23 things that made my 2016

Sarah Park -
  1. Being able to cook a real meal in this kitchen.
  2. Finding hikes in the city.
  3. Air conditioning.
  4. Regular domestic life things. Things like descending into plant madness with the addition of more houseplants and succulents than I can count, and handfuls of airplants that are successively killed off weekly. Cleaning out the closets. Losing the will to fret over the white rug that was never going to stay white anyway. Buying bath towels. Stepping on dog toys in the living room. Finally dropping off that dry cleaning. Roasting chickens. Learning how to install a dishwasher. Baking my dog a cake.
  5. The sights and smells of returning to the mountains.
  6. Emerson's t-shirt, but not so much the reason why he's wearing it.
  7. The fact that I live so close to Springfield, and learning that there's no small amount of Butterbeer that doesn't immediately amplify a hangover.
  8. Buying an Instant Pot and making this phenomenally easy Kalua Pig.
  9. The chicken and waffles at Ad Hoc that prefaced an unbeatable afternoon of day-drinking under the sun in Napa with great friends.
  10. Using tools like Highly to keep track of what I've been reading on ze interwebz, and to make it easy to revisit when I inevitably forget everything I've ever read.
  11. Flying over great big cracks in the Earth.
  12. The Pacific Ocean, paired with a delicious IPA.
  13. An amazing year of television, and finally understanding it's not a waste of time if you love every single minute of it - even the terrible ones.
  14. Having Chef Ludo Lefebvre deliver a grilled cheese sandwich to my table during my 32nd birthday dinner, and not even noticing because I was too busy laughing with my eyes closed.
  15. Learning that actually achieving a goal isn't always more important than the simple act of pointing a flag in the direction you want to go, then being open to unexpected detours that grab your interest along the way.
  16. When the sun stays out for hours after work in the summer months and I get to walk slow circles around the swimming pool with a skimmer, Bluetooth headphones, and a backlog of good podcasts. Some favorites that kept me company this year: The Weeds, Reply All, The Memory Palace, Hidden Brain, Invisibilia, 2 Dope Queens, Dear Sugar, Mortified, and so so many more.
  17. Making it through a meditation session without immediately rolling my eyes and being disgusted with myself, thanks to 10% Happier.
  18. Remembering that reading YA novels still counts as reading.
  19. Lifting the burden on my brain by dumping all of my weird ideas, thoughts, and to-do's in a bullet journal.
  20. Falling back in love with shooting little videos on an old Super8 camera I bought after a short stint of transferring people's home movies onto DVDs many years ago. Falling pretty hard back out of love with it after seeing how expensive the film is to buy and process.
  21. Crying over fictional characters in children's movies.
  22. Making limoncello using lemons off the tree in our backyard that produces a ridiculous amount of fruit even though it's clearly the most hideously unhealthy citrus tree on our street.
  23. My unhealthy love/hate relationship with this city.