Personal, Writing

42 Things That Made My Year (2019)

Growing oyster mushrooms from a kit. 
Making candy from the peel of grapefruits. 
Writing my first RPG after a year of wanting to.
Connecting with my femme peers and getting woo woo and weird at a women's day of empowerment at work.
Drinking good scotch, smoking a cuban and listening to coyotes with Paul. Watching him fall in love a little bit more with Albuquerque.
Everything DrupalCon Seattle: Introducing Dries, judging the Splash Awards, taking a leadership class, walking around in the Seattle rain and eating seafood.
Helping out on the Drupal Diversity speaker diversity training initiative. Taking the sessions myself and feeling inspired to get out in the world and help others speak more.
Becoming the leader of Drupal Diversity!
Eating on the patio at Taos Mesa with unexpected combinations of friends, scraping chocolate mousse out of a tiny paper cup with a tiny wooden spoon.
DMing Night Witches with new friends and feeling absolutely gutted by the ending they created.
Really, everything MañanaCon: Dragging myself out of bed to go play more games with friends.  Bumping into Dennis Hopper fans in the lobby. Smelling the lilacs as often as possible. 
Launching my Patreon
Looking at years old tracks under a culvert in the mountains — identifying coyote vs bobcat, snake, mouse, and wondering what rainy, muddy night drove them through here.
Returning to the very poor neighborhood where I went to elementary school to find a new wildlife refuge and bike path. 
Leading my first Uncaged D&D sessions at Slice & Dice.  Getting paid in pizza/game bucks! 
Refining my direction at work and becoming a community/Developer Relations specialist. 
Eating a pile of rijstaffel. Warm stroopwaffels while I wandered the Cuypmarket. Bread and cheese at an empty cafe area at dawn. 
Riding a Dutch-style bike to the Waterland. Breaking for pannekoeken and beer at a tiny adorable restaurant.  
Riding a Dutch-style bike around Amsterdam. I could have ridden that bike forever.  
Spending two days at the Rijksmuseum: It never quit.
Seeing the last three paintings Van Gogh ever made, laid out together
Learning that early on, Van Gogh didn't understand that you don't mix all the colors together.
Warming up my fingers and taking up crafts again. Finishing two years-old projects: Knitting some mittens, and embroidering a towel.
Serving as track chair for DrupalCon Amsterdam (Being Human) and DrupalCon Minneapolis (DevOps).  
Falling in love with a house. Buying that house.  Worrying about that house. 
Taking up drawing as a way to learn. 
Starting a diary. Nothing sexy, just a daily log of what I did, who I saw. 
Selling zines at my first zine fests! Santa Fe & Albuquerque.
Reading poems in the morning instead of checking my phone. 
Completing my Goodreads Reading Challenge!
Riding my bike along the bosque when the river was up over its bank. Feeling like maybe there is hope for this planet after all. 
Learning about water management in the Southwest. 
Going on a bee walk and learning how to catch bees (safely) in a net. 
Long summer evenings walking outside with my master naturalist class. 
Writing a 200 word RPG and reading the other submissions. 
Gaming with a new group of friends in our weekly game night.
Buying a Literary Witches oracle deck at Anne Rice's favorite book store in New Orleans. 
Reading these books.
Visiting so many independent bookstores in so many cities. 
Listening to two monks chant the gospels. I'm not religious, like, at all, but it was beautiful and felt truly…old.
Petting a cow and getting covered in cow goo as a result. 
Turning off social media. 
Hosting Thanksgiving for the first time ever. (We didn't burn the turkey!)

I picked this up from Austin Kleon, who manages to get to 100

BONUS THINGS I THOUGHT OF LATER:
Learning to can peaches and make jam.

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