As part of my regular review and reflection with my now page, I’m writing another now and then update. This one with a slight focus on the year that’s been.

Last year was easily the biggest change in my life for a long time. I changed career path and became a dad. Either on its own could be acknowledge as life changing and merit reflection but both together, a mere month apart, was a killer one-two.

As I stand at the start of this year, looking ahead, I can’t imagine what life will look like in a years time. Still, this is about now.

Last month: December 2018

Half the month was spent travelling and seeing friends and family with Christmas. The time off work was lovely but I’m keen to get back. Partially its about not being at home, but also I miss work. Yes, as strange as it may sound to some people, I enjoy my work. Don’t get me wrong, I can find things to complain about but I enjoy the creativity and intrigue of my daily tasks as well as the rhythm of my daily routine.
The free writing experiments continued and I wrote a couple of things people seemed to like. I also wrote some things which I didn’t publish but were fun experiments. Maybe I’ll publish them one day or not.

This month: January 2019

This month I’m planning on continuing my reflections looking at the year ahead. I wanted to have more clarity over what I could drop or stop as well as what I should do more on. One of the things I want to get better at is properly switching off, making sure that I really engage with the people around me. Living in Poland means that improving my Polish would be a good way to do so and with the increasingly looming Brexit, being able to get Polish citizenship would also be a great help. I’d really like to add some more hard data to my now page health tracker. I wonder if I could somehow export my Apple Watch workout data to a graph and add that, or something else. Basically, I want some numbers to show how I’m doing.

This Year

I’m really excited about this year, there are some things I’m nervous about (Brexit, being a dad, where I go next) but I feel good about the direction of my life. I was very nervous about work last year and while I don’t feel calm this year, I don’t feel caught by my job or at the mercy of a single decision maker (ironically I was tehcnically self-employed last year and now I’m employed by a company. I should feel and have felt the reverse but it shows that not everyone’s self-employment is the same).

I have a few goals for the year including

  • learn and play 3 jazz standards at an open mic night
  • keep and play with a journal (hobonichi)
  • spend less time on devices and more time with people, doing things
  • start taking more photos again

If I had to pick a word for the year (something I love and dislike, but the love just wins out) I’d probably pick Intention or Attention Though I reserve the right to update this depending on how things look in practice.