For Wordle 380: --- This entity - bare arms rippling with intent- pulls victory out of thin air. Time and time again, the potential for losing one’s head in a flurry of jabs is overcome by the evidence of winning, the one thing missing in this me being a fear that flinches before the rolling fists land. This is how it ends- victory snatched from the claws of loss when we decide.
--- Coffee, particularly when it is -5 deg C outside Fried chicken, in all its various incarnations Digging out the right answer to a particularly difficult question Music, particularly ones which take me back memory lane Handwritten notes (when received)
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash --- One of my earliest memories of doing stuff with my mother is of a newspaper cutout, sheets of paper and her sitting beside me encouraging me to apply whatever iota of critical thinking I could summon to whatever was the task of the day, usually some Close Up essay competition or the other. I don’t recall us ever submitting any of those, the discipline of wrestling thoughts into semi-coherent arguments perhaps being the point of the entire exercise. That sense of writing as a vehicle for thinking aloud about a subject is one that has stayed with me over the years. ...
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 ...
It has been a fascinating month going through the Art of Manliness Jump-start your Journaling 31 Day Challenge. I suppose the key is in the challenge bit because for what it is worth it wasn’t the easiest of things to complete. A few themes came at me time and time again, mainly related to my relationships with people and how much (or how little) I ave allowed others into my deepest space. That (friends and brothers, mentors, my romantic relationship and a few others) is one of the key focus areas for the next year, which I have captioned The Year of Living Intentionally. ...
Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash --- For the Day 30 prompt. Thankful for: Life: Given how many people I know who died during the course of the year, both young and old S: Who chose to accept me, warts and all T&M: Who continue to hold down the fort on the family front through what have sometimes been testing times. Books: For the opportunity to slip into them away from the world Friends: Who have stuck with me through the years Work: Which in spite of a growing sense of dissatisfaction still pays the bills. Travel: The chance to get away from it all from time to time.
The prompt for Day 29 is to write about one thing that brings you great joy. Here goes. --- A few years ago I would have said that my job was the one thing that gave me great joy, seeing as I felt very strongly that I was contributing and saw my future being very much intertwined with corrosion and materials. For a variety of reasons, including the sense of coasting that I have struggled with over the past year, it is beginning to feel like something I just do, that pays the bills.Trying to suss out the underlying reasons and getting back to a place of excitement about my current role (or something else) is something I have to focus on resolving in the new year!!!
Day 28 of the Art of Manliness 31 Days of Journaling Challenge is to gather my tools for a better life. Here goes: A Mentor: One of the clear gaps I have identified from the past year has been a tendency to isolate myself from people, both at work and in my personal life, one of the impacts of which has been a lack of oversight of my decisions. Mentors, in both my personal and professional lives, are a priority for me over the next year. Two people, EM and CG, come to mind as options for both domains. Engaging them with a view to seeing if this is something they’d like to help me out with is something I have added to my list of things to explore and conclude over the next year. A Mastermind Group: The AoM folks boil down a Mastermind group into a collection of similar irons which sharpen each other. Through my interactions with my friends in the corrosion business, I’d like to think the intent of this tool is being met already. Carefully selecting a mentor with corrosion expertise who also help provide coverage of this need, I believe. A Pocket notebook: My evolving journaling practice is loosely aligned to Austin Kleon’s (which is in turn inspired by David Sedaris’s). Discipline: All of the above require me to get off my backside and develop/ implement a number of habits consistently. Discipline is what will ensure I keep at these till they deliver value in my life. Enough self.
The folk at AoM identify eight factors which feed into an assessment of the suitability of where one is at the moment. Given Aberdeen and Byfleet are currently it for me, a table with the pros and cons of each location seemed like a logical place to start. Here goes: [gdoc key=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IZdb5os_AQNEjVBwEAscnsPzq2u2uqcj11jiaMktMBQ/edit?usp=sharing”]
Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash – Remember you will die…. Death puts everything into perspective, you can’t take anything away with you and once you’re dead you’re lost to everyone on this side of the divide. This begs the question of what I am living my life for, whose approval am I bending over backwards to please, against my principles. And perhaps most importantly, am I living my life in a way that makes sense in light of what I think is a non-physical reality on the other side?