On this final day of 2014, I thought I should reflect back on my “four words” for 2014. They were:

• Running
• Religion
• Audio
• Strategy

How did I do? Let’s take them one by one…

RUNNING

The good news is that I did make running more a regular part of my life. By adding up the monthly totals in my iPhone app I see that I ran over 288 miles this year. It was spotty, though. I only ran 6.2 miles in September yet I ran over 56 miles in July! I finished the year doing 26 miles in December… which works out to be about 6 miles a week. Good… but not great. Next year I’ll aim to do better.

It was also a strange year in that I ran only one race… and that was the short 1-mile “Pumpkin Mile” that was part of the Keene Pumpkin Festival and that I ran with my five-year-old daughter. For all the other races I wanted to do I either had a schedule conflict or in one case it rained harder than I really cared to race in.

My goal starting off 2014, though, was to get running more a part of my life… and I think I can safely say that I did that.

RELIGION

Back at the beginning of the year I wrote:

But you wouldn’t know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media…

… but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity… and I’ll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I’ve realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I’m not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I’m going to start… I’ve been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I‘m not going to be “in your face” about religion or anything (that’s not the UU way! 😉 ). But I’m going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We’ll see… this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me… but is an area I’d like to grow personally.

This has been hard for me, but I have started to be more open about this side of myself. For instance, I participated in a panel that was recorded on video distributed on YouTube where I talked about our church and my involvement in the “community breakfasts” that we do for the homeless each morning during the winter months. I also shared on Facebook and social networks when I was giving a sermon at our church in late October on the subject of “Facebook and Fox News: Escaping the Echo Chambers of Affirmation“. I actually recorded that sermon but have yet to put it online… perhaps in 2015.

I also shared out more links from our church’s web site and social media feeds into my own feeds… which was a big step for me.

Baby steps… but at least I’m no longer hiding my this part of me. We’ll see where this goes from here.

AUDIO

Unfortunately this area remained a bit of an “aspiration” this year. I had hoped to do more with audio this year. Now I did do more with my “The Dan York Report (TDYR)” podcast… producing over 155 of the short episodes. I also didn’t miss a single week of For Immediate Release (FIR) reports, producing 52 of those reports. I also started using several new applications on my iPhone to more rapidly produce podcasts

BUT…

… I’d had aspirations to do more. Here’s how I wound up with what I had hoped to do:

• FIR On Technology with Dan York – Sadly I only cranked out one episode during the entire year. 🙁
• Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast – I’d hoped to publish some interviews… but… nope. None. Zip. Nada.
• Internet Society Deploy360 Programme – I only published one episode here, too, but a very large part of this was that I spent a good bit of time seeking an audio publishing platform that supported IPv6… and never found one (SoundCloud doesn’t). In the interim I held off on publishing episodes.

We’ll see if this gets better in 2015. I thoroughly enjoy audio and would like to get back to doing more!

STRATEGY

I wrote in January:

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is “Senior Content Strategist”, my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online – and I’m adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club… and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial “cobbler’s shoes”, but in 2014 I’d like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I’m doing with all my online content. I’m at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

Alas… still a work in progress…

So there I was for 2014… good progress with two of my words… less so with the other two. How did your year work out?

An audio version of this post is available on in my “The Dan York Report” podcast:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• following me on Ello;
• following me on App.net;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

As has been my custom now for the past few years, I like to start my writing off in a new year with a post about a few “words” that I intend to use as guides for the year. They aren’t “resolutions” as much as they are areas of my personal life in which I aspire to be active this year. In previous years (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010) I’ve chosen three words, following a meme started by Chris Brogan many years ago.

This year, I found myself struggling to reduce four words down to three… and finally said “Hey, wait a minute, it’s MY blog… if I want to have four words this year, I can! ;-)” And so… here is my list for 2014…

RUNNING

Those following my writing here have known that running became an important part of my life over the last 3.5 years. I even recorded an audio commentary last year (while running) about how important it is to me.

But I suffered a real crisis in confidence – and enjoyment – when I ran an extremely frustrating half-marathon in September. I never wrote a response to my post about preparing to run the half-marathon… rather than “third time is a charm”, it was more “three strikes and you’re out!”

I’ll write some other time about that particular race and the resulting mental fallout, but suffice it to say that I’ve had a hard time getting back out there. I know intellectually that I just need to get back out there and do it… and in 2014 I intend to once again make running a core part of a healthy lifestyle!

And maybe I’ll get to where I do try another half-marathon…. (but probably at a cooler time of year).

UPDATE: – I started off the year on a good note here by running a 5K on New Year’s Day on our treadmill that we’d relocated to our basement. It was fine as long as I kept my head straight up so that it stays between the rafters!

RELIGION

You wouldn’t know it from any of my online writing or any of my activities on social networks, but religion and spirituality are topics I’m incredibly passionate about and care deeply about. My father is a (now retired) Methodist minister, as was his father before him, and so I grew up deeply steeped in a progressive Christian church.

Yes, I am a “preacher’s kid.” 🙂

When I was in my late teens and into college I had a severe falling out with the Methodist faith of my fathers and spent a significant amount of time searching for a religious community where I could belong. Like anything I do, I plunged in and dived deeply into reading, visiting churches, etc…. but never found anything until a random invitation from a friend some 20+ years ago introduced me to the world of Unitarian Universalism. Many years (and many UU churches) later, I’m president of the board of trustees of our local Keene UU Church and in fact led the worship service there last Sunday giving a sermon/message about the challenges of being open about religion in the age of Facebook.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media…

… but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity… and I’ll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I’ve realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I’m not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I’m going to start… I’ve been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I’m not going to be “in your face” about religion or anything (that’s not the UU way! 😉 ). But I’m going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We’ll see… this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me… but is an area I’d like to grow personally.

