May 3 2021

Books

Do you read on an e-reader? Do you buy electronic books? Do you buy paper books from stores that may or may not collate your purchases and share them with Amazon and the likes, anyway? Do you use apps like Goodreads to get recommendations, store read and want to read type lists, and to share read books with connections?

Last year, I watched “Online privacy is broken; this is how we fix it” a TEDX GEM talk by Emerald De Leeuw.

I also retweeted a tweet about an (older) mom who had been on Snapchat for a month where she captured her husband, a public school librarian, ranting in the most decent way possible. Two of the snaps stood out for me: one with him refusing to stock a biography of President Trump* and the other about Barbar the elephant being racist, colonialist rubbish. Whilst I absolutely applaud his principled stand, does he as a librarian have the right to censor information that could be put in a section labelled something like: things you should not do and people you should not emulate?

In the recent past, I may or may not have done work that may or may not have involved none or several public libraries. Whilst data protection and privacy were not the focus of that particular piece of work, the subject matter was a subset. Discussion centred around the usefulness of maintaining user reading history versus the expectation of privacy. Librarians like to have access to the list to recommend, when asked, however, the potential to profile (via the electronic management system) the individual using their reading list exists. Librarians generally voted in favour of not retaining the user history and rather discussing with the user asking for recommendations at the time. With the ability to shape the thoughts of a community, librarians are far more powerful than I think they realise.**

Articles have been popping up on my timeline recently about privacy, data protection and Amazon knowing more about you than anybody else. A certain BBC documentary aired the other evening citing the number of data points collected per person per ONE click on the website. Add to this the tracking of reading material via the Kindle ecosystem.*** At this point, Amazon could probably make you the movie of your future life and be 99% accurate.

This is not a piece on digital versus paper as I’ll point you back to the third question above and the TEDx talk. Whilst to some extent, our identity can be influenced and moulded according to the mores of the community within which we live, our identity is no longer influenced but rather curated. Also, curated at the speed of light to suit the motives of the highest bidder. What is the antidote to this? I like to think mindfulness. Do we need an antidote? What do you think?

*Respect the office, etc.
**Disclaimer: this is most definitely not a Tomcats reference.
***And social media posts, etc etc.

May 2 2021

A South Sea Turtle Reflects

“I see babies smile,” sang Louis Armstrong. So do I, Satchmo, and I think to myself: what on earth are they smiling about?

They have to contend with faeces-filled clothing, regular bangs on the head, and twenty miniature daggers of bone slowly slicing their way through their gums – which, in an absurdly vicious twist, also causes agonising inflammation of the arse. This is why we retain no memories of the first three years: because they’re hell.

It’s all to play for when you’re a baby. Everything is at stake. You’ve got to be careful not to eat from the cat’s litter tray, not to attract the nickname “Urinal”, not to turn out a heroin addict. Every beautiful little child, every dribbling, wobbling bundle of boundless potential, has a chance, however remote, of ending up in Real Madrid or Portlaoise Prison, of becoming an astronaut or a car clamper. We’re like those heartbreaking South Sea turtles that hatch on the beach and then have to dodge massed ranks of waiting predators to get to the sea – except it takes us 30 years to get there.

But when you’re a baby, you don’t know any of this. All you know is that damned screwdriver simply will not fit into the stupid electricity socket. All you know is that Mum insists on trying to perch you on the toilet even though you’ve told her about the dinosaurs lurking below. All you know is that there’s nothing Dad can say or do which would be even half as bad as the intolerable existential pain incurred by not being allowed to watch Toy Story right this second – who cares if it’s midnight?

A baby’s screaming has been scientifically proven to be the third most irritating noise in creation, close behind Robbie Williams singing and the words “Hi, could I just have a minute of your time?” Nature, in her wisdom, has gifted the infant humanoid with this infallible mechanism for drawing the attention it needs. But nature ain’t so smart (see also: the Chihuahua, Mike Myers, ragwort, breech birth). The infant’s siren call can easily repel the assistance it is intended to solicit.

But babies will squawk and toddlers will roar regardless, sometimes in duet, sometimes even kicking off just as Mr Williams comes on the radio and a charity mugger commences his spiel. At times like that, it’s easy to lose your temper. Remember, though, you were once the same. Sure, you were probably shouting for a nice new stick, or maybe a pig’s bladder to kick around the boreen, rather than the latest Bratz whore-doll or this week’s Man United jersey, like the kids of today.

But have some compassion, gather all your kindness and patience. We can never understand what babies are going through, but we know it’s bloody tough. In a few short years, they’ll have forgotten too, and they’ll be grey, slope-shouldered adults like the rest of us. These moments are fleeting. Treasure them now, tantrums and all.

Mar 10 2021

Four is Fair

You know what? You deserve a day off. Why don’t you take a long weekend, stay home on Monday? Hey, it’s cool, don’t worry, you can tell them the guy in Notes From Xanadu said it was okay.

In fact, take every Monday. Or maybe Friday. Yeah, Fridays would probably be better. Sure, why not? Take Fridays off from now on. Yes, you – all of you. No problem. You’re welcome.

See, that was easy.

What if we all just started working a four-day week? Simply downed tools, shut off the PC, parked the train, trousered the last brown envelope… all on Thursday evening. Then rang in sick, like the Blue Flu, every seven days.

