The big thing in the coming year is that I turn 50. Five Oh. Fiddy. Oh fuckity-fuck-tee.
I have a few plans for that. A drunken meal with some of my dearest friends in a private dining room. A trip to Toronto and Montreal immediately after. I’m going to go to DC via NYC for the Code for America Summit in May. Maybe a trip to LA at the back end of the year. I’m also considering finally getting the tattoo I designed a few years ago to commemorate the event.
An ‘artistic’ challenge for my 50th is to paint the Zifty (my favourite letter to paint is a Z – so Zifty was born) piece of graffiti I have been working on at a bunch of locations over the year including Dean Street skatepark, St Werbs Tunnel, M32 skate park, Leake Street Tunnel, Brick Lane/Allen Gardens, Toronto’s graffiti alley, NDSM in Amsterdam, St Pauli in Hamburg and somewhere in NYC. It is barely adequate for wider consumption but I figure my 50th is an excuse to totally embrace my midlife crisis and damn the haterz.
I’ve got a few events lined up in 2023 to help avoid total hermit-dom – this is the list so far →
- Product People Unconference (London)
- Govcamp (London)
- Code for America Summit (DC)
- Product at Heart Conference (Hamburg)
- Camp Digital (Manchester)
I’m looking for a couple more towards the backend of the year – try and drip feed reasons to actually leave the flat.
I’m also working up a new talk proposal – the working title is Product Management is 90% Communications, 90% of the Time – though I might just make is Digital is or Agile is so as not to limit the potential conferences I can pitch to. Though that said I think I’d like to stay local-ish for any talks to minimise the fear.
I’m also curious about maybe contributing to a podcast but this seems a fleeting idea as I don’t listen to many and HATE hearing my own voice – though god knows I can talk. Yeah maybe this is a non-starter 🙂
I’ll keep blogging and encouraging other people to do so. No silly attempts to write a book or take my writing elsewhere – just the acceptance that comes with age that I am only good enough to be published where I am the editor and publisher!
Is this the year I do something more with the jobs newsletter or is it the year I give it up for good? Honestly it is 50/50. It has stalled pretty badly with subscriber growth and a combination of the slow death of Twitter and the weird changes to the Civil Service Jobs pages means it has become a fair bit harder to do it in the manner I prefer…but it remains popular with the 1950ish people who do subscribe so I’ll see what 2023 brings.
Definitely need to ease up on the drinking, reboot my diet and get out walking more. Maybe get back to my (very) limited exercise routine. My mental and physical health has held up reasonably well since April but I want to keep building on that.
To support that I am moving to a nine-day fortnight in 2023. The return to five-day weeks after a few years of four days went better than expected but I don’t want to tempt fate.
Well 2023 doesn’t seem to be that ambitious does it? That probably feels about right after the last few years. I’m in a job I like that will keep me out of trouble for the most part and the age of additional side hustles has passed – the newsletter and the blogging will suffice – I’m going to be 50 after all.
Digital by Default 