I just updated my Now page, if you want the short version, check that out. If you want more reflection and events from last month, check out this article.

Last Month: February 2019

February was a very good month. I managed to finish a couple of projects which had been holding me back and made real progress towards others. This included the ninja course (last touches before hitting publish mostly just gaining the guts to do so) and submitted my work for the Copyblogger course. Just need to see the results on that.

One of the most interesting parts of the month was the Accidental Creative Podcast weekly planner. I listened to the episode and then had the idea to make a sketchnote marking up the planner. After that, I realized how I could adopt a couple of the ideas into my own weekly planning.

One of the interesting ideas was weekly words. So far my words have been

  • Finish (I completed a course and submitted it)
  • Prepare (last week I scheduled all the content for this week and prepared for a big work project)
  • Sabbath (this week is my “rest” week, so I removed all my obligations and it’s free for whatever I want) I look forward to seeing how this continues and I may continue to share these weekly words.

Another highlight was appearing on the Micro Monday podcast with Jean MacDonald where we talked about micro.blog and blogging. It’s given me a bit of a hunger to do my own micro.cast and I have an idea for one.

The biggest negative of the month was not really practicing Jazz guitar which is one of my yearly goals that I’d like to work on.

Reading

I finished reading the Leonardo Da Vinci biography by Walter Isaacson. It was a real delight and inspiration. The 20 life lessons in this newspaper article are a great starting point. I also read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport which has given me great ideas to adopt and I want to go back and revisit Deep Work again now.

Sketchnoting

I’m finally sharing more of my sketchnoting after gaining more guts and acceptance of not being an amazing drawer or having scrappy handwriting. It’s for myself mostly and trying to encourage others to give it a go too. The process is more important than the product.

The Month: March 2019

This month is looking to be very exciting as I continue from last month. I hope to keep the momentum going. Our big work project should end very soon and it will be interesting to see how things looks then. My main aim for the month is to bring these digital minimalism lessons into my life. This includes

  • more quality leisure (calligraphy, meeting friends and some deeper activities)
  • continuing without Facebook (turns out it’s pretty easy so far)
  • dumbing my phone (restricting a few apps and activities)
  • finding better ways to follow the news and information

My copy of Keep Going by Austin Kleon should arrive, I’m excited to get into that book.

I’m also considering my output. I’m wondering whether I should merge adversaria and my micro.blog. There’s certainly a lot of cross over and that can cause issues with knowing “where does this belong?”

That’s never a good sign.

I’m also wondering about launching a Micro.cast, I have a topic that I think could be interesting for one. If I do, it will probably be a limited series of about 10 episodes. I like the idea of a podcast having a beginning and an end. It can be what it is and not linger on when it should have been stopped long ago.

Finally, I have an idea for a book. I’m not certain of it yet but I’ve noticed some themes in material I’m reading and collecting notes on. So I’m continuing to collect notes and find more material on this topic and we’ll see if it becomes something.

My yearly goals

  • learn and play 3 jazz standards at an open mic night
  • keep and play with a journal (hobonichi)
  • spend less time on devices and more time with people, doing things
  • start taking more photos again