As I am prone to do I set out some ‘ambitions’ for 2023 – less New Years Resolutions, more loose goals to stop me ‘streaming’ the year away.

This year they were particularly unchallenging as I crawled out of my sabbatical and the trauma of the peak Covid/Crash years. Yet as we head towards the halfway mark I am not exactly crushing them!

Basically the ambitions break down to the following ten –>

• My 50th party
• Toronto/Montreal trip
• Graffiti challenge
• Get a tattoo
• NYC/DC trip
• Conferences – attending/speaking
• Guest on a podcast
• Ease up on my drinking and sort my diet
• Exercise a little
• Move to a nine-day work fortnight

My 50th was brilliant, as were my trips to Canada and the US. I did get my tattoo after talking about it for about 20 years.

I’ve attended Product for the People in London, Govcamp and Code for America. I am going to Govcamp Cymru and Camp Digital in the next couple of weeks. Plus I’m speaking at Agile in the City: Bath (though I do need to write the talk!) and helping organise Product in the People Cardiff at the end of June….oh I’m also on the subs bench for the Service Design in Gov conference in September. I’m also maybe speaking at another international conference at the backend of the year.

Totally failed with the graffiti stuff – in fact I’ve barely painted (or even sketched) in 2023. The weather was a factor for sure but also I’ve just not been feeling inspired. Lana did give me a beautiful leather bound sketch book for my birthday though so I plan to start using that and maybe experimenting with some different styles of drawing this summer. Still have a shed full of spray-paint though!

Haven’t done a podcast either. I did talk to a few people about it early in the year but I haven’t exactly pursued it – I blow hot and cold on the idea if I’m honest. Hasn’t the world suffered enough the last few years without another opinionated, middle-aged white bloke taking shit on a podcast? Maybe I should just shut up? Yep. I should. Scratch that ambition from the list.

My health has been shit. My diet has been rubbish, even by my limited standards I haven’t been exercising enough and while my drinking isn’t that bad I could benefit from cutting down a little. Just the last week or so I’ve started dragging myself out for a little walk every day (basically because my US trip shouldn’t have been so knackering!) and I’m going to try the lowest impact of low impact yoga adjacent type thing to stop me seizing up completely.

As I wrote recently I’ve been having some issues that have definitely created some mental health challenges as well. This has been weird as it hasn’t really been stress or anxiety (things I am familiar with) rather it has been been this months long episode of just been pissed off every day but having to pretend I’m not with almost everybody. Honestly it has been knackering. It is weirdly part of the reason I wasn’t able to move to the nine day fortnight – as I started to find every day too much of a strain to work the extra hours to create the buffer I needed for the day off. I do have to find a way to solve that though as five day weeks just are not the thing.

Actually it doesn’t look too bad written down – I just need to (as always) get a better handle on taking case of my health (physical and mental) and at least part of the answer to that is the same.

Right – new leaf turning 🙂

Onwards.