Yes, those phone calls would be awkward at first: “Well, I guess it is strange how we’re all sick again this Friday boss, but (pinches nose, coughs) I rilly habe a bery bad cold.” Yes, there would be fury at first. Yes, some of us, many of us, might be fired. But we would be fired for the greater good. You can’t make an omelette without a few pioneers getting arrows in their backs.

And after a while, we wouldn’t have to ring in at all. Eventually, even those most incensed by this great leap backward would capitulate. Owner-managers, CEOs, bosses of every kidney would, after a while, throw up their hands in despair and start taking their mistresses to Kinsale every Friday (metaphorically speaking, of course – at least till the pandemic is under control). After all, how can you work if there’s no-one to work with?

Clients and customers too would learn to appreciate this extended breathing space at the end of the traditional work cycle. Even foreign trading partners would come to terms with it: “Ah oui, the lazy Irish … but what can you do, uh?” In time, and with an easterly wind, our bold initiative would sneak across every European border, like Johnny Logan and the smoking ban. And inevitably, other continents would also follow suit. The grassroots support is already there, worldwide – after all, who doesn’t want to work less? – and once Ireland is out there as proof of concept, nation after nation will tumble before this beautiful historical tide.

With reduced working hours comes reduced productivity, and from reduced productivity flows the manna of reduced prices, thereby slowing inflation and gradually bringing down the cost of living. Possibly. While I’m making stuff up, let’s say also that the social and economic sea-change of a four-day week would, within 12 months, end the current global fiscal crisis, boost consumer confidence and spending, cure Covid, slash the price of oil and put a 64-inch plasma TV in the arms of every schoolchild in the world.

Where did it come from, anyway, this inviolable figure of 40 hours’ work per week? It’s so uneven, so awkward – such an unwieldy figure. It should be rounded down. Maybe to 30. That’s a nice handy number.

The first step is up to you. Enjoy the long weekend.

Feb 9 2021

Generation Pandemic

The most socially awkward thing I’ve ever done. So awkward I’m not going to * anything.

Have a baby in 2020.

But first, please enjoy the preceding few weeks’ hilarity in my meme and photo folder.

It was really awkward. Not least because of how it happened. One-time-only bad decision making, if you know what I mean, after a few glasses of Irish-cream-what-what from Aldi. I mean, can we be more classy? I’m thoroughly embarrassed as I type this and remember myself saying something like: “it’s the end of the world, who cares anyway?” (April ’20). In any case, one fine day sitting at the computer, the nausea hit me from my toes up. My first thought was, no. Just no. No way. And then himself got sent straight to the pharmacy.

Back to the awkwardness. For a while, it just looked like the Covid Stone. Then it started looking like a real baby. I was stuck at home, as we all were. Going literally nowhere except to hospital appointments by myself. Time went on and it was just too late to say anything on all the work video calls. I mean, what do you do? Stand up and show off your belly in an ‘accidental’ side shot? Yawn and stretch? Or do you interrupt proceedings with an “excuse me I have some news?” While debating these various different and equally awkward scenarios, so much time passed that it was nearly time to have the actual baby. And then he arrived early. So then the message had to very quickly turn into “hey, I’m off here now for a bit of personal time, but not for too long. No, I don’t have Covid. BRB”-type messages. AFK for a few days.

I had my baby on the 29 November, by section, in CUMH. It was a Sunday night – change of shift time. It was really scary and very unpleasant, with Graeme (my husband) waiting outside in the car park for hours and nobody knowing what was going on. I was admitted to the Emergency and was in for about five hours, in labour, on a narrow bed, not able to reach my phone. By the time I got somebody to pass it to me, I was pretty much being dressed for theatre. We thought I’d go in, be calmed down, and sent away again. Not that simple. Graeme was allowed in basically as they were cutting me open – after they had to repeat the spinal block that didn’t work the first time. Just a really unpleasant evening. He had to leave when they wheeled me out of recovery. He hadn’t been able to attend a single doctor’s appointment with me.

Ruairí came out shouting the odds though and was pretty okay. This was the biggest relief for me at that moment. We had a difficult pregnancy, him and I. Besides it being incredibly awkward, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. From start to end, the ball was dropped by the doctors and midwives involved in that regard. If not for our GP and the village pharmacy, I don’t know if we would have come out okay. That, and all the delicious healthy snacks Graeme made. Endless snacking. Snacking till the food is up your throat with the nausea.

To this day, I’m waiting for the South Infirmary to phone me back to get my sugar readings from about 6 months ago. And yes, assholes, I left multiple messages on your various answering machines. Can you tell I got sick and tired of injecting myself with insulin? I have the biggest respect for anybody who lives with diabetes. I did a needle count one day, rough estimation: I had to prick my finger seven times a day in order to test sugars and inject insulin twice a day. I will be avoiding the follow-up fasting glucose test for a while, possibly until the trauma subsides.

When I went into labour, they gave me medication for high blood pressure, as that was playing up too. They explained at the time, but, honestly, I wasn’t listening to anything or seeing very much. I met so many people there that Graeme remembers; don’t ask me who they are though! That medication did something, and Ruairí’s sugars crashed at 48 hours. He landed up in the neonatal unit with a sugar level of 1.9. This was at 10pm at night.

