In thinking about the year just past, my first thought was that it was a boring year. Not bad as such, but I felt like I went through the whole year without a satisfactory answer to the perennial question: "How have you been?" In other words, I constantly had nothing new to report. Whenever I responded that I'd been "good", I meant it literally rather than as a polite non-answer.
2018 provided plenty of change in significant areas of my life so 2019 was certainly dull in comparison. And really in comparison to the whole previous decade of my life, which barely saw me doing the same thing for more than a year.
But I don't want to be ungrateful. If I pause to ponder the last 12 months a little more, I'm able to find a few highlights. They may seem simple, but they have nonetheless enriched my life and I am thankful for these little things.
Sometimes I wish I was good at Twitter. It would be proof that I'm not just intelligent but super witty and have something to say about the state of the universe. There may be no "I" in team, but there is definitely "wit" in Twitter.
If I was a tweeter, here's what I would tweet
Here are a few things that have crossed my mind to tweet but never made it to the Twittersphere ...
At the start of last year, I made a commitment to donate as much as I drank. Now, in the interests of accountability and transparency, I'll show you how I matched every cent spent on alcohol this year with donations to charity.
I'm halfway through my commitment to match my charitable giving with my alcohol spending.
See how much I've paid for booze so far. And see which charities are going to be better off for it!
The 2017 Ethical Fashion Report is out today. I had the great privilege and pleasure of being part of Baptist World Aid's research team.
Read the report ... and read some of my reflections, about what I've learned and why ethics in fashion matters.
I love sport both on an emotional and a philosophical level.
Here’s why.
I love the contradictions in sport. I love how it is rational yet irrational, meaningless yet so imbued with significance, universal yet elite, aggressive and divisive yet a unifying force.
Five firsts for 2016
I have a friend who, at the age of 29, saw, smelled and heard the sea for the first time. And then, for his 30th birthday, he went ten pin bowling for the first time.
Which got me thinking: is this what my life has come to? Is there, as Solomon laments, nothing new under the sun for me? What significant “firsts” have I experienced this year?
I racked my brains and they are few but fine ...