20 minutes of French, German, Dutch, and Danish per day.
Ditto piano.
Starting to think it will take a miracle to manage all these lofty goals. Well. So be it. It’s a year that sounds like it belongs in a Science Fiction novel, after all. Nothing is impossible in sci-fi. Engage warp speed (and discipline)!
People like reading lists, they say. The problem is they (the lists) tend to get a bit same-y after a while (people do, too, arguably), so the trick as a writer is to come up with something new and exciting. Here is one you likely never saw before: 5 top ways to get hurt traveling!
Traveling gives me a great deal of joy, it is true, but it’s fair to say that ain’t always the case. So in ascending order of pain and hurt and general discomfort, here are the five worst experiences connected with my travels over the years:
5. Went kayaking off the wild east coast of Sardinia, wearing lots of sunblock but no good sunglasses. Fierce sun, wind and reflections on the water combined with intense heat to create a witches’ brew of salt and chemicals that got into my eyes, rendering me effectively blind, as I was utterly unable to keep my baby blues open – something of a problem when one has to navigate dangerously bad mountain roads to get back to base. In the end I drove at a snail’s pace, stopping over and over to pry my peepers open enough to rinse them with water. It took a night in absolute darkness before I could see normally again.
4. Went diving in the Andaman Sea on a live-aboard boat. That’s a small ship that is out in tropical heat for a week, with everyone living in close quarters. Long story short, I caught something that developed into high fever right as we were disembarking; flying home from Thailand via London with 39+ degrees’ temperature in cattle class was literally a nightmare – I was hallucinating, and so weak they had to get me a wheelchair to go from one plane to the next. Once home I slept more or less straight for 48 hours before finally recovering.
3. First time paragliding in Spain. One of the first attempts to get airborne properly, running down a gentle hill, I managed to rip a muscle in my groin just as I was lifted into the air. The pain was excruciating, but the forward movement and physics kicked in and I continued upwards, which meant I had to fly and land for the very first time while trying not to black out from the agony. To this day I don’t know how I managed. It took months of grueling exercise to regain something like normal function in my leg.
2. Another diving excursion, this time to the Seychelles. Made the rookie mistake of having local food that was probably washed in local water. Within a few hours our stomachs were rumbling, and before long we were two people writhing in gut-wrenching pain, before embarking on a night of horrors, as our bodies went into overdrive trying to purge themselves of the foreign germs; trust me, there is no feeling quite like switching back and forth between projectile vomiting and having your intestines go full fecal Jackson Pollock on the one shared toilet, whilst your friend is knocking on the door to be let in to have their turn, NOW.
1. A romantic trip to Granada and Alhambra might not seem like an obvious winner of this list, but my companion on this sojourn was someone I was very much in love with, and she had agreed to go only as a way to end our relationship on a high note, as she felt we weren’t right for each other. So while it was a lovely experience, and the sights of Alhambra a wonder to behold, it was still with very mixed feelings I went on it. And at the end she did what she had said she would, and ended things between us. She broke my heart, and it took years to mend.
So there you are. A Top 5 List like no other. Honorable mentions go to Barcelona and Amsterdam, where I broke my PBs for marathons – painful experiences in and of themselves, but disqualified because they also gave me a lot of masochistic joy. Hope you enjoyed. If you think you have my travel horror stories beaten, let me know in the comments!
I always try to sum up the year that was. This time around, it’s both easier and more difficult than usual. Easier, because life has been reduced to the bare essentials in many respects, and more difficult because… well, you know.
Corona/covid came out of nowhere and walloped the world in the face, and the world responded by reeling around like a clown as it tried to come to terms with this new reality.
As the illness went from being an underreported event in a far-flung place to conquering the world, masks became ever more commonplace, as did questions about Sweden’s approach to Covid, which I felt supremely unqualified to answer. Social distancing was the catch phrase on everyone’s (hidden) lips, and then Lockdown was a reality. The inherent flaws of humanity (Loo Roll Riots) and its capacity for empathy (daily Healthcare Applause) were on full display.
In our case the kids and their mom went on holiday to northern Italy in February, just when things got started there, so they had to quarantine before most people. Throughout spring the kids struggled with isolation, an entirely new work interface, and teachers who seemingly had no notion of the burden they were placing on their wards. Luckily for us, there was little work for interpreters, because there was no infrastructure in place to hold large multilingual conferences via internet, so we could help the kids with their transition to distance schooling.
Summer holidays were different, shall we say. Having struggled to even get to Sweden, we isolated as best we could. Whether rafting with the kids and my sister and her family, or kayaking with my brother, I slept outdoors pretty much the whole time – either in a tent or in a hammock slung between a couple of trees. It was lovely, but very brief, as I didn’t get all the leave I asked for (in spite of there being absolutely zero work, my employer insisted on having people on standby…), meaning I had to return to Belgium, where I was forced to self-isolate, and so couldn’t work anyway, of course.
Instead, my mind turned to all the things I had been contemplating doing for a long time, and hadn’t got around to. August saw me take on a flurry of projects: getting solar panels installed, buying a hybrid car, getting bees, planning a swimming pond, constructing a duck house, volunteering at a wildlife rescue center, getting an e-bike, making jams and juice and canning fruit and sauces. It was good.
Then September came around, and a return to school and work, but not as we knew it. School was a strange hybrid, work even more so. Even after more than half a year, both organizations were clearly struggling to come to terms with the new parameters. There was still precious little work for me, so I planned on going to the French alps for a week of paragliding. It wasn’t to be. La rentree had the predictable effect of making cases surge again, and I had to stay home. This was a blessing in disguise, as our beloved cat Misty suddenly died; had I gone I wouldn’t have been there to bury her and grieve her passing with the kids – a poignant reminder of how many people lost loved ones without being able to be there! As it was we buried her in her favorite spot in the garden on the last day of summer. She left a painfully large void in all our lives.
And so we struggled on. Like everyone else we have tried to cope as best we can. In many ways we have been incredibly lucky, in that no one in our family has died from Covid. We still have our jobs. We haven’t been too affected by the many nasty (and under-reported) side effects of Lockdown and isolation, such as domestic violence, depression, substance abuse (ok, fine, sugar consumption levels have been too high). The garden has been an oasis and a constant source of joy.
It does sort of seem like a lost year in some ways, but at the same time I feel very strongly that the world needed this enforced pause to stop and take stock and reflect on where we go from here. I have certainly done so. And even though my ambitions for this year were largely knocked sideways, I have still managed to fulfill some of them: apart from the projects already mentioned I reconnected with old friends and made new ones – you know who you are! – and I did have some fantastic adventures in spite of the limits on travel. Forced to stay at home I did read a lot more than I otherwise would, and played a ton of piano – ninety-nine more years of solitude and I might even get good at it…
So there you go. A year like no other. Some good things, mixed in with a LOT of crap. But this, too, shall pass. Vaccines are coming, the Trump era is hopefully nearing its end (and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see him and his cronies go to prison!), and maybe, just maybe, we can build a better world on the ruins of this one*. If there is one thing that this year has instilled in me, it’s the need for everyone to pitch in and do what has to be done in order for all to prosper.
Here’s to making sure that things improve in 2021!
*Of course, we probably have not seen the last of it yet. Trump declaring martial law in 2021 seems unlikely but then so did Brexit in 2015, and now we have Russian oligarchs buying lordships in the House of Lords even as the country prepares to hurl itself into the abyss.
Not content with having had a semi-personal audience with the Pope the previous day, my companion is hell-bent on seeing St Peter. So back to the Vatican we trek, and since we’re there bright and early we get in without having to face the massive queues that form later on.