After I had been told that afternoon that he had a murmur in his heart, I had to tell Graeme in a text message. I couldn’t voice note or call because the other children were listening in. Then I had to message, from the deserted basement passage of CUMH in the middle of the night, while our baby was being revived. He got through that. The murmur disappeared. And then he was jaundiced. So jaundiced he went back into the neonatal unit for a few days and sessions under the lamps. We had been able to take him home for one night only at that point. I had to go back to the emergency for very high blood pressure. Sitting, alone, again, on a tiny bed, my milk came in leaking all over. I pumped. He drank. We got through it. He was allowed home when he was one week old.

I don’t think anything gets more awkward than this experience.

All that trauma with nowhere for it to go, in the middle of all the trauma of our lives every day these days. At times, the awkwardness is really funny. But, at other times, I cry.

When we need the hugs and the chat the most, they’re not there anymore. We need to fix this. Be kind to the people around you. Ask how they’re doing. Make space for people to tell their stories. We’re all going through something, and we need each other. Let’s take turns having a bad day and allowing ourselves and others to have a bad day. We’re nearly there. Let’s not leave anybody behind.

As my niece says, he is our tinnnnyyyyy piece of cheese.

Jan 12 2021

Welcome to 2021

Merry New Year to all of you! I went AWOL for a good reason there – to be revealed in the next column as The Most Socially Awkward Thing I Did in 2020 and Ever.* In any case, here we are. Locked down. Again. The third time over. Well, it’s more like the second time, as the time before this didn’t really count. Or did it? Time is a bit hazy at the moment. I find my mind reverts back to our Southern Hemisphere, South African calendar in a Clockwork Orange-type blip from time to time. Is it the start of the school year? Is it the end? What’s happening? It feels like July, but it’s not. Will summer ever come back? If I start posting pictures of crossed out I I I Is send help!

At least this time I’m allowed alcohol. Counting down the days till my Kahlua arrives. I plan on making copious amounts of Dom Pedros.** The older children have asked for banana bread. This is such old news for me, I’ve decided that we’re clearing a shelf in our front entrance little room which is as cold as a fridge.*** This shelf will be dedicated to all things baking. I’m going full Martha Stewart this round of lockdown – minus the securities fraud and Snoop Dogg collab. Expect a slew of overnight and two day fermented yeast baked good pictures if you follow me on Instagram.****

Other coping slash distraction mechanisms include binge watching series. Schitt’s Creek has opened up a world of meme-age.***** We’re onto Brooklyn 99 now. It’s making me regret not going into the police service and becoming a detective (that is one of my lesser-known regrets – I think I would have made a very good detective. I also have a queue of schmaltzy 90s and 2000s romantic comedies to get through; Sweet Home Alabama ticked off that list. Mental chewing gum is where it is at.

Seriously though, what are you doing to cope? Retail therapy is dire. No more middle aisle shopping at Aldi and Lidl. Who the fuck classified that as not essential? Can we have a word, please and thank you? I’m still on Amazon – yes, with my Prime account intact. I spent a couple of days doing calculations and comparisons with .de; shipping is a monster, yoh! Still cheaper on Prime. And for those of you buy-local loyalists, the money I save buying on Prime gets spent on (Michael McIntyre Voice) spicey bags (normal voice) at the village takeaway. My version of shop local.******

In any case, fuck Brexit. Really. I don’t say much about it publicly, but I am sad it actually happened. I’m sad for all that could have been and now never will be. I’m sad for people who believe they’re so much better than everybody else that they put walls up, slam doors shut, and retreat. Small people with small minds. Nationalism turned disease. There, I said it. Ugh. In protest, I check out my items on Amazon one by one,******* while I watch my romcoms, eating alcoholic milkshakes and dreaming of UBI and communal gardens.

Welcome to 2021, everybody. The year we all eat less and walk more. Or not.

*As in EVER.
**Discovered this is a Very South African thing. Basically, adult milkshakes. Double cream, ice cream, and whiskey whizzed up together. Can substitute whiskey for Kahlua, Baileys, Frangelico, etc. I might try a chocolate/orange combo.
***We could right now skate on our swimming pool. Yes, the above ground pool is still up. Totally ran out of fucks to give.
****Don’t follow me on Instagram. Most vanilla happy-snap account ever – more for my own amusement. Twitter is where it’s at – JustCallMePips.
*****David Rose is a gift.
******Just go with it.
*******Avoid VAT and import duties: tick with Prime. You’re welcome.

Oct 23 2020

The Internet is too small

The Internet is too small for me.

What’s that you say, Google? Seventy-eleven gazillion web pages indexed? Pah. That’s kindergarten stuff, a puny collection, about as impressive as Donald “Big Brain” Trump reciting the ten times table. Sure, there’s lots of info out there: if I search for details of artists who work exclusively in the medium of baby duck faeces, for example, the web will ask me to “please specify type of duck”. But if I then search for jobs for these envelope-pushing visionaries, the electronic ether smugly reports that it found no matches, suggesting instead that I might be interested in some crudely hand-drawn erotica which clearly violates Disney and Warner Brothers copyrights, as well as the laws of good taste, physics and most civilised nations.

This just isn’t good enough. Now that we’ve sloshed about a bit on the oily, trash-polluted waters of this ocean of cultural bilgewater, we naturally want to sail on bravely, endlessly, like Detective Columbo in the Santa Maria, further and further over the horizon, chasing that last elusive Wikipedia citation on the episode where Pikachu teams up with Akira to defeat nine (yes, NINE!) Digimon in magic battle.

