And there goes 2023...

It's already March, and I haven't posted a thing this year. It's not that I've been lazy, but I switched to journaling using a pen (fountain) and a notebook. And I've written pages and pages, but none of that stuff has translated to my blog.

Believe me, I've had the best of intentions, and I thought I'd have a lot of time, but the year's really moving quickly.

OLD AGE

It must be a function of age. I've noticed that the older I've become, the faster time flies. You wake up in the morning, shower, dress, eat breakfast and get ready to face the day. And voila! Like that, it's already lunchtime. What happened to the morning? One meeting possibly, a couple of phone calls and the morning's done.

I remember when I had a full-time gig, the afternoons were especially tough. That's because I'm an insomniac and by the time the afternoon rolls around, I've been up for an entire day. I'm still an insomniac, but the afternoons are different. Now that I have my own gig, there's simply not enough time in the afternoon. I have a million projects, all started, each of them inching slowly forward. Some have stalled for months (like a book I'm writing) and some are about a hair's breadth away from the finish, but that last step's a doozy.

REFLECTIONS

I drafted an essay, a reflection of 2022, that I was supposed to post on LinkedIn, incidentally my favourite place for some type of information - most of the people on LinkedIn actually have lives and are serious.

That essay will probably end up in this blog. It's now too old to reflect on 2022. 2022's looooong gone and nobody even remembers it. I hope you've all done your taxes.

But even as I reflect on the first quarter of this year, January and February to be exact, where on earth did they go. We planned, we budgeted, we started executing and all of a sudden the train started rolling really quickly down the tracks. No brakes. No engine-person to manage the speed. At this pace, I won't be able to do many of the things I'd planned for this year. And the strange thing is that I'm saying this now, in March!

HEALTH

One of the really good things that I've done this year is take care of my health. The move from Canada to Kenya disrupted my exercise schedule and I stopped jogging and running marathons. But I kept on eating as though I was jogging and running marathons.

But I've switched and the results are slowly coming back. Food is great, and in Kenya especially, it's eaten at all times of the day. There's always time for a cup of tea somewhere during the day. And Kenyans love meetings, and all meetings are catered meetings. I needed to switch off that roller coaster of Kenyan-style meetings, and get back to my old Canadian-style work life.

But there was more. Becoming your own boss doesn't necessarily mean that your time is your own time. It means that your time is your employees time. And your time is whatever's left over after you've given all your time to the company. Your company.

Strangely enough some may think that when you're working for yourself you don't treat the day with the same bureaucratic discipline that you'd treat employment. But this is not true. When you work for yourself, it's all up to you to succeed, or fail. And failure is never a good choice.

2023, HERE I COME

So, 2023, I'm wide awake now, and you won't just rush by me without acknowledging my presence or my effort. I just completed my list and we're ON.