The Basílica is erected on top of earlier churches, on top of the burial place of Peter, Jesus’s main man and preferred apostle, the first Pope, and gatekeeper to Heaven if you believe the marketing hype (hence the papal insignia is a pair of crossed keys – one main and one spare, presumably…). Interestingly, basilicas where court buildings in Ancient Rome, and all cities had one. I guess the reasoning is that when you’re visiting his grave you’re also being given a once-over ahead of Judgment Day. If people knew that they might not be as keen to get inside… but inside they go, and so do we, taking in mosaics and statuary and relics and gold filigree and marble and whatnot.
The Pope’s not home, but there’s no denying his work place is impressive. Especially if you climb the cupola, which we did. It’s some 500 steps of ever narrower, claustrophobia- and cardiac arrest-inducing stairs before you reach the viewing platform at the top (presumably unique in that you can really see the whole country from it). Once there it wasn’t the view that captured my imagination, however, but the candle holders on the outside of the curving roof. Whose job did it use to be to climb around on the outside of the dome to change and light candles, and how hard do you have to believe in God before you’re willing to take it?
See the candle-holders? No rest for the wick-ed…
Leaving the lofty heights behind, we venture on to the Vatican museum, which houses two millennia’s worth of art. This one time only we give in to temptation and buy tickets that allow us to jump the queue that snakes around the wall of the Papal state (Note to Trump: when your wall is built, headhunt the Indian gentlemen who offer these golden tickets outside Pope’s Place – they will earn you (another) fortune!).
Inside it’s equally crowded, but here the orderly lines are abandoned in favour of tour groups that move like solid masses of flesh, their guides herding them like human-sized ducklings trained to follow a brightly-coloured piece of cloth on a stick. It’s tiresome, but the art is fabulous, there’s no denying that.
When we finally reach the Sixtine Chapel, the guards and signposts have the audacity to claim it’s a holy place and that photos aren’t allowed. I figure they lost the right to claim that when they started charging approximately a gazillion visitors per day close to 40€ per pop to see the place, so I took plenty – more than I would have done otherwise.
I’m going to assume you knew Michelangelo painted the ceiling, but what you possibly didn’t know (and they still don’t tell you there now) is that he painted the shroud that God is flying around on when he imbues Adam with life (see centre of the pic above) so that its outline is precisely that of a human brain! This fact was only brought to light by a neurosurgeon relatively recently, when he noticed its undeniable similarities. Imagine that! What a gutsy move: 400 years ago, in the very heart of Christendom, this man dared defy dogma and pointed out (albeit very subtly) that the brain, rather than any deity, is what make humans unique! It’s like The Da Vinci Code, only real, and better.
Damning evidence?
Once we’d dreamed of Heaven, we land in the gutter. Or at least we try. More specifically, I want to see the Cloaca Maxima, the sewage system created by the Romans and still in use today. The Atlas Obscura mentions it, but glosses over two things: it’s damned difficult to find (we try in several places, and the only thing to come of it is a very specific joke (Why did the chicken cross the road? There might be a cloaca!)) and when we finally do find it we discover it is very decidedly closed to the public. Shit.
One room apt. Airy. Large bath.
At least we got to see even more of the town this way. Interestingly, the tradition of painting walls and ceilings lives on today. There are stencils hidden here and there – some funny, some vulgar, many surprising. Apparently youngsters make them and/or collect them – something I thought was a useless fact picked up in the latest Spider-man movie; and yet here I am, Marvel-ling at them.
There’s street art of other kinds, too. Not graffiti, thankfully, but more talented offerings. Any city that has thousand-year old statues in Renaissance settings is doing something right; my favourite is the statue of Marcus Aurelius a-horse in a square designed by our old friend Michelangelo, but there is other stuff on display, as well.
I came to Rome to celebrate New Year. We didn’t coordinate it, but by pure coincidence, so did lots of other people. And here I was thinking winter would be off-season. Silly me…
Having spent the strike of midnight on the field of Circus Maximus (together with 30,000 others) and bought a bottle of spomante from an enterprising vendor at Colosseum after that, my travel companion and I slept in on January 1st, but then vended our way slowly towards the Vatican.
