Category: General (Page 2 of 2)

Happy New Year!

I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break. The home looked great, we had wonderful food, drink and company, walked our nutter Springer Spaniel at the beach and the park, and I read loads. The perfect Christmas holiday, can’t wait for the next one.

Unfortunately (I’m kidding, it’s all good), there are 50 weeks in the way before the next Christmas break, so I’d better get my act together and fill in the gaps with the best life I can make.

I’ve got a few things I want to do. Whatever it is, I want to see it through, and be relentless and steadfast in getting stuff done. Tenacious, yup, that’s the word.

Aside from the usual “lose weight” goal for every year (modestly budgeted for this year, despite having a ton of weight to lose), I’ve got some key things I want to achieve, based on my life “pockets”:

Purpose: I will refine my productivity system to work better for me. I reintroduced paper into my system last year – I love it – and I’m going to make it work better for me in 2026. I’m also toying with the idea of starting a YouTube channel – something fun and possibly even the launchpad for a side hustle into and beyond my retirement. I’ll be getting the planning paper out in January!

Health: More dog-walking needed! Good for me, good for Marley. Better food choices and exercise. Simples!

Money: Less is more – better financial decisions, savings strategies and investing for retirement.

Home: There were huge expenses last year getting things done inside and outside. We’re getting the exterior of the house painted this year, and we’re refining and improving inside the house. Minimalism will be key this year, stripping out what’s not needed and focusing on quality for what remains.

Work: The biggest item on my list is to say No. I don’t do it enough and consequently fall behind on other, more important projects.

Leisure: Read better. I read around 30 books last year, I want to read more paper books,  and use my new awesome Christmas gift – the Kindle Paperwhite signature edition.  Bigger screen, awesome battery life, wireless charging.  My garden is so important to my physical and mental health. I want to get better at what I do, there’s lots of infrastructure things to get right – a good year for getting stuck in. Oh, and completing my Horticulture course.

Learning: I’m studying Azure this year, as well as my Horticulture course. I’ll also be continuing with DevOps and testing learning this year for my job.

Relationships:  Listen deeper and talk less! Cultivate my relationships with my best mates (we call ourselves The 4 Old Gits), family, and our wonderful Springer spaniel, Marley.  I’ll be proud to welcome my grandson Bobby into the world next month too!

Right. Let’s get this party started.

This year’s watchword is TENACITY.

Haven’t quite read as much in October as I would have liked, but I’m really enjoying The Hobbit. A fun read.

Also continuing with Stephen King books I’ve never read before, very different styles for each I think!

Finally, it’s the annual revisit of Getting Things Done, all about the wonderful, common-sense framework for, well, getting things done!

Really enjoying my reading this year, but still need to keep the discipline going.

I’ve been a fan of Stephen King for over 40 years, but I sort of stopped following his books in my late teens/early 20s. It’s been great rediscovering them through Audible – and I’m now slowly catching up. I’m focusing on his novels rather than novellas, collections or non-fiction work – but I will get to them in time – especially The Dark Tower series, which I hope to do in succession. Nearly finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, so I’ve lined up The Green Mile next.

My son said recently he was looking to start The Lord of the Rings. I remember starting it in my teens, but I got bored quickly. Too much scene-setting (and I was too much into Stephen King). I thought I’d try again, starting with the The Hobbit. Reading it on Kindle, and really enjoying it!

I’ve been keeping a Bullet Journal and a personal long-form journal for the last 6 months. With the bullet journal, I want to get back to the original ideas and philosophy, as I’m keen to track habits and use better collections. I’m slowly splitting my work life and home life, and need my journal to reflect that.

As usual, it’s time to keep the faith and hope that Graham Potter can turn things around. Best we can hope for I think is mid-table this season unless there is some dramatic and frankly unexpected revival.

I’ll also be rooting for my birthplace team Dagenham and Redbridge as they try and do something after demotion to the National Conference Southern League at the end of 24/25. A loss and a draw thus far. 21st in the League.

It’s gonna be a fun season! Got to keep the faith. COYI! COYD!

Other Meta-related accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) are going that way also. the only Meta app I’m staying with is WhatsApp, purely because family/friends/work colleagues are using it.

I’d prefer to use Signal…. maybe I’ll convince them all one day.

I’ve also removed Medium and Goodreads – no beef against either, I’m just not using the accounts enough to justify use of my (frankly precious) time.

The one site that’s staying? That’ll be YouTube. I’ve got a nicely curated range of channels (on subject relevant to this blog!) that I subscribe to, so that’ll do me. I might even have a go at making my own YouTube videos in the future.

My current channels I’m subscribed to are : Bullet Journal, Cal Newport, Carl Pullein, Gardening with Alan Titchmarsh, GTD focus, JashiiCorrin, Learn Horticulture, Next Action Associates, Rachelle in theory, Rewilding Jude, The Grey Gardener.

After a year or so pointing my blog domain name at Medium, I’ve come back to WordPress.

Why?

Well, editing posts on WP is just more flexible. I’m more in control of how things should look and can easily faff about with CSS/HTML and arrange as I want. I’m also fully in control of the content I post.

I’m not going to diss Medium, however. It’s an extremely valuable site – with great articles from talented writers – and if I find that I can devote more time to writing and, perhaps get good at it, I may look at it again.

I’ll keep “The Dunn Thing” publication going on Medium – for now it’ll be to duplicate some content from this site just to see if there’s any interest or traction.

Any hoo. I’m really pleased to be back with my WordPress site and hope to make some interesting posts, armed with my lovely Canva and SketchWow apps to hopefully make content interesting for y’all.