I want, as a bare minimum, blanket CCTV coverage of every celebrity (defined as min 5MHz, or at least five Mickeyhartes), with MMS alerts to notify me immediately every time they go to the bathroom. I want 3D walkthroughs of every “ghost” estate of unsold housing in the country, schadenfreude-oozing showcases where our on-screen cadavers or avatars or whatever the hell they’re called can scribble begrudgist graffiti on the virtual walls.

I want jobs websites specifically for waterfowl faecal rendering specialists. I want 10,000-word reminiscences of every politician in the country from everyone they ever went to school with, also their results, disciplinary records, and scanned PDFs of their homework. I want insider revelations of every dirty trick used by every single profession, from actuaries to zoologists, to separate people from their money. I want to download endless hours of whalesong, or at the very least a passable dolphin tribute act, to help my insomnia. I want pictorial tutorials on how to replace every single part in every single consumer appliance ever made, from cars to electric chairs. I want to know what the second assistant cameraman on “Metropolis” thought of director Fritz Lang, I want to know how many joints George Harrison smoked while watching Lennon and McCartney squabble over the creation of “Let It Be”, and I want to know exactly where in Upton Park my Uncle Billy stood as he cheered the Hammers on to victory over Ipswich in April 1986.

Oct 9 2020

Wheels Within Wheels – Part IV

Glad to see you back for the last part of this four part series! In Part 1 we had a look at what the Wheel of Life is about, in Part 2 we had a look at how to start using the Wheel of Life, and in Part 3 we looked at how to set and assess goals. This final part is on how to review and assess your life and goals using the Wheel of Life, changing for the better along the way.

Reading back, I realise I might have missed out a small, but rather vital, piece of information for you. That is, when you’re setting your focus for the year or quarter or month, to pick out two to three things to focus on. So, if we look at our categories for the year – and we’ve scored them in light of what our level 10 life looks like – in order to start achieving balance, we’d likely pick up the two to three lowest scoring categories and assign them highest priority. On my Wheel of Life, my three lowest scoring categories are: Health, Personal Development, and Fun and Recreation. I decided to concentrate on these for 2020. When I set my goals, I make the goals set in these categories a priority. Other goals come second to these.

Practically, we have determined the scope of what we’re doing; we’ve decided on the categories for that scope; and we have set some high level goals for the year. These high level goals have been broken down into goals per quarter and then into actions we can take per month. And now we’ve added a priority to the goals we need to concentrate on.

We want to document a formal review date for the end every month (make it about 5 days before the end), where we evaluate, mark off, strike out or carry over actions to the next month. At the end of every quarter, we want to do similar with our quarterly goals, but at this point assessing if we’ve climbed up closer to our level 10 goal from our current score. At the end of the year, we do the great big review, and see how close we’ve come to achieving balance – with similar enough scores between categories – and to see how close we are to that level 10 life. We like to do some reviews together as a couple or as a family, sometimes informally over dinner. Our work-related reviews might be more formal, as they require a bit more complexity in assessments – they are company goals mixed with personal goals. Personal goal reviews might require you to take some proper time out, alone.

A note on the granular level reviews. You might find at the end of the first or second month that you aren’t getting around to the actions that you set. At that point, you might look at your list of monthly actions and attempt to determine if you were trying to do too much as part of a single action, or if you have not assessed the time you can spend on those actions accurately. Take a step back, and look at your monthly and weekly schedule as a whole. Who gets what proportion of your time? Or, you might look at the black and white in front of you and realise that you actually just don’t want to be doing that. If this is the case, then don’t do it. Make peace with this fact and move on.

Take recreation or hobbies in my case. At the beginning of this year, 2020, the year of all that is Corona, I decided to brush up on my piano playing skills. Again. I thought I’d be able to sneak an hour a couple of times a week while the kids were at school to do this. And then we all laughed together. About halfway into lockdown, I realised that instead of carrying this over as a ‘priority’ task that I was never going to get to, I could shift focus and make sure that I spent at least half an hour to an hour, before I went to sleep, reading novels. This helps me to wind down and shift focus onto something that is not work or family related. I love reading candyfloss time-crime dramas or thrillers. Honestly, it’s as much me-time as piano was ever going to be. I’m not about to be sitting at the Heuston Station piano enthralling all who come and go with my talents, believe you me. It was purely for me to do something different. Reading has the same effect. It is okay to change that specific action of play piano for three hours a week to read for half an hour before bed every night.

In terms of my health, I was determined to lose weight and get fit this year. Life had other plans for me. There was a shift in focus there, but that shift in focus turned out to be me eating far more healthily than I ever have done, and, through this change, losing weight without that being the focus. Flexibility is key when we look at our higher level goals. We should not be too specific at the top level. Keep the specificity for the monthly (or weekly actions).

Our work goals have had to change drastically since lockdown happened. That required a conscious sitting down with real facts (not media hysteria) and doing a simple SWOT analysis on the facts plus business landscape. Out of this has come a new focus on longer term, higher value retainer clients, versus a bit of a putting out fires for clients approach. My business will be more robust and able to withstand the upcoming Brexit shakes through this move, too. I should have probably done this analysis a year ago with Brexit in mind, but I didn’t. Mistake acknowledged, lesson learned, and changes made.

Before I finish up, I want to note again that this is not a race to reach ten in your various categories. The point of using the Wheel of Life as a personal growth tool is to achieve balance between the different areas of your life and then to level up realistically to reach the life you want to live. You will learn so much about yourself along the way and your life will only be the richer for it.

