Not a letter, but the friends are here.
This strange year started in the aftermath of a difficult 2020 and my recovery from burnout.
I should probably write a whole thing about burning out. It was awful, urgent and it changed me. But there are always silver linings. In an urge to regain agency and make time for myself, I developed systems, routines and habits that made everything outside of work more intentional and relevant — as it should.
One of the exercises which started with the first 2 letters here in this space, is good finding. And it is really a practice where every day whilst sometimes overwhelmed with information and stress, you take a beat to look at the accomplishments, the progress, the things that brought you joy and made you smile. So, this thing you are reading is sort of scaled good-finding thing for the whole year.
I won’t bring you the ‘this was a year of learnings’ because — although true — I have reflected enough on what I did learn and what was just despair framed with optimism. This is not LinkedIn and I’m not a clickbait-y networking personality to squeeze bullet points from anything.
But I do think focusing on the good trumps all the bad we’ve all gone through — which were pretty mild in my case since thankfully I am healthy and haven’t lost loved ones or a job.
As we come to the end of 2021 (or 2020s) I thought it would be a good exercise to look back to a few moments, people and things that made 2021 more bearable, fun, heartwarming and hopeful.
Here you go:
- Crossed a life-long dream from my list and visited the Abbey Road Studios. Twice
- Went on a little pub crawl around London with Cotta, Arthur Petrillo, Júlia, Reinaldo, and always Larissa
- Was taken on a pub crawl with Billy, Mafê and Estela in Berlin ❤
- Spent a fantastic week in Portugal, where we met Pedro from Nature-Affairs.com — an incredible human that guided us through Setubal, and had another incredible dinner with Zambrano — btw meeting him for incredible dinners in different countries is becoming a trend
- Celebrated my birthday meeting with actual humans ❤ Pinho, Manu, Ronaldo, Raquel and Arthur
- Upgraded my HiFi sound system and it changed everything. 🤯
- Added many records to my collection
- Saw my great friend Jonny Bond in London
- Kind of found our favourite restaurant in London: Brawn
- Did the AltMBA which sort of changed everything
- Did very well at work
- Got vaccinated!
+ Music, Books, Shows, Youtube and Movies:
Book Highlights:
- Read a personal record of 36 books — Thank you Ricardo Motti for the inspiration and for being my book shaman
- Project Hail Mary — SO GOOD
- Art of Possibility — Recommending to everybody
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
- How to Write One Song
- Burnout— Really useful
Music Highlights:
- Rodrigo Amarante — Drama
- Bruno Mars: An evening with Silk Sonic
- George Harrison — All Things Must Pass 50th Anniversary Vinyl
- Emma-Jean Thackray — Yellow
- Adele — 30
- Celeste — Not Your Muse
Screen Highlights:
- The Beatles — Get Back // Life-changing! You have no idea how happy I am with this series.
- McCartney 3, 2, 1
- Succession — Season 3
- Billions — Season 5
- Dune
- Ted Lasso
- The Great
- This is Us
- Youtube: Professional Musicians React
- Youtube: Samir and Celebrity Home Shopping
- Youtube :Institute of Human Anatomy
That’s it. You didn’t ask for it, but here’s all I can offer for free at this moment. :)
Happy Holidays!
