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“Guardian” by Chie Yoshii, for The Sunday Muse #37 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 385 prompts: \\\* She perches on your shoulder This invisible guardian of the night Her voice a quiet word Whispered in your ear Barely heard above the din The way text, lightly etched On a slab of stone would look In the shimmer of dusk. A dream deferred cannot slip back Into a sleepless mind. Once a butterfly’s eyes Have seen the light of freedom; Once its kicks have set it free From the caul of the caterpillar It cannot become a larva again. ...

For Sunday Muse #36 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 384 \\\* The call of the future comes from across the border bringing hope to this poor, tired pilgrim- slouched beneath the weight of an open promise and the remains of failures past. Tomorrow is uncertain, not promised but staying still wastes today so with intent I risk safety to seek the joy beyond the flood plains of seven rivers and the welcome of a home where hypocrisy is no more.

\\\* 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. ...

List of running actions and habits for 2019 for tracking, derived from The Year of Living Intentionally: Read The Hero With A Thousand Face Utilise the hero’s journey in updating my Life Plan Identify my band of friends and brothers and engage them individually once a month Identify devotional to use for 2019 (should involve reading 10 or less verses):YouVersion selected Track performance vs KPIs (various), report monthly, quarterly and annual Find web filter app for Linux and install Remove phone and laptop from bedroom Run >=25km a week Practice intermittent fasting Eat <100g of carbs per day Exercise daily (run or fitness blender) Limit coffee intake to one cup per day (morning) Explore options/ procure a blood pressure monitoring wearable Save >= 10% of net earnings (less GAYE) Restrict spend to <110% of budget Clarify medium/long term work plans (data science, corrosion/materials/welding/inspection) and location Update M&C roadmap, include gap analysis and closure plans (vs XoM competencies) Complete Data science Data Scientist track course, decide on Udacity Nanodegree Join a Data science for good meetup/ hackathon Identify/ complete a creative non fiction writing/ blogging course Learn to use kdenlive or other editing suite, also inkscape? Build list of books to read/ themes for 2019 Read a chapter of a book per day Write compassion kid once a quarter Identify/ complete assertiveness training/ coaching Find a mentor for work and personal life Call siblings / in-laws once a month, call Dad weekly Meet up with one of Rotimi, Deji A and Deji Ajayi once a month build stock picking tool (strategy and triggers) Identify app for tracking daily/weekly actions completed vs planned Determine my target macros (fat, protein, carbs) and total calories

Snowed in on my first Aberdeen Christmas… \\\* As I write this I am slouched in a chair, head banging and eyes sore from the remnant of a cold, the only hint of Christmas out here being the podcast I am listening to, profering explanations for the Star of Bethlehem. In my head though, I am back to my first proper Aberdeen Christmas from which this picture comes, the enduring image being one of snow, bitter cold and loads of time for introspection. Many years ago, when I still was in children’s Sunday School in the University Chapel my family attended, the carol service and reeling off lengthy passages committed to memory were most looked forward to, alongside rice and plentiful chicken. At one of those, I played the Magi with Myrrh, in addition to the scripture memory. Since then, the story of the Magi who bearing gifts has always intrigued me, particularly as it relates to the moving star. ...

Wordle 382: \\\* We brave the howl ing wind, wincing on the odd occasion when its icy fingers somehow reach within the folds of our coats to touch our necks. Along the snow covered streets, the children play, their shrieks of joy as they spin again and again piercing the air a hundred hundred times until they drop with exhaustion. From the coffee shop around the corner, different caramel drizzled drinks bring back their strength. This is the plan, to - with any luck - keep them so occupied that all they can do on the train home is sleep, so we get some peace and quiet.

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. ...

For Wordle 381: --- Last night they gathered with intent, forty-eight memo s a lingering stench that could no longer be shrug ged away. Behind the bluster of “doing the right thing” was the lure of the key s to Number 10. When the frame is badly broken can the picture be restored? Is the crime of lying word s so great that everything is irretrievably broken and no longer of use? Inside, the Wounded lived to fight another day; outside the circling hyenas beaten back for a season will return.

Although the lights have been on around town for a while now, only now with the office Christmas party a few days away has any sense of good cheer begun to rear its head. In addition to the bunting everywhere (and our very own special office Christmas tree), the subject of Christmas plans has now seeped into our coffee machine conversations, as has the buzz around the office secret Santa reveal. The Christmas party is definitely a highlight of the season, not least for the special costumes a certain someone breaks out year after year and the alcohol enabled banter which in my view tends to reveal the inner workings of peoples minds more often than not. On a personal note, I am looking forward to catching up with a couple of friends of mine ahead of Thursday, which means I’ll be out everyday from Tuesday till Friday when I hop on my flight down south to formally kick off my period of unplugging. ...

For Day 4 and 5 of the WordPress Finding Everyday Inspiration Challenge --- Struggling has hope of success, but forsaking the struggle does not - John Piper John Piper is perhaps most famous for his espousal of Christian Hedonism, the idea that ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him’. One of the essential tenets of this is that we are designed to, and should indeed, desire God not only on the level of mental assent but also at a deeper heart, emotional level. The reality of most people of faith is that our hearts and heart connections to God wax and wane, the strength of our feelings never really existing continuously in that Christian Hedonist space. ...