So, I’m going to end the last part of this four part series with this part of Ryder Carroll’s quote.

“What’s important is figuring out which incomplete Tasks are worth your limited time and energy moving forward. Strike out those that aren’t, and migrate the ones that are.”

If you take anything from this process, take this with you. We all have limited time and energy, and the intention throughout has been to figure out how to spend this limited time and energy in the most productive way we can, in order to choose and achieve what we see as being our best life. I can tell you now that when you start out, what you think is your best life is probably not going to be what you will think it is 6, 9, or 12 months down the line. The beauty of this process is that we learn more about ourselves and what we really cherish and value along the way. Do not be afraid of changing your goals along the way or your focus, BUT make sure you give yourself enough time on something before you make big changes.

This will be my last bit of writing for Mary and Notes From Xanadu for this year. I hope to be back early 2021 with more insights and maybe a few mini lectures. See you all soon.

Sep 12 2020

Manual? What Manual?

I’m a parent – no, really, it’s true – and let me tell you, no-one could be more shocked than I. Does every father live as I do, in constant dread of the hand on the shoulder and the words “Sorry sir, been a bit of a mix-up”? Or the inevitable letter from the Department of Ensuring All Destinies Run As They Should (DEADRATS), clarifying that only individuals of the highest mental and emotional calibre are permitted to have children, and that as a Grade-3 Minor Idiot (Category B), I unfortunately don’t qualify?

The lament is often heard that children don’t come with an instruction manual. That sounds reasonable, but it’s total BS coming from a dad. Because dads don’t read manuals anyway. We just pick up the DVD recorder, hedge strimmer, or 15-month-old baby girl, and expect it to operate within specified manufacturing parameters.

But being a dad is incredibly hard. Since I never seem to hear any other dads saying this – they’re too busy romping off with their sons on 6am camping expeditions, or teaching their daughters kung-fu – I assume there was some sort of no-complaining clause in the paperwork that I never received because of the whole mix-up by DEADRATS. Or else those other dads are just better than me.

Maybe, though, they’re not: maybe they’re more like icebergs, just 10% showing above the surface, but underneath, they’re paddling like crazy. Or do I mean swans? Possibly ducks? Hard to say. What is an analogy, after all, but a pig with five legs? The point is, possession doesn’t automatically confer expertise. Just because you own a few kids doesn’t mean you know how to operate them. That takes years – and even then, you’re probably only familiar with a fraction of their functions.

Of course the rewards of parenthood are among the most wonderful experiences this world can offer (and I speak here as someone who has seen the Northern Lights dozens of times, on Youtube). Every evening when I get in from work I’m greeted by stampeding feet and the giddy, affectionate sounds of happiness. But that’s enough about the dog. The kids might look up briefly from the TV too, if I’m lucky.

Sadly, though, there are no DEADRATS watching over us. DEADRATS don’t exist at all, unless, possibly, maybe in the health service somewhere. It’s entirely up to us to make sure things Run As They Should. But as the philosopher-poet Ralph W. Emerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Hard as it is to take advice from a guy whose middle name is Waldo, I think that where parenting is concerned, there’s no other choice.

Sep 1 2020

Wheels Within Wheels – Part III

Good to see you here for Part 3 of the Wheel of Life Series! In Part 1 we had a look at what the Wheel of Life is about and in Part 2 we had a look at how to start using the Wheel of Life. We looked at how to decide on the eight sections we’d use for assessment and how to work out what a 10/10 life means for us personally in the areas we choose to assess.

In this part, I’d like to have a look at goal setting and how we assess goals. I’d also like to look briefly at how to adjust goals along the way. I’m a great believer in bullet journalling and the philosophy behind the methods used. Particularly, I love the monthly migration aspect of the bullet journal methodology. In the words of Ryder Carroll teaching the methodology:

“At the very end of each month, set up a new Monthly Log. Once that’s done, review the pages of the month gone by. Chances are, you didn’t get around to completing all your Tasks. That’s fine! What’s important is figuring out which incomplete Tasks are worth your limited time and energy moving forward. Strike out those that aren’t, and migrate the ones that are.”

and

“It may seem like a lot of effort to have to rewrite all these things, but that’s intentional. This process makes you pause and consider each item. If an entry isn’t even worth the effort to rewrite it, then it’s probably not that important. Get rid of it. The purpose of Migration is to surface what’s worth the effort, become aware of our actions, and to separate the signal from the noise. This is where BuJo shifts from a system, into the practice.”

Part of our goal setting and assessment when using the Wheel of Life, and assessing quarterly (or monthly if you choose to do it this often), would be to examine the goals we’re setting and determining whether the actual goals are moving us toward our level 10 life. Weed out what isn’t working and try something different. Always, move forward.

In Part 2, one of the examples I used for a 10/10 for Finance might be to save ten percent of all income into a credit union account and have a cushion of three months expenses built up in a current account. If I assess myself now, at the start of 3 months, at a 2/10 because I have an actual credit union savings account set up and maybe two weeks of a bit of a slush fund in my current account, then what would it take to get me to a level 10? Do I have a budget set up where I know what my personal outgoings and incomings are? Do I need to set this up? Will I use an app? Will I use a spreadsheet? Will I set a weekly or monthly reminder to reconcile my bank account or accounts with this spreadsheet? Will I assess every outgoing and other spending habits to cut down? Will I need to set up a standing order on my current account to send over the ten percent on payday to the savings account? How will I stop myself from spending the three months excess in my current account? Should I open a savings pocket on the current account and put it there? And so on. There are very specific actions that need to be taken to achieve that level 10 goal. It is up to you to work out how to prioritise actions and how to work out dependencies or prerequisites.

