Best of Both Worlds podcast: 2022 Year-in-review

Well, 2022 has been quite the year. There have been ups and downs, and some quirky events and discoveries along the way.

For this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I decided to look at the year through the lens of our 2022 goals. We recorded an episode in late 2021 with our hopes and intentions for the year. We both listened to that episode recently (available here; we also looked through our various notes) and then reported back. What happened? What didn’t happen? What happened that we didn’t even think about?

My family did indeed move, and this new house feels like home. I launched Tranquility by Tuesday. By the end of December, I will have read all the works of Shakespeare (I’m almost there now!). In our goal-setting workshop, I said I wanted to write 365 entries (one each day) describing a moment in a character’s life over the course of a single day. I’m about 50,000 words into that project. By happy coincidence, the opportunity presented itself to finally learn some things about make-up. I traveled with the big kids to Paris, and went leaf-peeping in the fall. There were some random little adventures like driving in Manhattan (I’d never done that before!), recording the TBT videos, going to Las Vegas, taking two retreats with Sarah, etc.

There was also an element of surviving — five kids in four different schools, navigating childcare issues and so forth. But I’m still here! And excited to see 2023. Our goals episode will air right after Christmas. Hope your year has gone well!

In other news: Our Best of Both Worlds Patreon community is growing! We have great discussions going over on that site, and our annual goal setting workshop (led by Sarah!) will take place on Thursday December 15th at noon eastern. If you’d like to join us for that, just join the Patreon community before then. Membership is $9/month.

9 thoughts on “Best of Both Worlds podcast: 2022 Year-in-review

  1. Hi Laura,

    I am very impressed by your working your way through all of Shakespeare. I did the War and Peace reading challenge this year (though I couldn’t keep myself to one chapter a day…I tore through it by early February. Perhaps an interesting “know yourself better” question a la Gretchen Rubin– what’s less intimidating: breaking a massive project up into bite-size chunks that will take a long time or trying to knock it out as quickly as you can to get it over with) and am trying to come up with next year’s reading challenge. Shakespeare seems beyond me. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

    1. @Heather – if you can read War and Peace in a month I don’t think Shakespeare will be beyond you. I read the Wikipedia article summarizing the plot of each play before I read it. That helped me figure out who was who and what was going on. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty, but I had a pretty good sense of things (and I’m also reading the Harold Bloom Shakespeare book after reading each play to analyze a bit more…)

      I’m planning on reading all the works of Jane Austen this year, so that could be a good project! Maybe do a big pairing of the same theme/subject like The Odyssey and Ulysses? Or long books by women, including something like Kristin Lavransdatter and Middlemarch…

      1. Ooh, I love the idea of Jane Austen!

        Re: Shakespeare…I took Shakespeare classes in college and felt like every line was a clever little puzzle that took time and effort to figure out and appreciate. War and Peace was long but not hard, whereas Shakespeare to me feels very effortful!

    1. @Elisa – I did it! White knuckled, but I did it. And then driving in a few weeks later just didn’t feel like quite so big a deal.

  2. Oh I love this. I think I did pretty well on my 2022 goals. I tried to focus on things that made my life better – more social events, more time with my husband, etc. and I broadly achieved those. The things I didn’t get done are big (the book proposal) and small (getting my ears re pierced) but I think I’ve got a steer on the book, and I can get the proposal done in the spring, to allow me to apply for sabbatical for 2024. I fell off the W&P schedule halfway through and I wonder if I want to just finish it over the holidays. Will restart it today on the plane and see.

    I need to get back on track with my reading in translation project. My library access changed when we moved, but I bet I can get some from my uni library. Another holiday project – a spreadsheet with where I can get the books.

    1. @Cb – here’s hoping the ear re-piercing goes well! I thought I needed to get mine repierced but it seems to work ok with those reinforcer things behind my ears…

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