Weird Categories and Favorite Tools of 2022

All the cool kids (okay, Dan Ward and David S. ) are doing it, so I made a semi-quick and very quirky list, too, of stuff I encountered in 2022 that made a difference for me.??These are from both my professional and personal lives, though probably a little heavier on personal this time.

The year overall:??For me, 2022 wasn’t the pivotal year that 2021 was but more of a year of intentional pivoting. If I were choosing runes to represent the two years, I’d say that 2021 was?hagalaz?(hail, catastrophe) whereas 2022 has been thurisaz, (self-induced change but not without consequences). I ended 2021 with the end of the long goodbye to my mom after 3 grueling years of dementia.??I’m now, a year later, starting to remember her as she was before, so a lot of the sadness is starting to shift.?2022 has been a year where I’ve refused to put up with drama or any BS or waste time on people who don’t reciprocate my energy or projects that don’t glow.??Just done with all that. Done.??Watching my mom fade away around the same time that 2 of my closest friends died of Covid at the end of lengthy hospital stays has made me rethink my willingness to endure many of the things drilled into me as the proper or polite thing to do.??It's been a monumental year for my family and for me—new baby, another move (within Tampa), new friends, new professional connections, new professional projects, new creative projects, and still not completely done with probate.

Best book:??I didn’t read 1 business book a week as usual, and this year’s reading was far more varied.???The one I learned the most from was?Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar?by Jessie Inchauspe who has about 5 unusual tips that make a world of difference.

Best rare (but not antiquarian) books I added to my collection:??The Bristol Merlin:??Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment?and?Last Words: Variations on a Theme in Cultural History.

Music discoveries:??Russian Doomer music?and?Mongolian throat singing—both a nice balance to Taylor Swift.

Favorite personal life podcasters/influencers:??Belightcare?on Instagram provides tips for dementia patients’ caregivers and loved ones.??I?wish?I’d had this available to me for the last few years.??AislinnEileenCoaching?is a blast as well because that’s my kid talking about stuff I exposed her to when she was a young teen—it stuck and she’s expanded on it $ucce$$fully. I also adore?“The Creative Penn Podcast,”?this year, because Joanna Penn is always so calm, positive, and future-focused when it comes to creatives and their work and marries up creating and technology.

Courses and new skills:??A big shoutout to?Digital DNA,?which was fantastic for learning more about software acquisition and very “accessible.”??Best course out there on the subject.??On the personal side, I took courses and coaching in?copywriting?and in?audio production.??My plan for the latter was to record my own audiobooks (nice creative touch), but a week after I started the course and started setting up my home studio, a herd of elephants moved in upstairs.??Therefore…(shift, shift, pivot)…I’m looking at?Google AI?and possibly?Apple AI?(coming soon) and?Speechify?(also coming soon) for audiobooks. Audio AI has greatly improved and no longer sounds like robots reading the FAR. Whole new world.

Guilty pleasure of 2022:??“Magnificent Century”?on YouTube.??In Turkish with English subtitles.

Health devices/apps of 2022:??I started wearing an?Oura ring?in January, and it’s been super useful in my biohacking, especially when combined with my Apple watch’s health features. The only problem is that it looks like a wedding band and I usually wear it on my left hand unless I’m cold, and I get really strange looks if I’m spotted changing hands in public places. I tried a lot of apps and devices this year and most were like, “nah, this is what we offer and we’re not interested in our outputs being in your Apple Health aggregator”—so they weren’t much use to me.??The most useless were snarky to me when I asked valid questions and they wouldn’t i$$ue a refund when I cancelled immediately due to the app or device not being what was presented. One that did take my feedback with grace and issued a refund immediately was?Natural Cycles, which actually didn’t have my birthyear in their calculations (Hrumph!), but I was super impressed with what I saw of the app and what they could mean for my daughters’ generation. They’re now considering expanding to a menopausal module, which I would recommend if it’s anywhere near as good as the current 3 modules for women either trying to conceive or trying not to.

For the home:?One of the small businesses I supported this year was?Eucalyptus Farms?through a subscription service. Every month, or however I set it up, they deliver a small bouquet of eucalyptus, which is different from spray-painted and dye-bleeding eucalyptus I find in most stores.??To me, eucalyptus seems to clean the air or at least freshen it. I hang the new bouquet over my shower and the steam makes my bathroom smell like…herbal tea? Another favorite for my home is?Homemory Battery Tea Lights.??They come on every night around dark, throughout my hippie lair, and I love it.