Setting achievable goals depends on many different factors. It does require you to know yourself. I’d recommend doing a bit of research (not a lot, don’t get bogged down) on different methodologies for goal setting. The most common you’ll come across when researching in the personal development context would be SMART goals. Choose your method wisely, as the last thing you want here is to set unachievable goals that break you down and make you feel like that level 10 is unattainable. Start with baby steps and increase the goals as you go along.

Once you’ve set your goals, work out a task list of actions that you will need to actually do to achieve your goals. Set deadlines on those actions. It might work for you to set higher level goals for the year and then work out in quarters the next level action that needs to be taken. From those quarterly higher level actions, you would draw down the actual minutiae for completion on a monthly or weekly basis. Again, write all of this down in your journal. You could also make use of an app like Microsoft Planner or Trello to set up boards with deadlines that integrates with your calendar so you have reminders on actions. This might sound like a lot of work, but trust me, very satisfying when you get going.

Personally, I find this type of organisation allows me to maintain some sort of illusion of control over my life! Covid lockdown sanity retained.

In the next part, we’ll look at how to review the process and pivot or change as needed. Until then.

Aug 5 2020

Wheels Within Wheels – Part II

I hope you enjoyed Part I of this little series on the Wheel of Life. Now that we have an idea of what the Wheel can do for us, we need to look at how to start using it. This is going to require some introspection!

First, you need to decide the part of your life to which you will apply the Wheel of Life. Will it be an overview of where you’re at as a person? Will it be for a specific part of your life – maybe an important relationship? Will you use it to aim for a promotion at work?

When you have decided the scope of the application, you’re going to look at the 8 sections you’ll be assessing on the wheel. Obviously, these 8 sections depend on the scope of the application you have decided. To recap, for a general overview, the 8 sections would be something like: {bullet points}

Business and Career
Finance
Health
Family and Friends
Romance
Personal Development
Fun and Recreation
Contribution to society

On my Wheel of Life, which is in the pie style, I have the following 8 sections:

Work and Career
Finance
Health
Family and Friends
Significant Other
Personal Development
Fun and Recreation
Physical Environment

Before we start dreaming of our 10/10 life, we need to set a time scope on this Wheel. I do one for a year, and then assess at each quarter. So, to make my year scope, I decide what represents 10/10 at the end of 12 months. and then I assess where I’m at now. At the beginning of each quarter, I then assess how far I am and make adjustments to my specific goals and processes.

The next part of the process can be the really hard part. This is where you need to identify or dream up for yourself what a 10/10 life would look like in each section of your Wheel of Life. In the time frame you’ve set (3 months, a year, three years, whatever is appropriate), what is a 10/10 life in Work and Career? For me currently, it would be having a solid customer pipeline (thanks for messing with that, corona!). While I get great referrals, that are mostly word of mouth, from current and past clients or colleagues, it makes me nervous that we don’t have a stream of clients from tried and tested marketing and advertising. To get a 10/10 would be a huge achievement, and probably not quite realistic in 12 months, but I felt that this year we could make significant strides in this direction. I’d be happy if we got to a 7/10 by the end of the year. For those of you who don’t know me, I run my own company, so these goals wouldn’t be related to a promotion in my own position.

What is a 10/10 in Finance? This can be quite a tough question, as it depends on how hands-on you are with your own personal situation. Would you bring family financial planning into this? Would you consider your retirement years? Do you need to learn more about different aspects of your personal finance? A goal of mine might be to save ten percent of all income into a credit union account, and have a cushion of three months expenses built up in a current account. Last year I achieved putting into place various life covers based on our potential needs.

What would a 10/10 be for Fun and Recreation? To be honest, this is probably the hardest section for me. I love working, but my love of working isn’t conducive to a healthy work/life balance. I constantly mark myself quite low in this section, and I battle to achieve higher scores. This is where I have to work the hardest. I’m a mom of two who are now 9 and 7 years old. Who I was 10 years ago is not who I am today. Some days, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to have fun. Although, maybe that’s lockdown talking! What is fun for you? Do you have a hobby or an amateur skill you’d like to work on for your own pleasure? Where are you at with that now?

And so on, and so forth. I’ll spare you an essay on each section. The first time you go through this exercise (of looking at your level 10 life), you might take a while to work it out, so set aside a decent chunk of time for this.

In practical terms, get yourself a notebook, and dedicate a page to each section describing what your level 10 life looks like. Then, draw up your first Wheel of Life, and get ready to score your current status out of 10, compared to what your level 10 looks like.

In the next part of this little series, we’ll talk about how to set and assess goals that will help you achieve that level 10 life.

Jul 14 2020

Wheels Within Wheels – Part I

Following on from previous columns, where I had a bit of a moan about lockdown, I’ve decided to focus on change and being positive about change. I’ll also alter my style a bit for this series. Slightly more serious – but only slightly.

We’ve all had to change – whether we like it or not, whether we wanted to or not – over the last while. Change is difficult. Alongside the change, I’ve personally gone through varying cycles of emotion that range from utter despair and anger to acceptance and joy. I have had to maintain being mindful throughout, as the negativity can take over quite quickly.

