My "Best" of 2011. Now Give Us 2012

This past year was an intensely awkward one, for all of us. It was a challenging, troubling year from whichever point of view one chooses to examine it. 2011 was, confessedly, an intensely awkward year. However, I -being the eternally "half-full glasses" I am- believe that it was not an absolute and total loss, (ironically though, "loss" was -for many- a defining word for this year). Some aspects of it seemed to gleam "through the ashes"; some events of significant, life-altering gravity, in a positive light this time,  did occur as well. So, what we should do is focus on some of the good things 2011 left us with. 

On a personal/professional level, 2011 was life-changing for me. This past, turbulent, year set the foundations -in a challenging way- for things which felt that they were meant to happen. I was urged to make choices and take actions for which I am the only person to be held responsible for the outcome, whatever that may be. 

I am not going to get all profound and mushy in this post, though I am prone to doing that lately; I will just focus on the "lighter" things which stood as some sort of "psychological support" -if you like- this past year. Below you will find a humbly assembled list of my personal "bests" and "favorites" of 2011. 

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Day One

Day One kinda caught my eye the first time I saw it in the app store. It essentially is an app which helps you log stuff in a journal, with specific date and timestamps. However, I wasn't quite sold on the idea of bying an app which would do what I would be able to do by logging stuff in a note and saving that between my Mac and iPhone. After some contemplating I decided to get both the Mac ($9.99) and the iPhone apps ($1.99) which sync seamlessly via Dropbox (and with the arrival of Apple's iCloud I am almost certain they'll integrate that somewhere in there too).

I am using Day One quite a lot these past few days and it's just great how amazingly it does what it says it's designed to do. Actually, I don't necessarily use it to record what happens throughout my day -I'm not sure I'd want to see all that in the future- I use if to document the unexpected flashes of inspiration, ideas, images popping in my head and sparks of thoughts that could lead to something. The thing is; I usually get all the above when I'm in the car and I either have to pull over and write it in or try to type it while driving (not recommended). There's password protection for both apps and adding bits to the journal flow is easy and it sort of gives me that feeling that I am actually vaulting all these thoughts there to use them when the time comes, and it looks good too! So, those $12, were well-spent after all...