Year-End-Review on A Geek's Life

The Year of Living Intentionally - Revisited

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 22:02:14 +0000

\\\* 2019 was my Year of Living Intentionally; the central idea being to stop living life on the huff but instead to define a plan and live by it. Five key themes came out from that period of reflection; Learn, Prepare, Engage, Diversify and Measure, with fifteen discrete actions identified across those themes. The screenshot above is of the dashboard that tracked the key metrics from the year. All told, a few great ones, several meh ones and a few epic fails. Data apart, I think the big benefit from this for the year is the visibility of my performance. I now need to build a practice of regular assessments and reviews to enable the Act-Check portion of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

My Year in Reading 2018

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:40:26 +0000

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.

My Year in Music, 2017

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 17:31:27 +0000

Although according to Spotify I spent the equivalent of 17 days - and then some - listening to music, no one song defined the year for me the way What A Beautiful Name It Is defined 2016, and the Nine Fridays of Summer. Of those that I listened to the most, Todd Dulaney’s Victory Belongs to Jesus, came closest for the sheer number of times I listened to it on repeat, but that lacked the personal connection that joining in with the crowd roaring the chorus to (in my opinion one of the songs of Hillsong Conference 2016) What A Beautiful Name It Is had.

The Year in Music

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 17:31:27 +0000

The Year in Reading

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! ---

Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out.

The Year in Reading 2017

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

Lessons Learned...

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 21:07:23 +0000

A Year of Lessons Learned - some at great cost - in no particular order:

Doubts not dealt with at inception are unlikely to go away of their own accord, they are more likely to fester and then lead to a cataclysmic event;
It is almost never ever about you alone, people can (and probably will) get hurt by the fallout of your (in)decisions;
The health, quality and colour of the grass across the fence are notoriously difficult to predict, one is perhaps best minded to live by the dictum ’ a bird in hand is worth two in the bush’ ;
Mutuality - another notoriously difficult thing to predict - is everything;
There is nothing to be gained from overthinking things;
Time is perhaps the greatest contributor to clarity and healing;
God does still come through, only He does have a peculiar sense of timing.

For 2016?

Recapping that 'perfect' year

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 08:07:29 +0000

That perfect year?

In Work: Did finally get offered a staff position somewhere that ticked all the boxes I deeply desired at the beginning of the year (O&G operator, strong technical focus and scope to evolve my role). As a bonus, the official job title is now half a sentence :)
In Women: The G ‘problem’ ended being resolved in dissolution. Sucked but we were clearly headed no where. I suspect it was me tearing things up instead of dealing with them, again. :(
In Faith and Worldview: Not a lot of progress, very easily my worst year faith wise.
In Weight: 1 kg net loss, give or take, I do have the excuse of a broken foot in Q3 to blame here though :)
In (Net) Worth: Stalled again, slight decrease from 2014 actually - not helped by the Naira tanking and wiping out a shed load of my Nigerian savings and investments.:(

F0r 2016? Wash, Rinse, Repeat I guess - but with a lot more fight.

The Year in Reading 2015

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:39:58 +0000

Trying to get a lot more structured with reading - 25 books in total spread across 5 categories - Christian Classics, Literary Classics, Popular Fiction, Modern Christian Writing and Productivity, Personal Development & Non-fiction.

Completed:

Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
The Pioneer Detectives -Konstantin Kakaes
The Best American Essays 2014 - JJ Sullivan (ed)
The Land of Steady Habits - Ted Thompson
Sexual Detox - Tim Challies
NW - Zadie Smith
Crafting the Personal Essay - Dinty W Moore
What’s so Amazing About Grace - Phillip Yancey
How To Be Alone - Jonathan Franzen
The Best American Essays 2013 - Cheryl Strayed (ed)
The Seven Good Years - Etgar Keret
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez - Richard Rodriguez
The Children Act - Ian McEwan
The Things They Carried- Tim O’Brien
Something to Answer For - P.H. Newby

Year End Review - 2014

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 22:03:03 +0000

General 2014 was an emotional wringer of a year, perhaps the most difficult one I’ve ever had, thanks in part to losing H, and O, but also because of difficult transitions at work. All in all, it’s been a largely forgettable year, with spots of delirious joy in between. Here, in each of the seven focus areas undergirding the life plan are a little bit more detailed thoughts on how my 2014 went with a (R)ed, (A)mber or (G)reen indicator.

