I never celebrated turning thirty. The significance of achieving that chronological milestone was lost in the hustle of every life - a barely discernible peak in the flat line that had become a monotonous existence. I had just lost a cast iron guarantee to return to my old job in Nigeria followed quickly by the petering out of what I thought was a nice, strong girl connection. One day I fell asleep, the next I awoke to being thirty plus. ...
One big idea to revolutionise the year in my opinion - ‘Practical Wisdom’. Rules are great but they often lead to performance based metrics which meet the letter of the law, but fail to address the real root causes…. Two excellent TED talks from Barry Schwartz that I’ve been listening to a lot today.. Bring on the new year… The real crisis? We stopped being wise..Using our practical wisdom
On my forty things by forty list is a task to read 25 books each year. For 2011, I am thinking of starting off with the Booker Prize lists. I suspect a few of them might be out of print, but from running my eye over the list there appears to be at least a few of particular interest. Ben Okri’s 1991 winner ‘The Famished Road’ and Ian McEwan’s ‘Amsterdam’ stand out as starting points. First off though will be ‘The Finkler Question’ by Howard Jacobsen - thanks to the Kindle… :) ...
The turn of the year is unique for the way it inspires one to try better. Plans from the last year, cast aside without thought or regret, suddenly return to the fore of the mind - seeking to exact their recompense for one’s neglect. Its a New Year.. The one thing I plan on doing this year is to articulate more of the thoughts floating around in my head. Hopefully I’ll write a piece each day on here.. Maybe I’ll not..December 31, 2011 will be the final judge of how well I fared…
This is slowly becoming a yearly thing on this blog. The 2009 and 2010 Versions are linked. Since 2010 I have opted for focus areas rather than a list.. So here goes the 2011 plan. God/Faith: Failed to make any headway in this regards last year - It’s a new year.. Let’s hope we fare better this year with resolving the God issues and getting back into a church community. Work & Career: I safely navigated getting back into work after a poorly thought out decision led to me quitting my last job. This year the focus is on chasing a couple of certifications to boost my profile as an independent contributor. This is slightly complicated by the Girlfriend being stuck in North America. This year I intend to get my professional membership of at least one UK and one North American Engineering body sorted. People and Socials: Last year was the year I splurged on social media connections. This year, I need to have a strategy for social media interaction. The goal of this strategy is to focus on sharing information, keeping the loose chatter to an absolute minimum. For real life connections, I have been blessed with having a couple of old friends from undergrad in my city, so as a minimum, I should hang out with them once every couple of months.. Health and Weight: 2010 was the year, the bulge finally beat me. The keg ballooned out of control. I bought a home treadmill in my attempt to regain control. This year, I hope to win the battle - running thrice weekly on the treadmill. Family: The family connection hasn’t been great up to the end of the year. This year I hope to call the parents and siblings at least once each week. Financial: The numbers from last year indicated I saved approximately 25% of my gross earnings - in spite of significant expenditure on trips to the US and gadgets. This year, I hope to up the percentage to 30%. In conjunction with a promised pay rise at work, it should be a good year - if I avoid splurging on any new gadgets.
A chance meeting - via the ubiquity of the internet - with Yousef Komunyakaa’s poem ‘Ode to The Drum’ left an indelible mark on me. The sheer beauty of the lines, rich imagery that harks back to a time of hunting for sustenance in Africa and the ritual of drum making are things that I have never been able to forget. In the poem a hunter kills a gazelle, skins it, and uses its skin for a drum. The hunter maintains an ongoing monologue, almost apologetically stating the case for killing the gazelle. There is meat, and the need to drive trouble from the valley via the beating of a drum. In the process of creating a drum, the gazelle is reborn - from dead weight slouching in the grassy hush to a drum beat filling the valley and exorcising evil. This, to me, is the under-girding theme - transformation; from evil to good, from death to a different sort of life. As the year 2010 wraps up, perhaps the closing lines are apt.. ...
Having earned (if I say so) the right to put my feet up and relax at the end of what has been a particularly hectic year of working, travelling, reading and volunteering, one has the luxury of reflecting on how the year has panned out on a personal note. This time last year I had just packed up my bags, cut my final ties and jumped on the East Coast train service up north to Aberdeen. There was the small matter of needing to restart life on a number of fronts - new job, new city, new house, new friends and all. The first few weeks took getting used to, especially as the job description involved a change of focus - from being the bossy, fastidious-to-a-fault, hard to please client to being part of a service delivery team. January was spent managing the work transition, eased somewhat by having the use of shared company accommodation alongside a colleague with Geordie connections. There were many nights of discussions on a motley of topics well into the night as we both grappled with coming to terms with redemption and second chances - he after invasive heart surgery, me upon returning to daily work after a messy resignation. ...
A few of the info-graphics that captured my eye this year.. Football Chalkboards: For us the discerning football enthusiasts, chalkboards were the revelations of 2010. Granted the Guardian debuted with them in early 2009, but the Roy vs Rafa debate for us Liverpool fans ensured chalkboards became the ultimate resource for assessing how high up the pitch the lads press, passes completed, oh and the aptly named heatmaps. Twitter is not a conversation: Us Twitter apologists usually claim Twitter as a conversation for being one of the reasons we stay on Twitter. Sadly, the data does not support that claim, as this info-graphic from 2010 showed. The world according to Facebook: In December, Paul Butler at Facebook came up with an interesting info-graphic; a world map based on Facebook connections. Marriage In America: TIME asked if marriage in America was still required. Al Mohler argued that we all do, and this PewSocial info-graphic captured the data. Infostate of Africa: Fascinating… via AppAfrica Flickr account…
Waking up to the strains of We Three Kings Of Orient Are on the BBC’s Radio 2 brings back memories of days long lost - of youth, of creativity and an unfettered enjoyment of life. When I was much younger (close on twenty years ago now, cringe), I took part in the carolling, recitals of bible verses committed to memory, and nativity plays which were the highlight of the Christmas season in our small University town in Nigeria. This hymn though, is one especially important to me because it marked the first time I was selected to sing a lead vocal. Granted, I ran over the lines, forgot some, went ‘off key’, and probably knocked my knees so loudly a few well placed microphones might have picked up on them, but it was still a ‘solo’ performance. ...
Words that were burned into my conciousness in 2010.. swingeing |ˈswinji ng | adjective chiefly Brit. severe or otherwise extreme : out-with | out- wiθ | preposition. chiefly Scot. outside: knackered |ˈnækərd | adjective British Slang. exhausted; very tired: ta | tɑ | interjection British Slang. thank you: wee | wi | adjective chiefly Scottish. little: