Europe Recap

We recently returned from almost two weeks in Europe, and I thought I'd record the highs, lows, and "buffalos" (surprises) of the trip before it recedes too far into memory. This trip wasn't on our radar at all in January and was catalyzed by WanYing winning a place on the US National Paraclimbing Team in February. So now we're doing a surprise world tour to attend Paraclimbing Worlds competitions (it's the World Cup of climbing). What a delight!

Highs

• 
  WanYing winning her category at Worlds! She had stiff competition in her category, left qualifiers in first place, and emerged on top! Since it was the whole reason we were in Europe in the first place, it seems like winning should be at the top of our list of highs. If you missed her climb, check it out here (starts at minute 41) - it's amazing! 
• 
  Hanging out with Laura and Pau in Valencia. Since we were going to be in the neighborhood (the competition was in France, and all European countries are basically next-door neighbors), we decided to begin our trip in Spain. Our connection to Laura goes back as long as our connection to WanYing - Laura was a high school student who sponsored a Chinese baby in an orphanage nutrition program. That baby became our daughter, and we have stayed in contact ever since! This was the first time we visited Laura and Pau in Spain, and it was wonderful. They took such good care of us, and we are still a little wistful for the plates of jamon iberico and fideua (paella, except with noodles instead of rice and seafood instead of rabbit). 
• 
  Mont Saint-Michel. We ended up with a spare day in central France and drove to Mont Saint-Michel. An abbey and medieval city that took over an island that, once upon a time, you could only get to at low tide - it lived up to the hype. 

Lows

• All the peeing in the street in Paris. I mean, come on.
• Norman food. It turns out, we are not made for Norman food. Steve says I should have known what I was signing up for when the English translation on the menu said "pig parts." He was right. The "best" one on the plate was the smoked tongue sausage, which tells you everything you need to know.
• 
  Vending machine pizza. When we were in France a few years ago, Steve became enamored with vending machine baguettes. We found a machine, but it was out of commission for the month of August because its supplies were on vacation (ah, Europe), so we followed Google Maps to what we thought was another. It turns out that it was a pizza vending machine, and we figured we had come this far; we might as well get two (this was a huge mistake). We sort of finished one. It was not good, but it was memorable.

Buffalos

• 
  The Banksy museum in Paris. This was a little spur-of-the-moment excursion that ended up making our highlight reel. It's always fun when you get surprised by something random and fun. 
• 
  The Paris Catacombs. We definitely didn't know what we were signing up for, and the whole experience was memorable and disturbing (so many similarities with Norman food). It turns out that 10 million people were exhumed from their graves in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their bones were moved into the catacombs, which were originally tunnels left over from limestone quarries under the city. It's a sobering experience to walk the almost two kilometers of hallways lined so densely with bones. It's solemn and lovely and weird. Definitely memorable.

We had an amazing trip - we cycled through Paris, went to a macaron-making class, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, wandered in the Louvre, cycled 20 km (and back!) to a castle, ate snails, swam in the Mediterranean Sea, admired Paris from the top of the Arc du Triomphe, walked through Valencia, painted on the banks of the Seine, and marveled at the stained glass of Saint-Chapelle and Notre Dame. 

Now to start planning for WanYing's next competition - Korea and Japan, here we come!

Celebrating Long-term Goals

I've been reading Big Time, the latest book from my very favorite "productivity expert," Laura Vanderkam. It's a great read, and one of her suggestions for savoring and expanding one's experience of time is to set long-term goals that feel rewarding, take minimal effort each day, and build toward something big and celebratory. As I read about this strategy and felt energized about goals I could set for 2027, it occurred to me that I was already doing this with my year-long habit tracker. Still, it hadn't paused to complete my explanation by describing the celebration step! 

Maybe you can relate to my trouble here - I focus on the hard work and "how good it is for me," but I forget about the celebration that could cap off the whole experience and leave me feeling rewarded and delighted. So let's right that wrong and set aside time to celebrate!

This year, I am taking time to log each time I engage in one of the fourteen habits I decided to focus on. These are activities that generally leave me feeling happy with my day, such as working out, yoga, and journaling. Each time I engage in one of these activities, I add a square of the corresponding color to my tracker. 

But wait, there's more! Not only do I get to celebrate the habits I engage with each day with my special box of crayons, but I also decided to indulge in a special knitting project to celebrate this year. I'm making a Celebration Scarf! 

I'm only a quarter of the way through, and it's already a fun, funky celebration of my year of great habits. Each habit has its own yarn associated with it, and I use my habit tracker to determine the color repeats - so the scarf pattern follows my habit patterns!

I was thinking of my Celebration Scarf as a continuation of the habit-tracking project, but with Laura Vanderkam's help, I'm reframing it: my scarf is a cumulative celebration of all the beautiful habits I am focusing on this year!

What's a big project or big goal that you're working on that deserves a little (or big) celebration? Would planning a celebration boost your motivation and commitment to that goal? 

Checking in on Foundations

This year I took on a goal to lean into and enjoy foundational practices that I know make me happy.  I did some deep thinking about this because I really (really) didn't want these happy practices to become a checklist of drudgery. I know I have a tendency for the means to become the end, and in this case I wanted to stay focused on the fun - the tracking of the fun was just meant to focus and celebrate all the wonderful stuff I was doing! You can read about my decision to habit track here.

We're halfway through the year, and I wanted to report on my progress. I have a very colorful tracker, which is a lovely, tangible reminder of my very colorful life! 

It's been really interesting to see the ebbs and flows of my habits, when I lean into one type of activity and when I do more of another. My average week sees 30 distinct activities, which is super-cool data. It tells me that I'm living out my priorities in the ways I hoped and intended at the start of the year. 

It's interesting to see patterns and anomalies in my activities, such as the very un-fun week of March 8 when I had ACL surgery and basically took the week off from life. 

It's been really fun to see my habits play out on the page, and I've enjoyed this subtle nudge to do more of what I love each day. I'm planning to make a fun knitting project to celebrate all of this lovely fun played out in color, so I'll keep you posted on that! 

Overall, I am happy with this habit tracking and decided after consideration in early July to keep going through the rest of the year. I like the daily celebration of doing things I love, I like the gentle nudge to do more of it, and I like using crayons. 

What about you? As we hit the mid-point of the year, it's a wonderful time to look back and take stock of the year so far. What are you pleased with? What do you want to double down on? Anything you want to let go of? Clean starts don't have to wait for January; they're available any time!