The best thing about Rome is that it is shock-full of beauty. Roaming its streets is a delight. Every corner you turn, every alleyway you head down on a whim, there is more architectural grandeur and dizzying history on display than you can find anywhere else. Villas, palazzi, churches and roman ruins are everywhere. The Jewish quarter and Trastevere stand out, but it really doesn’t matter where you go, it’s all a feast for your eyes.
One of my absolute favourites was Palazzo Spada – sumptuous home of a cardinal who clearly was a man of the world, as the house is decorated with friezes depicting lusty fauns and nymphs. Not content with a giant house with adjoining gardens, the good cardinal also used mathematics and other tricks to create optical illusions to further improve the grandeur of his home. The distance from the woman to the statue at the other end of this colonnade?
Considerably less than ten meters. Really. It is. Tricky bugger.
When we finally got to the Catholic centre of the universe it seemed most of the city was gathered in the piazza. We had planned to see St Peter, but instead we got to hang with his present replacement, Franciscus, who spoke to the crowds from his balcony.
I have no idea what he was on about (bad sound and Italian conspiring against me), but the devout roared its approval, and he insisted on being in a selfie with me, so I guess he is a likable guy.
Second window from the right, top level: Pope.
The various other popes have certainly left their mark on the rest of the city as well over the centuries: every other edifice seems to have been adorned with their names, more often than not combined with the medieval equivalent of a papal graffiti tag – who knew their collective rap name was P-Max?!
The only institution that is possibly more venerable in Rome than the Pope (at least according to foodies) is Alfredo, the birthplace of fettuccine Alfredo, so that’s where we headed next. The walls are filled with portraits of famous patrons, and the atmosphere of religious raptness that falls over the dining room whenever the head waiter rolls out his little trolley to perform the mixing of the fettuccine and the Parmesan is no less magical (sorry, wonderous) than the miracle priests perform when turning bread and wine into the body of Christ.
Is it good? Yes. Undoubtedly. The pasta is done to perfection, the Parmesan (aged two years) is powerful yet subtle, and since carbs don’t count when on holiday we have a large portion each. And yet I can’t help but feel that it is really nothing more than really fancy mac ‘n’ cheese.
Be that as it may, others have noted before me that the strength of the Italian kitchen lies not in the complexity of its dishes, but the superior quality of its ingredients and the masterful way in which they are combined; that is certainly true at Alfredo’s, but also in virtually every other eatery we encounter. We have delicious melanzane parmigiana in modest neighbourhoods, we find the best tiramisu in the world in a hole-in-the-wall called Pompi (the queue runs into the street at all times during the day) – if it hadn’t been for one evening when we had what can only be described as a Fawlty Towers experience (where the serving staff would appear at random intervals with orders that no one recognized as theirs, thus putting the wait in waiter), it would have been a perfect score. As it was, we hiked over 20 kilometers per day and I’m still convinced we racked up a calorific surplus…!
We’re in for a new year again, and I feel I have found a model that works for me (no, not Claudia Schiffer): Keep your ambitions S.M.A.R.T. and make sure to make the most of time,.
So I’ll stick with the familiar format – develop as a human (intellectually and physically), travel, have new experiences, and set myself new challenges – one trip or challenge per month on average, for a total of twelve.
Trips: I have nothing planned (beyond the fact that I am in Rome celebrating New Year as I’m writing this), but hiking somewhere with my brother, taking the kids on several trips (the first one in February), and paragliding in either Spain or Switzerland (back allowing) are definitely happening.
Challenges: As last year was plagued with injuries, I don’t dare set any fitness goals at the moment. I do hope to improve my fitness, but in what way remains uncertain as of yet. The ideal is a workout per day, of some sort.
In the workplace things are equally up in the air, with my job as a roving reporter having come to an end, and nothing concrete to replace it. I want to keep writing and working with communication one way or another, tho, and I have a few ideas – let’s see what happens.
