In recognition of the end of another year — 2018 being my 41st on our good planet Earth — this is a short retrospective on the major events that have impacted my life this year.
The year seemed to go by quickly. Off the top of my head, it’s hard to think of anything monumental that occurred. Reflecting upon my list below, it can be described as a year of optimisation. Nothing much new or novel; just me making what was already out there work a little better.
🤒 Health
Retired from basketball: I started playing when I was 9, now at 41 my body told me it was time to stop. Bad knees and ankles combined with a stiffening back all played their part, but it was the diagnosis of developmental hip dysplasia that ended it for me.
Diagnosed with hip dysplasia: What started as a pulled hip muscle from a crazy effort to climb into the driver’s seat of a car from the passenger side escalated into diagnosed hip dysplasia that apparently I’ve had from birth. The medicos were incredulous that with the severity of my dysplasia, that I’ve never noticed it before now, nor had any major serious injuries. At least I now know why even as a kid I found it uncomfortable to sit cross-legged on the floor.
Got semi-serious about gym — but not serious enough: With no basketball to fall back on for exercise, and the need to rehabilitate my hips I got serious about gym work for the first time in more than a decade. I still don’t love it, and I’ve lost some momentum in the back-end of this year. I need to establish a better structure for committing to it in 2019.
🛠 Work
Improved methods and systems: I reviewed and improved a large range of my work processes, which has made me more efficient, and it has freed up time to spend on the more creative elements of my work. This benefits me and my clients
Improved automation: I don’t have a personal assistant, so I leverage the ability to create automations to make my work life easier.
Director and Treasurer of a not-for-profit: There were some interesting challenges, and I grew in my ability to respond with confidence and self-assurance.
👨👩👦👦 Family
Made strides in autism management: My 7-year old has diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder. I have learnt much about coping with the challenges this brings.
Politics:my wife is running to become a Member of Parliament in the 2019 Federal Election. This effort takes up a considerable amount of shared family time.
🤹🏻♂️ Hobbies
Assessment of hobbies: I took the time to take stock of my hobbies. I’m not sure it delivered clear tangible results, but it grew my level of awareness about how I was spending my time.
Elimination of social media: I deleted my Twitter account. I disengaged from Facebook. I won back a bunch of time, lost background anxiety, and have not missed them at all.
A return to indieweb ideals: I’ve always been a fan of the traditional web. I have never given up on following individual sites through RSS. This year I engaged with micro.blog, started this blot site, and continued to maintain my homepage and blog regularly.
Hearthstone: I became slightly addicted to this game despite being lazy about the deck-building element. I’m happy enough to play with random sets. I’m close to being over this game now, which I’m sure will please my wife.
Audible books: After realising I wasn’t feeding my brain enough nutritional content, I took up an Audible subscription and have successfully worked through a range of fiction and non-fiction books. I never seem to have time to sit and read, but I can find time to listen to somebody read to me.
Meditation: I continue to undertake mindfulness meditation on a semi-regular basis.
Explosive Pro Wrestling: Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved wrestling. I watched WWF through the Hulk Hogan era, then WWE through its Attitude era. This year I discovered Perth’s own wrestling show, EPW. I took my boy to their end of year event, where we had ringside seats. I loved every second of it, as did he. It was so much fun to reconnect with a sport that I’ve always loved to watch.
👨🏼💻 Personal
Indoor skydiving: Skydiving is not something I’ve wanted to do, but I did have an opportunity this year to participate in indoor skydiving. It was fun, but it lacked the heart-stopping exhilaration that I’m sure jumping out from a plane would deliver.
Vacations:
Yallingup — a rainy pre-winter break in WA’s beautiful south-west.
Bridgetown — a great chance to stay with my best mate at his farm.
Bali — champagne taste on a beer budget.
Jurien Bay — creating sand and sun summer holiday memories for our kids.
Grew a beard: I’ve grown a beard once before in my life. The one I have now is longer than that the previous one. This is unchartered territory.
I just overheard my 7 year old boy explaining how a payday loan company that is advertising on TV is a bad thing. He said they give you money but then you have to give them thousands more back later. Parenting win!
