The Hangover List

I woke up on January 1 with two hangovers. The first I’d earned the night before, at a wine tasting with my wife and our friends Arpi and Nunu from Tomcsanyi Birtok. The second had taken all year to build.

We’d started a company while raising two kids, and spent twelve months trying to keep work, marriage and everything else attached to each other. Add illness in the family, a war nearby and an economy leaning on all of it. It was also, somehow, a good year. I can’t make those facts add up neatly, so I won’t try.

Then our parents took the kids and the house went quiet, the kind of quiet you forget exists. My wife and I slipped away for two days to talk the year through and work out what we wanted from the next one, before ordinary life turned the volume back up.

This is what we came back with:

1. Successfully finish dry January and replace drinking with sports.
2. Start cooking again. Every Friday night reserved for cooking with friends and family.
3. Be more calm and relaxed, trust myself, and keep helping others.
4. Get ready for Budapest while keeping the main base in Switzerland.

Almost embarrassingly ordinary, I know. Number four is the big one. The first three will probably decide whether I get there as somebody my family enjoys being around.

I’m publishing the list because a promise hidden in my notes is far too easy to renegotiate. Give it a few months and I’ll know whether this was a plan or just the second hangover talking.