profound Look Back at the Week: January 4-10

Now that it seems 2021 has indeed told 2020 to hold its beer, at least in some parts of the world, most of the optimism we sent the old year with must have fizzled out. This is sad, really. Resist it. That’s what I’m doing, with mixed success.

A Profound Look Back at the Week: November 16-22

You know how sometimes you think “That’s it, it just can’t get any worse than this”? And then it does get worse and you feel this urge to drop everything and go somewhere and hibernate? Yeah, that’s what this week was like.

The Ethnologist

Vanya is an ethnologist. Yes, I don’t really know what this is either. Google it, it’s interesting. But she’s not just the degree she has. She’s one of the most violently positive people I know and I mean violently! She has no truck with any kind of hypocrisy whatsoever, and as if this is no reason enough to admire her, she is also a great cook and an excellent teacher. A children’s teacher, no less. say what you will, I firmly believe these things take a very special talent and since I don’t have it and never will, I admire the ones who do.