1st Jan - Bite Size Pieces

I'd been pondering on how to appropriately kickstart this venture for some time... How do you take a sieve to the constant whirlpool of ideas pinging around my pinball-esque neurological state, and still come out with this week's 'Bonus Ball' in true Lotto style? So instead, I decided - for once in my life - not to plan it... Just to go with the flow, and let fingertip touch keyboard. My subject will depend entirely on how I'm feeling right now, here, in the moment. 

Over the next 364 days, you can expect a smorgasbord of content. Some profound, and deeper than a Jordi El Niño Polla (if you know, you know, and if you don't, don't worry) production, whilst others will verge into the mundane, such is the constant 'balance' of life. It is - perhaps - worth noting, that the world's most successful diary was written around a topic of the latter. It was Miss Frank's noting of her scraps of food, or the sound of the clock in the tower overlooking her Amsterdam cubbyhole which made her journal so relatable. Though I'm unable to sprinkle the 'glamour' of incoming Nazi invasion on my own memoirs, if 2022 goes the way of the current political landscape, then perhaps we can copy & paste that last sentence, inserting the word 'Russian', where appropriate. 

Ergo, we come to my opening gambit of the year, and like many of you, a fresh calendar represents the opportunity to grasp the opportunities which await us. My own personality is somewhat bipolar, and in truth, the 'work from home' nature of the pandemic radicalised a switch in my own mentality. From the relentless hustles (particularly around the 2014-2018 period) of 18 hour days, and eye-blistering weeks of work-rate which would (usually) and somewhat - unhealthily - result in a 'sick' day per month due to burnout, I soon found myself slipping into the 'comfort' of the sofa/screen lifestyle. I abandoned personal projects in favour of Netflix, moved today's tasks to tomorrow, and resigned outdoor activities to the many pantheons of excuse folder... 'It's cold', or 'looks like it might rain' etc. 

So how will I, and how will you, achieve everything we want to this year? I'm personally armed with an arsenal of at least 10 goals I'll be completing throughout 2022, (all relatively sized too), but I'm wise enough to know that by tacking them all head-on, the brain will feel overwhelmed and likely shut off, or lose interest. And thus, each goal has been categorised into monthly/periodic segments. Can I tackle 10 things in January? No. But can I take on 2 things now, and then introduce a new project between March-June? Another between June-September? Another between September-December? Absolutely. 

This is where I open the gates to my emporium of autistic/OCD madness. A note, stored in my phone, detailing what I'll be doing, daily, almost hour-by-hour, in order to break down each project, stay organised, and combine every element of what I'll be achieving this year via manageable bite-size pieces. It's the work of a psychopath, I have no doubt about that. But when this psycho looks back at the same document he stayed up to 3am with, furiously typing away, tongue-hanging out in concentration, he'll know that the long-term success, came from the short-term planning. 

I'm certainly no life coach, I've made more fuck-up decisions in my life than most, but by doing so, I've gained huge amounts of wisdom, and crucially... Life experience. If you've got goals you want to achieve this year, write them down. (For real, don't ignore this one. In late 2015, I was told that by writing down a goal, you're 70% more likely to achieve it than keeping it in your head. Every major goal I've written down since that day, I have - often through stringent sacrifices and laser-like focus - genuinely achieved). 2022 is a year to do whatever you want to do, regardless of what others think about it. Case in focus? This exact diary. Within 4 hours of posting about that I'd be creating this throughout 2022, I'd received online abuse about it. Do I care? Will it shackle my contributions, or dampen my vision? Absolutely not, and I'd urge you to mirror the same mentality. 2022 is not just the Year of the Gable, and it's the year of YOU. 

Go get it!