I already know I want to stay vegetarian for the coming year (having stuck with it for two months I see no reason to change back to a carnivorous diet), and I want to continue to stay off refined sugar, so that’s two. I really want to learn how to paraglide properly, which makes three. Also, limit time spent on social media (more difficult than it sounds?) – four. Keep a diary – five. Read (at least) one non-fictional book per month – six. Improve my piano and French skills, for a total of eight. And linked to all this: use my time more efficiently and wisely.
There is a funny passage from the book About a boy (later filmed with Hugh Grant in the lead) that has stuck with me:
His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.
The protagonist of the book is a time waster, but the concept works: divide your day into time slots, and make sure to use them. That will be another challenge.
Why do this? Well, first of all, because, as the poet Herrick wrote in To Virgins, to make much of time:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying
and this same flower that smiles today
tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
the higher he is getting,
the sooner will his race be run,
and nearer he is to setting.
In other words: Our time is limited, and every breath takes us closer to death. That’s grim, as realizations go, but if that doesn’t light a fire under your ass to get things done, nothing will. Also, to quote Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.
Or rather, I wanted to make sure that I would be more likely to achieve my goals, so I resolved to be smart and make ’em S.M.A.R.T.– Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Did I succeed? Yes and no.
Chess: ✅ I played every day for a month and got the rating I had set my mind on. (Then promptly lost it.)
Reading: ✅ One non-fictional book per month. Done.
Piano: ❎ I did play, but didn’t learn as many pieces as I had hoped. The temptation is to stick with the ones you know…
French: ❎ I didn’t learn anywhere near as much as I had planned, mainly because I had to focus on Danish.
Travel: ✅ I went to Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles, Norway, Italy (thrice), and Denmark (plus Sweden), which is less than usual, but still acceptable, especially since Egypt, Italy and Norway was with the kids.
Fitness: ✅ The year was marred with injuries – first recovering after the paragliding incident, then a wonky neck, a messed up Achilles’ tendon, a tennis elbow, and finally a slipped disk – so running and biking and swimming suffered. I did manage the Paris marathon, and a runstreak of 100 days, but I’m nowhere near the distance goals I set myself for runs and biking. Nor did I learn to crawl, but I’ve racked up some 100 gym sessions, including an ironstreak of 40 days or so, which has meant three or four extra kilos’ worth of muscles.
Challenges: ✅ Apart from the aforementioned run- and ironstreaks I’ve successfully given up coffee, tried intermittent fasting for a month, I’ve become vegetarian, and I’m currently on a no sugar diet, so that’s gone well. Less well went my attempt at keeping a diary – I kept it up until Denmark, but then fell out of habit, unfortunately.
Work: ✅ I added Danish to my language combination, and continued working in Communications. In addition to that I MC’d a couple of conferences using participatory leadership, which was fun, too.
Blog: ✅ I increased my readership quite spectacularly this year (from just shy of 3,000 readers to 5,500, and from 5,000 views to nearly 10,000), which is really gratifying.
So. What worked and what didn’t? Some goals turned out to be insufficiently specific, such as “learn a piece of music”; others were unattainable due to factors beyond my control (the fitness targets) or had to be downgraded in terms of priority (French, when I was paid to go learn Danish), but overall it’s a sound principle, and one I will continue to use in 2019.
Now all I have to do is decide what those goals should be…
I was thinking about what I want to try to achieve in 2018 when I came across some good advice that really resonated with me. If I have failed to reach my goals in the past, it’s nearly always been because I haven’t made sure they were S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. So that shall be my credo for 2018: be smart about what tasks I set myself.
The fundamentals haven’t changed: I want to develop as a person, intellectually and physically, by testing my limits, working diligently and hard towards certain goals, and I want to travel to see the world and broaden my horizons, ensuring that by the end of the year I can look back and see progress and time well spent.