The boy received a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. Dad approves of Super Mario Odyssey.
Boxing Day in Western Australia and it’s overcast and not hot. What an outrage. I want my money back.
I’ve been an Overcast user since it launched, but feeling a little bored by it. Wondering if Castro might be worth a try. Do people have thoughts?
Living the holiday dream.
Onward!
Not a bad place to be.
I miss playing basketball 🏀. I was good at it and now I’m just old and decrepit.
I’m getting itchy to restructure my web properties. Trying to sort out how best to use my website, Wordpress blog, Blot blog and Micro.blog in a way that makes sense and plays to each of their strengths.
Our family recently travelled to Bali for a holiday break. It was a week of relaxation at the tail end of a year that has been pretty crazy, and a 2019 that we expect will be even more hectic.
When you travel with kids, conversations can move in varied and interesting directions. Our 7-year old boy took a particular interest in the toilets that were installed throughout the hotel we were staying. The brand — TOTO — is one seen all over the world, but less so in Australia. He was enthralled by the features: from automatic flushing with infrared sensors, to in-built bidets. Even the design of the loos was novel to him. He was fascinated. Next he realised that TOTO had also been responsible for the all of the tapware as well. Incredible!
As a responsible Dad, I kept the toilet banter going, egging him on to explain to me further what he loved about them. I tried to add some interesting educational angles as well. I suggested that as a Japanese company, TOTO probably took great care in their manufacturing processes. I explained how Japan was the cradle of modern manufacturing methods, and how the Toyota Production System changed the world. I’m not sure he bought into my lesson on lean thinking, though. I will have to try again in the future.
Over the length of our stay, our conversations escalated to the point where I suggested we contact TOTO directly to let them know what great work they were doing with their toilet design. He took to that idea! So we did it. My son wrote an email to TOTO Customer Service, noting how impressed he was with their toilets, and expressing his desire to have them installed in our house as well.
I figured that would be the end of it. I didn’t expect to hear back, or if we did, I assumed it would be a boilerplate response. After a few days, we did in fact receive a reply, and it was a wonderful, personal email from TOTO’s Senior Manager of Customer Service. In the email, she expressed gratitude for my son’s kind words, and also offered to send him some tokens of appreciation if we could provide our mailing details.
We replied, and for fun, included a photo of David and I enjoying ourselves in Bali.
A few more conversational emails bounced back and forth between TOTO and ourselves, and they asked if we could send a photo of David with his items once they arrived.
Within the next few week, we received an express mailed package from TOTO in Atlanta, to us in Perth, Australia. Just this concept alone was enough to blow my son’s mind. As promised, we sent another photo back with David holding onto the gifts he had been sent, and this was acknowledged by TOTO with thanks.
I see two key lessons in all of this:
Always embrace crazy conversations with your kids. They’re fun, and you never know where they might end up.
Genuine customer service — not selling — is the key to building great brand equity. I might never buy a TOTO toilet. My son might never buy a TOTO toilet. But I think both of us will be TOTO brand ambassadors from this point forward. Not because we were sent some trinkets, but because we had a genuine human interaction. We connected with a person who was obviously engaged enough in their own job to engage positively with us. If that employee is happy, then the company must have something going for it, and that’s the kind of company I want to see succeed.
From a business perspective, customer service shouldn’t be about hitting sales targets or avoiding bad press. It should be about working to have people care about your brand.
So thanks TOTO, for bringing fun and joy to me and my son’s lives, and for making sure this particular Bali holiday will have a very strange and unique anchor memory.
With the help of Be Focused I cranked out the Pomodoro sessions today. Achieved everything I wanted to, and more. It’s satisfying to end the day with a high productivity quotient.
Best Santa ever.
I’m experimenting to see if I can eliminate my use of Bear, moving its notes into DEVONthink Pro. This would save me a subscription charge and lessen the “within which app did I save that information?” problem.
I would love for one of my micro.blog followers to take advantage of my Backblaze coupon. You get a month free. I’ve been a happy customer for a couple of years now.
