On New Years Eve I published a list of ambitions for the year. Here is the final report of my progress. Here is the first one. Here is the second.

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tl;dr

I’ll give 2017 a [C]. It didn’t really pan out as planned and getting my diabetes diagnosis derailed things quite badly. I’ve generally been feeling out of sorts most of the year with some pretty sharp dips in mood so that doesn’t feel like too bad a result!

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WRITE THE BOOK
– 3000 words per month

TOTAL FAIL. Didn’t real get off the ground at all and to be honest I had a lot else on my mind. Writing a book still remains my biggest ambition but I just don’t know if I have it in me. Anyway the topic is now much more likely to be about blogging and personal openness or something. Maybe.

[F]

RUN #PUBCAMP
– 8 meet-ups
– 1 ‘event’

This fizzled out entirely in the summer — it was going pretty well with a small, but dedicated, group of regulars. I stopped organising though initially as I was feeling unwell and then once I found out why I was feeling unwell I didn’t want to do much of anything for a while. Certainly not in a pub.

This did for my plans to run a blogging conference as well — which I really did think would happen as it was really coming together. Oh well.

[D]

HEALTH & EXERCISE
– 80,000 steps per week
– 6 non drinking months (not consequentially)

Well this pretty much dominated the back end of the year. Turned out my ill health was a bit more serious than I hoped and I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in August. I’ve written about that elsewhere but things are getting better. I’ve lost three stone, am walking more and generally feeling (and looking) healthier. Still a long way to go but I am feeling pretty positive.

[C]

WEEK NOTES/SKETCHES
– 50 notes
– 50 sketches (one drawing or piece of graf a week on Instagram)

I managed 40 weeks of #weeknotes over two ‘seasons’ in the end — which was pretty good I think in the end. The second lot from September until Christmas were hard work and I lost my love of the format a little but I’m glad I stuck with it — it became more helpful to me as a record of my lifestyle changes than anything else.

Pretty disappointed in my lack of sketching in the second half of the year — I had really been enjoying it and was starting to feel like I was improving but I just gave up on it. Bad Matt!

[C]

PUBLIC SPEAKING
– 6 talks
– 2 new presentations

I more than met my target for this on both fronts — I gave a couple of talks in difficult circumstances and had to cancel a couple but all in all it was pretty good. I’m more calmer and better prepared these days but I’m not sure what I get out of it any more — the point was always to push myself into doing something that scared me but now it doesn’t as much I wonder whether I’ll carry on? No matter — it was a decent win.

[B]

INTERNET OF PUBLIC SERVICE JOBS
– 50 published lists
– 200 email subscribers

I currently have 432 subscribers and managed 48 newsletters this year. Pretty pleased with that to be honest. I think it has gone really well and I will definitely give it another year to see what happens.

[A]

TRAVEL
– 3 continents
– 4 UK trips

Randomly I ended up going to NYC and Rome twice each this year. Also I went to Belfast for the first time. I missed out on trips to Oslo and Dublin though due to ill health which is a shame. Next year maybe.

Other UK trips were a bust as well. Another case of must do better.

[C]