50 things that made my year 2018

In no specific-order.

• Car-less easy commute. Walk to work everyday.
• Collecting leaves with my daughter on the way back from work.
• A week in Portugal - thanks to my wife.
• Book: Diane Keaton autobiography.
• My new job, back to digital physical design.
• Travelling to Prague.
• Few days on Valentia Island.
• A night in the Bowery watching Electric Swing Circus with the wife.
• Dining at King Citric (Howth).
• Building lego sets with the little one.
• Finding my old lego figurines.
• Going to Deer Park with a bike trailer.
• Migrating my geekier website from Jekyll to Pelican.
• The Game Alto Odyssey
• Completing all challenges on Temple Run 2.
• Pantos ( Tivoly and Gaite )
• Finding my daughter flourishing with the new montessori.
• The daughter starting school ( well montessorri )
• Family christmas kindle.
• Token pinball arena.
• Dublin Zoo Wild Lights ( night time at the zoo)
• Cooking from Jamie Oliver book ( Five Ingredients, and Ministry of Food )
• Cutting pumpkins for Halloween.
• Bray walk, and slots.
• A first visit to Tayto Park.
• Limerick winning the All Ireland in Hurling ( finally ).
• Ireland rugby team win over the All Blacks.
• France soccer team winning the world cup.
• Bundoran adventure park.
• Playing on the beach in donegal.
• Finding a lego figurine dressed up as a brick - oh the irony, and one as a french man.
• Trojan academy free play ( dressed up as a lion )
• Building wooden train tracks.
• Solving jigsaw
• Hole in the wall beach ( Howth ).
• Robert Plant in concert.
• Books: "Mythos" by Stephen Fry and "I found my tribe"
• Completing my 2018 book challenge - beating my target of 45 by 3 books.
• Tall tower building (duplos)
• Reading night-time stories ( Enid Blyton, Sven Nordqvist ...)
• Rick and Morty.
• Catching up again with my talented American composer friend.
• Finger painting.
• Dublin Zoo.
• Snowed-in in Dublin.
• Dinosaurs (The Ambassador )
• Auvergne ski resort ( Super Besse ), building a snowman.
• Old Carousel in Vichy (France).
• One year married.
• Playmobil advent calendar.

Books I read in 2018

Highlights:

• Mythos by Stephen Fry. I enjoy rediscovering the greek mythology.
• One Piece: Drawn to it just by curiosity to see what the fuss was all about, much better than I thought it would be.
• Then Again by Diane Keaton, sincere and inspiring.

2018 - Goodreads Reading challenge
So I read 48 of 45 books in 2018.

Spring clean - reboot

With the new limitations on Flickr free accounts ( no more than 1K photos ),  I am taking the opportunity to clean out old posts, and hopefully reboot that somehow half dormant blog....

Duplo Robots build

Today build robots.... nice one with ladybird faces....

And discovering that Megablocks are Duplo compatible.... 

On abandoning facebook

I am no longer on Facebook, this is not recent or new, I took the leap 2 years ago.

I had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the social network, and by the time I was wasting scrolling newsfeed.
No regret about the decision, the only feature I had to find an alternative is the ability to keep in touch with some people, especially since I move abroad and to a different city, in other word going back the old fashioned way: use email, shockingly call directly using my phone.

I want to discuss here the strategy I have been using.

First, not all acquaintance are equal, we get closer to some and disconnect ed to others, and those relations keep evolving over time.

Leaving Facebook forces you to sort out this, and prioritize the relationship you value and want to preserve, and the one you can do without, and can easily prune out.

Now I have few categories, two sometimes overlapping

1. Work and colleagues relationship
All work-related connection has been moved and is staying exclusively on Linkedin. The platform is great to stay in touch with colleague, industry progress and jobs opportunities, without too much of the un-wanted noise. I  have found noisier and noisier content appearing in the last two years, but careful use of the unfollow feature is helping to keep it under control.

2. Family and friends
Email, messaging, Skype, phone, or even better meeting directly face to face.
I am not short of families gathering on the Irish side, for the people abroad it does require more voluntary effort - and I need to improve on that.
I have setup shared photo albums, so they can be easily accessed by my family abroad.
In the end, I found that I do need to schedule a time for the phone call or meetup, allowing a dedicated time for exchange is what works for me best.

3. Acquaintances, toxic relationship, old flames...

Simply put, it is cut off from all social network. I may still have their contact details somewhere.
If I happen to cross the path of old acquaintances, I happily say hi, and exchange a few moments... they usually turn out to be happy fortuitous events.
For the rest, I am much happier without those crossing my mind either physically or virtually.

I would encourage anybody to read Cal Newport articles on this subject.

Update: 

• Tim Harford post on the subject :
  http://timharford.com/2019/02/how-behavioural-economics-helped-me-kick-my-smartphone-addiction/

Update: June 2019

• Following this, I also deleted my Twitter, Instagram accounts

Update: October 2019

• Not missing FB or twitter, but I decided to reactivate an Instagram account for a photo a day project. To ensure I don't waste too much time on the app, I have setup a 10 minutes limit per day (using Android Digital WellBeing setting), so that is 10 minute a day to do the picture and upload.

Update: January 2020
An interesting video from Melanie Murphy

Update: June 2020

My Instagram usage, increased again, so I have deleted the account for good this time.

Update: August 2021

• Re-activated a new twitter account so I could follow my kid school twitter account and the cycle bus information. No followers and limiting following to below 90 people. Not installed on my phone, only on my personal computer, Screen Time limited to 5 minutes everyday.
• Activated new instagram account, only on phone, with screen time limit of 10 minutes... very unsure about that, but it allows me to follow the wife...
• What's App usage has increased but it is replacing email, SMS, Skype and phone call, so no complain.
• Installed Signal on phone.

Engineering disaster

Not sure what happened after the building phase ...

Engineering disaster

Looking back at 2017

Somebody started walking, just in time to multiple visit the zoos and walk down the aisle with its parents... busy  year which flew so fast....Another busy year is gone

Pram nature walk and birdies

And a resolution for 2018 is: Do only One Thing At A Time.


PS: I would highly recommend this website: https://www.futureme.org/
to send yourself a reminder in a year time of your resolution / objective for the year.
I have been using myself for the past 6 years, a good reminder of sometime broken aspiration, and at other time fulfilled propheices.