It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. It wasn’t the most productive year of reading proper books (the web has cannibalised that for good for me I’m afraid) but a late spurt in November and December brought some redemption. 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 . ...
\\\* The data is in, Planetshakers were both my artiste of the year and of the decade if Spotify’s number-crunching can be believed. Compared to 2018, I listened to 36% less music, although I suspect that had more to do with listening to a lot more podcasts than I did last year (thanks to switching to an Android phone and Pocket Casts), streaming more radio and the occasional YouTube binge. What would be fantastic would be a service that aggregated my listening across all these platforms and thus enabled me to delve deeper into the underlying trends to my listening. ...
Went Well Transition to new role at work Restarted a weekly Thankful Thursdays feature on here, in a bid to build an attitude of gratitude Significantly increased my monthly run distance peaking at over 100km for July & August Came through my regular BP checks in August without any need to adjust meds etc Interviewed for AOC role, waiting to hear back on a potential offer, also waiting to interview for a senior M&C role at an oil major in the next few days. Didn’t Go Well Spiritual life is still out of sorts, Suffered occasional bouts of panic, negative self talk and lack of self confidence both at work and my personal life. Need to get a regular meetup and support set up with an older wiser head/ mentor (eg Pastor W?) Didn’t write as much as I thought I would. Need to establish a series of rituals to make this happen semi-automatically Relationship with S appears stalled, with us both living our separate lives and not bonding as well as we should, current living arrangements being the primary cause I believe. Year Objectives and Status The 11 things: ...
The year I turned thirty, I was a student battling to put finishing touches to my master’s degree dissertation and pondering what the future had in store for me. That the success or failure of that year, and the year before that, came down to that singular task was the result of an unanticipated turn of events which turned what was a leave of absence to return to full-time study into having to leave my Nigerian job. Grad school, my response to the year before that, had made sense in my head largely because it seemed a low risk, given there was a reasonably high likelihood of returning. I, as it would turn out was ultimately mistaken. ...
By some unexpected twist of fate, I found myself heading into Central London on the hottest day of the year, a fairly tropical 37 degrees Celsius, and that for the first time since last December. The destination was the Nigeria High Commission on Northumberland Avenue, the plan to get my expired Nigerian passport renewed. To get here I had had to jump through several tortuous loops, not helped by the fact that my trips down to England are scheduled months in advance with impromptu trips being aggressively minimised due to the costs. My takeaway from my dealings with the appointment’s system was that the (re)scheduling system could be significantly improved - first, you sign up via a third party web service, pay the booking fees and then get randomly assigned a date, one you can only change to a more suitable one by emailing back and forth, no less than six in my case – which meant in addition to the heat I very much had my mind prepared for a terrible experience which could potentially take the whole day. It might have been my low expectations, but the experience was far less stressful than I expected, sans the slow pace at which things trundled along from picking a ticket to getting called for an initial review and then submitting my biometric details. If there was a silver lining, it was that the slow pace of things – and the very many other Nigerians there for similar purposes – increased the likelihood of running into people I had not seen in a long time; 20 plus years and two kids in one case. That the most unsettling thing from all of that was wondering what the scrawny lad I ended up sitting across from on the tube from Charing Cross to Waterloo was up - to whilst reading from 2nd Corinthians 1 in a huge bible - is a miracle of sorts (events at the High Commission didn’t leave me mentally drained as they have in the past) or perhaps only the symptom of my low expectations. ...
Highlights Broke 50km distance for the first time in 2019 Kept up my daily devotional streak, thanks to the CoE’s Lent Pilgrim app Completed a book! (James Clear’s Atomic Habits). Still behind on the year plan though Lowlights Habit streak tracking still patchy at best Finances ended up a mess - home improvements were unbudgeted for but perhaps add value to the house (not quantified though) Next Month Focus Area ...
\\\* If I had to boil down the essence of the year of being thirty eight into one word, it would be coasting. It felt like I lurched from one crisis to the other, my actions driven more by the need to fight whatever fire glowed brightest than any form of plan or structure. As I stand here on the cusp of turning forty, I feel like something needs to change significantly - a fool at forty is a fool forever they say. That, and that t here is someone who is significantly affected by my actions only makes it more imperative that I get my SH*T together soon. ...
It is that time of the year when others - more (or better) read than I - share the highlights of their reading from the year. As with last year , I’ve commissioned myself -unbidden, besides perhaps a desire to record the key themes that drove and/or came out of my reading - to weigh in with the highlights of my own reading.So here goes. Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury was all the rage on the airwaves at the turn of the year, which is how I ended up grabbing a copy for myself and digging in. As I plodded through it, I found the mix of fly-on-the-wall behind the scenes reporting and qualified conjecture curiously engaging, drawn by the lurid details behind public events and happenings in what at the time had been a Trump presidency that seemingly lurched from one PR disaster to the other. A few themes ran through Fire and Fury - the Trump team being surprised by the election win and thus poorly prepared to lead, the hold of Stephen Bannon and the alt-Right and infighting amongst various factions of the administration. Despite strenuous denials at the time, the events of the year - multiple firings, leaks, indictments, evidence of Russian activities and prison sentences - would seem to give credence to the viewpoint of the book, more so as the year draws to an end. ...
Key Events Came through several important meetings at work with varying results: Area Review: One I could have done without but feedback was they went well. CCMT: One completed Had my annual performance review. Feedback is that I need to improve my visibility. Personally, I feel like I need to decide what I want to do (stay/leave/move into data science?) Was chased by the verification folks on some review items for a recently completed project. Personal follow up on welding and how pressure equipment design codes handle MDMTs required. Attended a two day seminar on non-intrusive inspection. The data analysis section seemed particularly interesting, given my interests in data science/machine learning. December Goals ...
Photo by Brett Patzke on Unsplash --- The Hero’s Journey makes for interesting reading, showing how in 12 stages the boy becomes a man as he journeys through a life. Although based on myths, the underlying idea behind this framework is that these myths work because they represent how we understand how life happens to us. Vogler’s model, which the folk at AoM espouse, is an abridged version of the original in the Joseph Campbell book (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) and identifies 12 steps (from the Wikipedia page) as below: ...