Thanks to a chance episode of the Re-Enchanting podcast, The Seven Deadly Sins have been front and centre in my mind for a while now. In thinking about the past year of being forty-four, the y come to mind, particularly that of acedia. Sloth, its usual translation, doesn’t quite capture all its nuances, with its connotations of “a lack of any feeling about self or others”, “apathy” and “passivity” to name a few. It is this aspect of passivity and apathy that I feel like I need to address as a key focus area for the year of being forty-five.The last year did have momentous events ; packing up my life abroad and returning to be with family, a new job back in the UK and a slight pivot into the biofuels space from the core oil and gas stuff I had done all my work life before to name a few. Whilst that was most certainly the right decision, I do have doubts as to if it was the right time, and if it was for the right reasons. Forty-five then has to be the year of re-engaging, of re-igniting the passions that drove my life in the past. Alongside those are the several key decisions which loom for me next year, the desire for which has to be that they are made for the right reasons first and foremost.

The plan (ish)

Four of the seven life dimensions on which my life plan is based stand out as being key for this year of renewed focus: spiritual, physical, relational, work & career and social. The plan (or more accurately, hope) is to identify one or two overarching objectives for each of these dimensions which then become the focus for the year.

Spiritual: A key source of the malaise I have felt this year is an increasing sense of disconnection from faith, a fracture of sorts to quote Elizabeth Oldfield. Along with this has come a sense of a loss of awe about the world, my base mindset being one of the mehness of everything. To address this, I am hoping to engage with a devotional for the year with completing 90 consecutive days a metric I am looking to track.

Physical: Perhaps the most obvious indicator of the need to re-engage is the fact that I am now at my heaviest since the early 2010’s, the long dark days in which I subsisted on junk food and had little activity. The days of actively tracking runs on Strava and weekly Parkruns with PBs seem like a long lost history. Two things stand out here as objectives for the year:

  • Complete a couch to 5k program by 31st March 2025
  • Run an official 10k in under an hour by 31st August 2025.

Work & Career: If anyone had told me all those moons ago that the day would come on which I would consider corrosion engineering as a non-core part of my life, I would have laughed them to the moon and back. That is my reality now, one in which I find myself pondering if this path of specialist I have chosen is still worth pursuing or if a pivot is not warranted. Part of it is I suspect the lure of something new as I find myself solidly mid-career. For work and career this year I am targeting two things:

  • Achieve Fellow of the Institute of Materials by 31st August 2025
  • Achieve the ASME Level 3 certification by 31st December

Relational: Being back in the UK with family has sorely tested my patience, in a good way. The underlying admission which I am somewhat loathe to accept though is that the years of living abroad kept me sheltered from the realities of every day life, toddlers, shared space and demands on my time and energy. Engaging these with intent will have to be a key focus for this year.