Written by Dyami Millarson

This is the final day of 2020. It has been a unique, unforgettable year. I did not do things as usual and I changed my planning for 2020 as I decided to postpone our projects to 2021 and 2022. I acquired new skills this year and had first-time experiences that enriched my life. I will sum them up below:

• I had new foraging experiences this year. I started foraging with my father in 2019 as I suddenly had an epiphany about picking acorns and turning them into flour for making cookies. I watched a lot of gardening videos in 2019 and I was at that time very interested in gathering seeds from fruits and vegetables bought in the supermarket, I was suddenly seeing seeds everywhere and I saw opportunities to grown my own plants on the balcony.
  • I picked blackberries together with my father for making blackberry jam for the first time again since 2008-2009.
  • I picked acorns again in 2020 like I did last year and I turned them into flour. However, this year I wanted to try something new and so we decided to use the acorn flour for making pancakes.
  • I picked elderberries for the first time in my life. I was genuinely scared of this because berries in nature could be poisonous and so I decided to go about this very cautiously. I did proper research or this and we managed to pick the right berries. At first, we had to learn to distinguish elderberries from other berries that look like them. I wouldn’t recommend picking elderberries to the faint of heart.
    • We made elderberry syrup this year for the first time ever in our lives.
  • I picked stinging nettle for the first time together with my father for using it as a vegetable. I learned that the folkloristic Dutch name for stinging nettle is dondernetel, which could be interpreted as Thor’s nettle.
  • As part of my quest of trying natural and wild foods, I tried lemonade made from sea buckthorn (duindoorn) syrup produced in the Wadden islands for the first time this year. It tastes like honey. I vowed to pick sea buckthorn next time I visit the Wadden islands and turn it into syrup.
  • We picked rose hips and made rose hip syrup for the first time in our lives. Making syrup was really a common thread throughout 2020. It turned out that removing the seeds from the rose hips was a lot of work and so it was very time-consuming to make rose hip syrup.
• I studied investing and the stock market. This was a continuation of my 2019 financial studies. I saw investment opportunities during this year’s financial downturn.
• I made a Vietnamese soup called Bun Pho Hue for the first time, which was also the first time I ever made a dish of the Vietnamese cuisine. It was a success, so I made it a second time. I had tried Vietnamese cuisine once in a restaurant in Hong Kong in 2017. Making Bun Pho Hue was a continuation of my 2019 idea to try making Asian dishes at home. I made the delicious Thai dish called pad thai for the first time in 2019.
• I finalised the paperwork for setting up our Operation X foundation. This had been officially announced since 2018. I still need to set up bank accounts, though, for receiving donations and get proper business cards for our foundation. Everything is taking time, but I am doing my best to set up everything as quickly as possible.
• I acquired my TESOL certificate. I have been teaching English and other languages to students online for years. It was an interesting experience to compare my own techniques with those of TESOL-certified teachers.
• I followed a photography course online. I have been interested in improving upon my photography skills ever since I became a blogger and I aspire to make my photos as professional-looking as possible. I do generally not allow myself to repost photos of others because i want to share original content.
• I improved upon my legal knowledge and my organising skills required for solving legal disputes. This is the first year I intensively studied and practised law again since 2013.
• I tried penpal websites for the first time, I set up my profiles there and made new friends there. I hope to make more friends next year. Making friends online and connection with people online is the future.
• I bought the vikingreligion.com domain. I haven’t come around yet to build the website, but I am posting some basic ideas there as I am working on the direction where to take the site.
• After studying and working a lot behind the scenes this year, I finally returned to blogging. While I had made my public reappearance after being absent for a time, our blog gained many nee followers and set new statistical records. This year’s growth has been motivating because I am putting a lot of effort into studying for this blog and acquiring new practical knowledge to entertain my readers with.
• I studied Nordic and Frisian folklore this year. The object of my Frisian and Nordic folklore studies was tree veneration in particular. By chance, I found some useful books about this at a local antiquarian. I will continue my folklore studies next year.
• I studied medicine more this year as I had planned. I hope to write more medical articles next year. Becoming a health blogger is what I aspire to.
• I expanded my Swedish vocabulary this year. I will keep reading Swedish next year. I hope to write some Swedish articles next year.
• I have been cleaning and reorganising my house. The items we do not need we are selling online. We are trying to cut down on the amount of items we have as we wish to live a more efficient minimalist lifestyle. I will continue working on this next year and I hope to have finished most of the work by the summer of next year when I really want to start my new minimalist life. I hope to blog about this and share tips about how to save space, time and money and if not saving it, then how to use it efficiently so as not to waste it. After all, minimalism and extreme efficiency are at the core of our organisation and it is an integral part of our general survival strategy.
  • I have been particularly preoccupied with reorganising my books and selling the ones that I do not need. My goal is to keep only the books that I need for my foundation and the blog. If I will not consult them for the blog or the foundation, there is no point in keeping them. I am trying to build a library of Frisian languages and related languages for my foundation. To that end, I bought some books online and added them to our collection. In fact, I enlarged our collection quite a bit this year as these investments were part of my planned preparation for upcoming language projects.
    • I bought Middle Goesharde Frisian reading books and phonology books from the Univerisity of Kiel in 2020. I am particularly fond of these additions to our collection. I definitely consider it an achievement since it is an important preparation for our future project of studying the highly endangered Middle Goesharde Frisian.
• I planted a few more potatoes in my balcony garden this year. Many plants from last year were seeding this year. I collected their seeds.
• I decided to write more reviews this year and in doing so, I forged a habit gradually. I have a lot to review: websites I visit, dramas I watch, books I read, products I buy, languages I learn, recipes I use, foods I try, courses I take, shops I like, services I use. I will continue writing reviews next year. My written reviews will be fully integrated with the work for the promotion of the preservation of endangered languages.
• I tried essential oils for treating my skin. I discovered that this really works for improving and healing my skin. I hope write more about this year’s experiences in the future.

Also see my progress of 2019.