One of the tools I’ve used as part of my mindfulness practice is the ‘Wheel of Life’. What is the Wheel of Life? The Wheel of Life is a tool that is widely used in coaching circles, to simply benchmark where we’re at against where we’d like to be in certain areas of our life. I use it as a personal accountability and development tool. It keeps me on track, and from wandering down rabbit holes where I can get lost for days or months at a time. You can adapt the concept to suit yourself and your own needs.

Before we get into the practicalities, some history first. Some like to say the original, original concept came to us through Buddhism, however, the original concept originated with Paul J Meyer, the founder of the Success Motivation (R) Institute in the 1960s.

The original wheel, with six slices of the pie, looked like this:

You’ll note the sections were labelled:

Financial and Career
Mental and Educational
Physical and Health
Social and Cultural
Spiritual and Ethical
Family and Home

The more modern Wheel of Life is usually subdivided into 8 sections. These are, commonly:

Business and Career
Finance
Health
Family and Friends
Romance
Personal Development
Fun and Recreation
Contribution to Society

My wheel of life is very similar, except I would have ‘Physical Environment’ in place of ‘Contribution to Society.’ This doesn’t make me a cretin who isn’t interested in society. My contribution to society runs as a natural thread throughout my interactions with society; I don’t feel the need to actively measure this or set goals for it. However, my physical environment is very important to me for various different reasons, so I prefer to measure this.

If you want to focus in on one area and break it down into other sections, the Wheel of Life can be used that way too. Some people use it to assess themselves in each of the roles they play in life, such as partner, manager, parent, sports coach, teacher, etc. Try and keep your set consistent when designing it.

The Wheel of Life is used in two styles: pie and spider web. When we use the pie style, we draw a line to mark how far up the slice we are, whereas with the spider web wheel, we can plot points on the slices as if it is a graph. Both result in the same messaging, though. Personally, I use the pie style, keeping it simple.

In the next part of the series, I’ll look at how to get started: identifying what an aspirational 10/10 is for us in each of the categories of the Wheel of Life, and how we benchmark where we’re at now. I look forward to sharing more with you in the next column: showing you how I use it in a very practical way, from longer term goal setting that then translates into small, daily actions that I take to reach said goals. Through this, you’ll get a glimpse of how I managed to maintain a semblance of sanity during lockdown, even though our lives were turned upside down.

As a small teaser, you might want to try this online assessment: https://wheeloflife.noomii.com/

Philipa Farley

Jul 7 2020

Don’t Change a Hair for Me

Here’s a cautionary, and true, romantic story.

Seán and Jenny had a wild romance: fiery, adventurous, hungry… especially hungry. They both loved fine food and tried to visit a nice restaurant at least once a week.

Giddy on passion and reckless zest, they developed an eating-out routine which combined their shared taste for theatrics with a soupçon of adrenalin. This involved Seán rising from his seat mid-dessert and sinking to one knee before Jenny, producing with a flourish the unmistakable, iconic cube of a ring box, as every eye in the place turned to watch this age-old human fairytale.

They were good actors, and invariably Jenny’s happy Oh-darling-I-do! would elicit a round of applause. More importantly, it also brought material benefits: free drinks, at least, and sometimes – you’d be surprised how often – a torn-up bill. Cakes were produced, waitresses sang songs. There are at least three upmarket bistros in Dublin where you can still see, pinned up behind the bar, a yellowing Polaroid of the allegedly betrothed, toasting their fictitious future with champagne donated by the beaming manager who’s embracing them both.

Even if their romantic hamming hadn’t moved the boss, some well-to-do fellow patron might pull out his credit card, spurred to generosity by this sentimental reminder of the beauty and optimism of l’amour even in our uncaring, dog-eat-dog age. The world will always welcome lovers, after all.

On holidays the pair fished for every conceivable freebie by claiming to be on honeymoon. They even brought props to support their Bonnie-and-Clyde sham: wedding cards, a bridal veil, leftover confetti. Happy, daring, aphrodisiac times ensued.

But of course they were playing with fire. Not just the fire of potential discovery, but the fire that smoulders, usually undetected, in the hearts of the young and infatuated. The lie oft-repeated became an internalised truth. Jenny made certain assumptions, subconscious perhaps but no less important for that. Seán meanwhile remained blissfully non-committal as the years whizzed by and the pretend engagements mounted.

It could only end one way. After five years they parted. Badly.

Five more years passed, years of hard graft, hard knocks. Lessons were learned on both sides. And finally there was a reunion. In a different restaurant, surrounded by another crowd of strangers, peace was made. Dessert was ordered. And Seán produced another little jewellery box – this time for real.

Tears in her eyes, Jenny rose to her feet. “Too late, darling, too late,” was all she whispered as she walked away. There was no applause. Seán quickly settled the bill, dozens of sympathetic watchers pretending not to see, and left.

George Wells

Jun 9 2020

Lockdown Lunch

It has been a while, dear readers, since I have been sat down and writing. Much has happened in ‘lockdown’ which I won’t get into right now.* Yes, I prefer the term ‘lockdown’ to ‘self-isolation’. Like, I’m not self-isolating. I haven’t chosen to isolate myself. I’m not isolating because I’m not by myself. ‘Self-isolation’ is a very confusing term. We are, according to public health advice, limiting our interactions with people outside of our core home unit to the absolute essentials. What do we call that?** It’s definitely not ‘self-isolation’ in my book.

