So it’s really quite weird coming back to a blog after three years, reading text after yourself so much later that you’ve completely forgotten writing it. I’ve spent the time between last writing on this blog and now either not writing this kind of content, or writing in a diary. The diaries are really quite useful when going back, but the writing style (in my case) is more one of exhaustive completeness for future reference rather than readability. And so as you can maybe already tell I’m struggling to find my concise voice!
It was my birthday yesterday, and because it falls exactly between Christmas and New Year’s I now have a couple of days where I can basically avoid work for the most part. And so one gets to thinking.
I think the lovely part of writing a blog is that it forces you to step back and look at yourself in a certain way, imagining an unseen (and no doubt disinterested!) public being introduced to you for the first time. This blog for me was always a thing of hope, a public diary on the way to hopefully doing amazing things. A few years ago, when I was poor, I remember thinking that I should write a diary, and chronicle my journey from poor to what I hoped would be financially comfortable for more than a few months for the first time in my life. I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because I think in many ways I did it stupidly: I took too long, I worked too hard, didn’t learn quickly enough, left various messes that took ages to clean up afterwards; I didn’t read enough novels, or spend enough time on relationships, and so on.
And so this blog is, at least partly, an attempt to chronicle the next part of things, during which I do them better. Even taking the time to reflect a little and write a post or two a week is, I think, a sign of focusing energy in the right place.
And, so, what’s to come? Some of the things I’m interested in at the moment are:
- How do you manage people, in a positive, productive way
- How do you absolutely minimise the amount of time that you spend working, or at least the time spent working that you don’t genuinely, unambiguously enjoy. I’m constantly feeling like I’m behind, and never ahead, and I want to feel like I’m forging ahead somewhere exciting rather than running away from the chaos and mess and chasing my tail
- Much the same as the above, what’s the best way to manage and separate work and the rest of one’s life
- How can organisations that I control positively impact the world around them
- What new ventures should I start, and how can these get off the ground as insanely quickly as possible
- How do I best approach daily work to actually get things done