Medications and supplements:??Hands down,?Trulicity?was a miracle drug for me.??I postponed trying it because I thought I could control my blood sugar with diet and exercise, but a foot injury ruined my regimen early in the year, so I relented. By the time my foot healed, I didn’t want to go back to the struggle. The side effects for the first two months were awful, but?Chimes ginger chews?effectively defeated the nausea—highly recommended!??I have to note that with my DoD retiree insurance, I pay around $70/month instead of $1000-$1200/month for Trulicity. All those years of paying huge premiums for next to nothing are paying off for me now. The first pharmacy I went to declined my insurance and tried to charge me $3000, so I marched over to nearby?Walgreens?and got great customer service.??Second medical/supplement find of 2022 was?vitamin patches.??They absorb through the skin vs liver, and did a nice job of raising my Vitamin D better than pills.???Supplements that were superior in helping me get deeper sleep were?magnesium?and?gaba, a big difference I could detect on my Oura ring.

Favorite gadget for home:??When I was at younger daughter’s house, I noticed she had motion-sensitive lights on her staircase so I could find my way through a dark house.??I adopted the concept and placed?MLambert 4-pack motion sensor LED night lights?at the base of my bathroom counter/cabinets, so they’re not seen at all until the room is dark and??someone approaches them.??Great for me or for guests to find their way to the bathroom or kitchen in the middle of the night without waking everyone!

Healthcare:??Yes, yes, it was a big health year for me.??Makes sense to focus on self-care after 2020 and 2021.??I tried out a?concierge?(but doesn’t call himself a concierge) doc in 2022.??I have a monthly membership that evens out with insured visits elsewhere and same-day appointments and immediate access to my doctor.??He’s experimenting with the new business model and it suits me. Yay for experimenters!??I get quarterly bloodwork, including testing for vitamin deficiencies and hormones, which means if something is off-kilter, I can pivot quickly. This model is really focused on healthcare rather than the usual sick-care system. I pay him to help me stay healthy and I’m satisfied with the results.??The other big healthcare tool for me this year was a?full body scan, including cardiac?at the beginning of the year. Because people in my family who don’t live to their 90s tend to die of things that grow unseen, I decided to pay the hefty fees for peace of mind and/or a baseline.??I had a few non-problematic oddities that I could only have discovered otherwise through surgery later in the year, so it was definitely worth it to me to have answers already when questions arose in the summer. I’ll have it done annually.?

Favorite tech gadget:??This is new and I’ve not maximized it yet, but I’m toying with an?Elgato Stream Deck XL?for macros and quick launching on my “writing” computer.??Another favorite, especially for travel is the?Samsers Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard?which connects to my phone and is a godsend on long flights or just stuck in an airport waiting and not able to drag 1 to 2 laptops with me.

Biggest boost in decreasing stress:??I’ve been hiring out and automating tasks, as needed,??since April 2007 when I heard an interview with Tim Ferriss about his book,?The 4-Hour Work Week?(definitely a marketing title). After Covid put me waaaaaay behind in my creative projects, I hired 5 or 6 independent contractors on?Upwork?to do things like audio file transcription (because software doesn’t yet work for Southern female voices doing dialogue in fiction), graphics resizing, major website fixes after my existing company screwed up, book formatting, data scraping for ads, etc.??I already work with an incredible editor who also works for a major Manhattan publisher (I’ve known her for years, so I was lucky she could take me on).??Plus I hired a Ukrainian company for new cover art for book covers. For the last month of 2022, my entourage cleared out 25 to 40 hours a week of work I couldn’t get to or that previous contractors had dropped the ball on.?

Favorite car/garage products:???Hero Fire Spray by Prepared Hero?(also good for kitchen and office) and?Jansite Tire Pressure Monitoring System.?

Favorite trips:??I finally started traveling again in 2022. Sorry, Boston:??you were beautiful, but I caught Covid on that trip!??Vail, CO,?was amazing though, and probably equally enjoyable was my trip to?Sarasota, FL,?much closer to home and wonderful company.

Biggest work decisions:??In my?Acquisition?life, I decided early on that as my various projects ended, I would take on only new work that I lovelovelove and thought I could have the biggest impact on, and that my customers would use to its fullest.??I’m lucky to have lots to choose from that I love!??In my?Writing?life, I decided (very recently) to get off the hamster wheel of chasing algorithms and getting jerked around by big tech companies’ bots and instead go back to my roots in publishing, including selling from my own websites in 2023. The money is NOT worth it. I wasn’t a publishing pioneer in the 90’s to go back to the monopolies I tried to escape then or trade them for new, bigger monopolies.??As with most things, as long as I don’t depend on it to feed myself, I have a lot of freedom to do only what brings me joy and not play silly games that benefit only the monoliths in publishing.

Favorite new person in my life:??Baby?Orion! Sorry, guys—you can’t hold a candle to him! Oh, and a side note:??for a makeshift diaper pad and easy cleanup for young babies, it’s?Puppy Pee Pads?all the way.

--Lorna Tedder