So: smart intellectual challenges – the ones I’ve worked on for a couple of years now still remain the same: I want to read more non-fiction, get better at piano, French, and chess. That’s not very specific, tho, so measuring progress will be key; I need targets I can quantify. One book per month. One new piece of music learnt every two months. One hundred French words per month. And as for chess… well, getting a rating of 1400 before the end of the year would be an easily measurable goal, if not necessarily that easily attainable. (I’m hovering around the 1300-mark as I’m writing this…). Plus I will note down every half hour spent on each activity, thus keeping a tally for accountability purposes.
So I’ve got all of those down to an A.R.T. Physical challenges are a little different, mainly because of the uncertainty I’m living with at the moment, so for 2018, I have decided to change tack a little. For my first challenge in January I will do a runstreak. Running every day will hopefully allow me to rebuild what was damaged in the accident in November. If that goes to plan, Paris marathon in April will be another milestone on the road to recovery, and if that goes well I’ll sign up for either another ultra marathon, or a full length Ironman. Or both.
Alas, there are too many unknowns at this stage for me to know if I will be able to run such distances again, but if I can, then a total of 1500k each of running and biking seem attainable goals overall. At least I know I can bike, so if running is out then I’m doubling that number for biking (and only watching Netflix while on the stationary bike will kill two birds with one stone – limiting my Netflix binging AND encouraging more time in the saddle!).
Weights have never been anything but a complement to my other workouts – now more so than ever as I try to strengthen my weak leg – but again, if I find I don’t recover my running capacity, I will focus more on getting strong/building muscle. Having always been skinny it would be interesting to see if I could actually muscle up.
As for swimming, I want to learn how to crawl properly! At present I can hardly do one length in the pool, and even though I managed the Ironman 70.3 anyway it would be nice to shave off five or ten minutes from that time, so learning how to crawl at least a kilometre is another challenge.
I will be working more in 2018 than I have for a decade, which will hopefully have the dual effect of giving me the opportunity to take on more interesting work on the job, and allowing me a bigger travel budget, as, happily, my children have said they want to travel more with me, so that will affect what trips I take this year.
2018 promises an Arab spring once more, as I’m going back to Morocco in January and have another trip to Egypt in February (with the kids). I have a week of holidays in March that I don’t know what to do with yet – downhill skiing would be nice, but again it’s dependent on me making a complete recovery. I want to go back to Spain and get a fully-fledged paragliding pilot’s licence. Hiking in Iceland would be lovely, the last part of Bergslagsleden still beckons, and I want to do at least one journey further afield – maybe watching the great sardine run in South Africa? Or taking the kids to the US? There’s no shortage of possibilities.
Other challenges: I wouldn’t mind doing more for the environment. This could involve installing geothermal heating in the house, keeping hens for eggs, joining a wind power collective or other changes. One thing I do know I want to try is becoming a vegetarian. At least for a month.
Not eating any sugar in any shape or form may be another challenge, and limiting my social media intake to half an hour per day wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
And of course I want to continue building my blog, writing about my experiences for the joy of writing, but also as a living testament to what I do with my life when I don’t have my kids. Hopefully my readership will continue to grow, but that is less important. If I can inspire only two people, that is more than enough for me.
Here’s to a S.M.A.R.T.er future!
P.S. All this goes out the window if I were to get my dream job, of course… 😄
…and it’s time to summarise what’s happened this far 2017. As has been the case these last couple of years, I set myself certain tasks in January, to be completed over the next twelve months, and at the halfway mark it makes sense to take stock, to see what has gone according to plan, and what hasn’t.
Looking back, it’s quite a lot crammed into six months, so I’m pleased with that.
I’ve managed to work out quite a lot (unsurprisingly, what with the races) but not as much as I had set out to do in total – weeks of hiking and skiing and diving have prevented me from reaching the goal of a marathon run and biked every week, and I haven’t done much yoga either. But then there’s still six months left to remedy that.
Have I developed my French, my piano and chess playing, and done more non-fiction reading? I certainly got off to a good start, doing thirty minutes per day of each, but a good friend giving me a Netflix password threw a big spanner in that particular structure. I haven’t completely derailed, but there have been leafs on the tracks, shall we say.