The Year In Reading 2014

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:37:50 +0000

Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth - Warsan Shire
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross - James Patterson
The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
Finally Free: Fighting For Purity with the Power of Grace - Heath Lambert
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How To Change - Charles Duhigg
On Writing - Steven King
Love At First Click - Laurie Davis
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Everyday is for the thief- Teju Cole
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Don’t Tell Mum I work on the Oil Rigs - Paul Carter
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Frank Sinatra Has A Cold: And Other Essays - Gay Talese
Another Man’s War - Barnaby Phillips
A Delicate Truth - John le Carré

2012: The Twelve Things Wrap

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:06:01 +0000

2012 was to be the the year of just 12 things. If I learned anything it is that life’s far removed from the order and clarity of an excel spreadsheet complete with target dates and milestones. Most importantly perhaps was that I gave living a good go in 2012, whether that was a success or not is a whole other conversation.

So here goes:

Develop a daily practice of meditation, prayer and journaling: I struggled with this all year - and for a variety of reasons, not least because work ebbed and flowed through the year, God and I didn’t see eye to eye for the larger part of the year and my 2012 was an emotional roller coaster. I did improve over 2011, but real work, and focus, are required through 2013 on this. Thankfully, I stumbled on this post on the Justin Taylor blog. That should come in handy I suppose.
Lose 20kg: I lost 7 kg - returning to the weight I was in 2008 when I left my Nigerian job. Walking to and from work each day certainly helped, but the big kick came post November when I joined a gym and cycled twice a week for 30 minutes. Losing the remaining 13kg has to be a focus area for 2013 - if I do not end up adding a few more thanks to the swathe of Christmas parties and the associated gin and tonics and rich pudding I had to down all through December.
Read (and review) 25 books in 2012: I read the books - a grand total of twelve - and bar three barely there reviews, this was a colossal failure.
Call parents and siblings once a week: This was the one area I excelled in. A particularly testy November/ December required a lot more phone calls to the family than I am used to. The one small positive from all that is that we have bonded and grown together as a family.
Save £1,000 a month: Plan was to cut out the soft loans which I typically never got back and scaling back on my gadget buying sprees. I did pretty well here until December - and I am blaming the emotional turmoil of navigating my season of detox for the retail therapy I needed to pull through. :)
Get Chartered Engineer status: Ended up gaining professional membership of two institutes. Spending the greater part of the year waiting on a slot for the professional review interview meant this slipped. A chance opening in December ensured I did get the PRI sorted, January should bring confirmation of what the decision is - hopefully it’s a pass and I can check the CEng box after 8+ years of working!
Get a driver’s license: This was about an EPIC fail as possible - I never even got to take the theory test.
Resolve long term settlement options: I flip-flopped on this. At some stage I was certain that the future lay in Canada, and I actually seriously began interviewing for a role in the cold, wintry realms of Fort McMurray. Then L happened, the details of the role I was chasing didn’t quite fit what I wanted (more tailored towards someone with refining and sour gas corrosion experience as against my oil/gas/condensate/offshore pipelines experience and I fell out of love with the idea of (yet another) move. In a sense there was resolution, I am more likely to remain in Aberdeen, unless something significant happens to change my views, which given the history is not unlikely.
Resolve my dating and meeting issues: I did end up de-cluttering my head - in a round about way after nearly eighteen months of moping around. Strangely, it took meeting L, and getting to enjoy her company, to give me the jolt I needed to let go and realise there was a whole sea of smart, likeable women out there. Small mercies, even though it doesn’t look like L and I will work out after all.
Complete FAN integration: Plan was to reengage with the Youth group at church as a way to get some more activity into my life. I did end up leaving this late - the year end party was a blast, and I did sign up to get more involved. Fingers crossed.
Re-engage with FOL service: 2011 was a year to forget - 2012 was marginally better - even though God did find me in early November. Hopefully 2013’s a lot better with my rengagement with the technical/ media team and the Youth group.
Find a mentor: My friend O became a defacto mentor through the course of the year as I pulled my CEng application together and worked through my girl issues, as were Izz and Dee my wing-women-in-chief. On the work front MrG was more pain and bother than help, but it was all in good spirit and helped to ease my various work related transitions through the year.

All told, again a fairly reasonable year - a few misses/ near misses but overall ending in a better place than where I started the year… Hoping 2013’s a lot better too, and the momentum from the last two months of the year carries over. :)