Personal

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. ...

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here . My previous attempts are linked here. ** As has been the goal for most of the past few years, at or around two books a month for a total of twenty-four books for the year was the reading target. Unlike previous years, I was open on the subjects, more open than usual to wending my way through the year in books depending on what piqued my fancy at any given time. I’d like to think that shows in the range of subjects and authors covered by my reading this year. ...

The Year of Being 42 went reasonably well, all things considered. I survived another swing around the sun out in the corner of the world I am now, with a sense of acceptance beginning to predominate. There are still days on which I ask myself why / how I ended up here but whatever misgivings I have tend to recede at month end. In this regard Re:Think, which was the theme for last year was useful, aided by the status game lens, picked up from reading the book of the same name by Will Storr. His argument, that we are all (created, evolved?) to play social status games has been useful for clarifying things both in a work and relational context. I now know that my primary game is one of success. I used to think that I was driven by the inner prestige bestowed by being a purveyor of niche, technical subjects in the workspace. The reality , as I am finding, is that the raw numbers at the end of the month are intensely motivating, not least if the costs of diapers, baby milk and toys are anything to go by. I am definitely not a player in the (physical) dominance or (spiritual/ moral) virtue status game. A highlight of the year has got to be having L & S out with me for the greater part of eight months or so. For all the late nights, befuddlement at my inability to contextually interpret tears and the feeling of being run into the ground, the appreciation of just how much effort goes into child care is one that I will go away with. Rethinking is not done by any means though, rather it feels like it will be a recurring decimal in my life for a long time yet. ...

Photo by Il Vagabiondo on Unsplash ** One day it was wet, slightly windy and the temperature was below 30 degrees C, the next it wasn’t, which is how seemingly out of the blue the semblance of winter bowed out, being replaced by summer in all its fierceness. To be brutally honest, calling ‘it’ winter would be a stretch by all accounts, but for the context of the prospect of 40+ weather over the next few months. Of more personal importance though is that it is the end of Ramadan, and the lengthened hours with little food that was my lot in the period (a quirk of the shift patterns revised for the period was that my work day started an extra hour early, and the food spots at work were all closed). As with last year, I decided it would be a fantastic time to attempt to shift some of the weight, tacking on three morning runs and reduced carbs to the month. The three kilograms which have somehow slid off into the ether suggests there was some value to all that exertion. Whether it was worth it all remains to be seen though. ...

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash ** No sooner than the year begins does it seemingly end, the flight of time - ponderously slow in the moment - somehow seemingly fast when the view is backward, over its long arch. It truly is a trick of time. As 2020 morphed into 2021, what thoughts I had came together around Rebuilding Better, the premise being that 2020 had been a year of significant disruption - and deconstruction - with 2021 a fresh chance to begin again, to put together what was broken in a better way with twelve objectives concretely describing that for me. Now that 2021 has morphed into 2022, it feels like a good time to revisit all that, so here goes. ...

Image Source: The Guardian ** Every waking minute of the past few weeks it seems has been filled with some nursery rhyme or the other, so much so that deep in my less wakeful moments, I have caught myself humming along to some tune or another. Chief of them has to be the ten in a bed one where a particularly bossy kid shoos off the others who end up in a pile beside the bed nursing various bumps and scrapes. Sometimes it has felt like there are an infinite number of ways this can happen, although the mathematics suggest that there is only one way to do that, if that particular order is maintained. All of this is long way to say that L is very much at the centre of things with sleep, if I can go out for a run in the morning and other such mundane things very much dependent on what state she wakes up in. ...

Rodin’s Le Penseur. Image from the US National Gallery of Art ** When I set about thinking about the year of being forty, it seemed a no-brainer that it would be centred around delving deeper. The premise was that as the worst kind of failure is one of depth, actively looking to ensure I had depth in all critical aspects of my life was key as I came into my decade of being forty something. As to why I think failures of depth are the most critical, I think that both the one who fails and the one who is failed are left with the lingering after taste of what might have been. For one, the chance of a lifetime disappears before it even begins. For the other the time and energy expended/ invested ends up being for nothing. Both face the opportunity costs, lost irretrievably. For the year of being forty-one, rebuild better was the key, given COVID and how it had intervened specifically in my life with regards to a new job. ...

Photo by Marcel Fagin on Unsplash ** As I write this I am looking out of my window onto the lush greenery of the park across the road in the tiny corner of South Yorkshire in which I am currently ensconced, as different from the edge of the world in which I have spent the last eleven months as it could be. For 45 degree Celsius and 90% plus humidity, I give you a bone-chilling 14 degrees Celsius with more than the odd spattering of rain; a mild Yorkshire summer by all accounts I am told. ...

Back in May of 2020, Nassim Nicholas Taleb tweeted about the pandemic - and the disruptive forces it brought to bear on the world we knew - being a trigger for one to do a total reset and adapt. For better or for worse, we all have had to reset through 2020. When I started thinking about 2021, the sense of evolving past the reset into something new was hard to shake. As such for me, 2021 feels like a year in which I need to focus on Rebuilding, but doing it Better. ...

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here . My previous attempts are linked here. ** Coming out here dominated my thoughts at the turn of the year, which was how it found me digging into Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work . True the overwhelming sense at the time was of anticipation but there was enough uncertainty around how well I would navigate bridging a credibility deficit that looking for help came to mind most readily. In my notes from that first reading, I detect a sense of holding back against what seemed like rules promoting blatant self promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, and a big dollop of reality to boot, my view of the book is a lot more considered. There are certainly gems in there, which is why I intend to return to the book in the new year. ...