‘Lockdown’ is far more sexy and intimates some kind of purpose or goal, maybe. If you say it the right way. You can’t say it in a sad or whiny tone. You have to say it with authority, possibly with your eyes slightly wider than usual, giving you a bit of a crazy look. Practice in the mirror.

We started ‘lockdown’ gloriously. Well, I think I did. I spent hours in the kitchen making wonderful exotic dinners for the family.*** I’ve since lost count of the cheese toasts and teas I’ve consumed. Unfortunately my waistline insists on bearing evidence.****

We have managed to avoid the whole artisan, bread starter craze but only because I’ve been there and done that. That ish is worse than caring for a baby. It gets everywhere and becomes all-consuming. The only excuse you’ll ever have for keeping a live starter is if you’re baking for your neighbourhood. Don’t bother, otherwise.***** We did build an open fire pit in the garden so we’ve reverted back to the African way of cooking over the open fire a bit. That has been particularly enjoyable. Possibly have gone feral making pallet furniture. Yet to be completed.

On the food note, I decided to sign up to a cooking newsletter on email.****** First edition just arrived. Full of soup recipes. Soup. Even the word: soup. Say it. The mouthfeel of the word soup is not even satisfactory. If soup is not accompanied by a nice big fat plate of toasted sandwich with everything in them (preferably snackwich style for dunking), it’s not worth it. I don’t know how I feel about drinking my food. Never got into the juicing craze. Smoothies need to be thick enough to eat with a spoon.*******

I also have just realised thanks to the red underline that snackwich is probably not a well known term. South Africans call toasted sandwiches with the sealed edges from the home toasting machine a snackwich does in fact have a good mouthfeel when you say it. Far more satisfactory than soup.

Cooking newsletter did not just seem to put soup on a pedestal. It advocated biscuit making with lard. Yeah yeah to the pros. I get it. Crispy biscuits. Ireland has spoiled me for life. Butter is queen. Lard is not. I love bacon, don’t get me wrong. But knowing the fat from the abdomen of a pig is inside my delicious crispy biscuit is just not a great feeling at all. Similar to handling raw chicken. It makes me want to scrub, violently, with soap and hot water. At least I won’t catch corona in my kitchen.

‘Til next time.

*Suffice to say, I cackle every time I see a man saying we’re all inadequate if we haven’t learned a new skill, blah blah.
**Being A Responsible Human?
***Didn’t last a week.
****Trying not to bare the evidence…definitely not a bikini ready summer, lads.
*****You’re welcome.
******Feels like 1999 again.
*******Smoothies count as food only when fruit to liquid (yoghurt) ratio is correct.

May 30 2020

Dear You

I remember the first time I saw you. The light haloed you. What do they call it? An aura? Yeah, you had something about you. Something that drew me in. I knew I wanted to …. not to question but know, know you. Not like an address book, no I wanted to understand what makes you tick, at a molecular level, (chuckles). I wanted to be close to you. Yes you were beautiful, different, easy to look at, fit, elegant, nothing overstated, something drew me. Maybe your taste, I’m sorry, is this too much? Curiosity killed the cat. Or maybe the Cat had nine lives?

So I surveyed you. I’m not one to leap in. I like to know my locale. I’d find a comfortable position in the middle of the class. Part of your inner circle. I start to know you, through them. The neat way you take in the world, your habitat, the community? You are a warm, reliable, person. Not one who needs to see themselves liked by social media; a people person, touchy feely, a hugger; people feel they can rely on you, and you smell good. Not cheaply floral, no, broad, sweetly herbal, maybe spice and a healthy scent of exercise. I wanted to be immediate to you. The thought of being confined with you tickled me; in a warm closet or airing cupboard, dry and warm, intimate, shared breath, I can still feel your heat, smell your hair, taste your constrained breath. Your body frames mine. Clasping together. Your brother searches having reached ten. I was still small, too small to be taken seriously. But I meant it. Even then I was feeling it and it would only get stronger. But I had to bottle it. I, in the …. past, well, I suppose I’ve been too obvious, wooden, gauche. To win you, it had to seem like your victory. Otherwise you might think I was a stalker.

I love you. I don’t mean in a half hearted flirtatiously attached sort of way. Not dalliance, not a teasing exchange. You make me complete. I no longer imagine going places without you. You’re long term. Not just a travelling companion. In you I’ve seen myself. I can see our potential. You embody it. I commit to you fully.

But what do I get in response? Fear, I can taste it. The way you distance yourself. Not just slyly relocating the table tent at the meeting so as to avoid being my neighbour. No, excusing yourself from events, soirees, involving our mutual friends, always a reason, not a school day, migraine, need to catch that train and look, they can all see it. They know we fit together. Complimentary flavours, primary colours in our social palette. But you don’t buy it. Anyone would think I was toxic, I just need to be close. I’m not asking for conscious commitment. Choice is irrelevant. Our willing compliance is unnecessary. Our connection is fundamental. It seems trite to say we’re made for each other.

An item; we have a future; potential to make something simply beautiful. So this change in your behaviour, this cruelty will not go unanswered. I’m afraid, or rather I’m not. To be brutal is a mark of my passion. It’s all or everything. You can’t just cut me. I know where you are. How you behave and how to exploit your instinct. Take a long hard look at yourself and reconsider. Because I’m resilient, persistent and patient.

Notes From Xanadu

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