As for taking on new tasks at work, I have, happily. And not least because of this very blog, in fact. Turns out people at work read it and thought I might do good in Internal Communications, so from now on I will spend one day per week as a roving reporter, highlighting goings-on in my work place. Very happy about that.
So what’s next? I will try to make up for lost time in those areas where I haven’t quite managed to reach my targets, obviously.
I’ve still got the mountain ultra X-trail coming up in the beginning of August, and ten days of hiking the Bavarian alps hot on the heels of that. After those ten days I don’t really have any plans for the rest of the year. An acquaintance has invited me to Bilbao, and another to Nepal, so those things might happen. Or not. Readers should feel free to make suggestions.
I still want to try and beat my marathon record before the end of the year – I’ve improved significantly on my personal best for shorter distances, but whether that will translate into a new marathon PB remains to be seen. Time to start looking for a fast race, in any event.
At work I have made a promise to attempt to add Danish to my official language combination, so that should keep me busy for quite some time (maybe there are Danish movies on Netflix?!), and the new job will hopefully continue to present new challenges, as well.
All in all I feel quietly confident that the second half of this journey will be as filled to the brim as the first half was. Come fly with me!
2016 is coming to an end. It seems not long ago that I sat down to set out the goals I had for the year, and now the time has come to summarise what I have accomplished, and what targets I failed to reach.
I wanted to challenge myself, have new experiences, travel, go on adventures and develop as a person. Overall, I think it’s fair to say I have.
I overcame my fear of diving, and went not only to Nemo33, but also on two marvellous diving trips, to Thailand and Malta. On top of that I travelled to Mallorca, Luxembourg, Barcelona, London, Leeds, Edinburgh, Sweden, Rome, Switzerland, and Sardinia, so I certainly fulfilled my ambition to go on adventures.
I challenged myself in other ways than diving: bungee jumping and canyoning demanded overcoming myself mentally; and taking on not one, but two new roles at work has certainly brought new intellectual challenges and opportunities into my life, for which I’m very grateful.
The main challenge of 2016 however was gearing up for the immense task of running an ultra marathon. It took two marathons to prepare for that adventure, along with untold hours of physical exercise, but I did it, and couldn’t be happier with the result.
Not everything went according to plan, however: my grand design to develop as a piano player looked set to succeed until too much travel meant having to give up on regular lessons, which in turn left me disinclined to practice.
The same is true for my ambitions to improve my French – I started out well, but a lack of structure meant I let it slip by the wayside, almost without noticing, and I didn’t read as many books as I planned, either.
I didn’t bike as much as I had planned – the lofty goal of 2000 kilometres turned out to be more than twice the distance I actually covered, and I didn’t participate in any kind of Ironman. I did run the 1500 kilometres I had set out to do, however.
Oh, and I did write about it all here – no mean feat in itself, either.
So, what to learn from all this? First of all the importance of setting goals. I set out to do something every month, and on average I did, even though some months by necessity were more intensive than others.
Secondly, the need to have clear-cut, measurable targets if you want to achieve something; having UltraVasan as a goal allowed me to plan what I needed to do to reach that level of fitness, week for week.
Third, to push beyond your comfort zone. If I don’t, I tend to not get anything useful done, but by forcing myself to face up to my fears I have had a much more rewarding year than would otherwise been the case.
What I take with me most of all going into 2017, then, is that excellence is a habit. No goal is achieved in one great leap, or overnight, but by chipping away at it, you can do wonders.
I came to Rome to celebrate New Year. We didn’t coordinate it, but by pure coincidence, so did lots of other people. And here I was thinking winter would be off-season. Silly me…
We’re in for a new year again, and I feel I have found a model that works for me (no, not Claudia Schiffer): Keep your ambitions 
At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.
I was thinking about what I want to try to achieve in 2018 when I came across 