AUDIO

In a change from past years, I’m carrying a word over from the previous year. I did a great amount with audio in 2013, but in 2014 I intend to do more. I want to move forward with “FIR On Technology” and have a number of interviews in mind. I want to bring back Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast for some interviews… and I’m hoping to do more audio components in my daily work with the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme.

I’m excited… and “stay tuned” has never been more appropriate!

STRATEGY

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is “Senior Content Strategist”, my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online – and I’m adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club… and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial “cobbler’s shoes”, but in 2014 I’d like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I’m doing with all my online content. I’m at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

That’s my list for 2014. What about you?

What are you going to do this year with your one wild and precious life?

An audio version of this post is available on in my “The Dan York Report” podcast:

As has become my tradition since 2010, I like to start the year off by posting my “three words” for the year. These are not “goals” or “resolutions” but rather words that I hope will define how 2013 will go for me. They are more guides for how I aspire for my life to be.

EXECUTION

While last year I was trying to focus more on fewer things, this year I want to execute on some of the plans I have had for some time. There are some things I have been thinking about, talking about and even writing about for several years… but have yet to actually start. Not so much in my professional/work life, as I have been all about executing plans there, but rather in my personal life with some of my various side projects. As an example, 2013 really needs to be the year I either reboot VOIPSA or just close it down. There are a number of other similar projects and activities that are stalled, including a couple of boards of organizations I am on where I have not been able to fully participate. There are some projects, too, around our house that I have been wanting to do for quite some time.

Now, in fairness, a lot of these projects have been stalled for most of the past two years because of the unwelcome intruder in our lives that has sucked up pretty much all of my time outside of work. My wife is and always will be a FAR higher priority than all these other activities (as will my daughters be). She and I are hoping, though, that with her last treatment in early January we can stop living our life in 3-week increments and get back to having a more regular life. We’ll see how it all goes, but that is certainly our hope for this year.

Outside of projects, though, there is another aspect to “execution” that hits on a daily basis – it is far too easy to get distracted by social networks and online news sources. Instead of spending time creating content, I find myself reading about other people’s content. I need to change the priority there and focus more on creating content first and THEN engaging with social networks. (As an example, it would have been extremely easy to get sucked into Facebook instead of writing this post.) I need to be executing on my content plans first.

AUDIO

In 2012 I came to a realization that… I really miss working with audio. As I have for the past seven years, I continue to contribute my weekly reports into the For Immediate Release podcast and I enjoy that immensely… but I have found a hunger to do even more again. There is something about working with the medium of audio that I just really enjoy. It is a wonderful way for telling stories, explaining topics, providing education and interacting with people.

I don’t know yet the full form this will take this year. We’ve been toying with adding a podcast component to the Deploy360 Programme. I have been thinking about reviving the Blue Box Podcast, at least for some interviews. I am intrigued by SoundCloud and may expand my experiments there. I have half a dozen other ideas running around inside my head for new podcasts and other projects… all I know is that I would like 2013 to be the year I expand my usage of audio.

TRANSFORM

In a 2012 leadership workshop for one of the boards I am on, we were asked some questions that could perhaps best be summarized as “how are you using your life to transform the world?” To make it a better place? To bring people together? To strengthen connections and build stronger communities?

That question stayed with me because in all honesty the last two years have really had to be all about surviving. In the process of just getting through each day, I haven’t had the luxury of spending much time to contemplate the bigger picture. But as we move through all that, the question returns to my mind.

Obviously, as a parent a large part of this work involves the raising of our two daughters and giving them the foundation, strength, knowledge and skills to affect change in the world. That is perhaps the ultimate transformation that all of us can do as parents.

But is there something more direct… that can even involve them in some way?

Not necessarily something grand and glorious, but perhaps something simple and local… I have ideas… It all kind of comes back to that first word earlier in this post! 🙂

What are your aspirations for 2013? What are your goals? Or guides?

Whatever they may be, may 2013 be a great year for you all – Happy New Year!

Following on the tradition I've started over the past couple of years (2011, 2010) after enjoying Chris Brogan's take on this, here are my three words for 2012. They aren't goals, per se, or resolutions, but more just three words to guide my actions through the year.

FOCUS

In our age of distraction, it's insanely easy to lose focus and suddenly find yourself hours later not having accomplished anything you set out to do. It's an inherent challenge for those of us who are by nature bright-shiny-object chasers and whose job involves being on the edge of communication technologies…

Over the past six months or so I've been taking some very deliberate steps to reduce distractions and give me more time to focus.

I've reduced or eliminated many of the notifications on my computer. I've gone to checking email only at certain times of the day. I've blocked off time in my schedule where I just shut down all social media, IM, and email and just work on specific tasks. Friends would not recognize my desk these days because it is CLEAN… as I've worked on simplifying the distractions in my home office.

Still, these are just steps… and one of the areas I want to work on in 2012 is really bringing some discipline to this and trying to focus more on what is important to get done. (Oh, look, there's a butterfly…..)

QUEUE

There are two aspects to this word for me. First, due primarily to the unwelcome intruder in our life in 2011, I have a great queue of projects, both online and offline, that I want to work on in 2012. Naturally I have a l…o…n…g… queue of blog posts I'd like to clear out. I need to update my Migrating Applications to IPv6 book. I really MUST reboot the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) this year. There are some health issues I've put on hold that I need to address. There's a lot that was put on the proverbial back-burner… and I need to clear out that queue a good bit. There are a great many stories still left untold.

The second aspect of "queue" is that this year I really want to focus on maintaining a healthy queue of blog posts that are scheduled out in advance. Each week I'd like to be lining up some posts for the next week. Certainly there will be posts written in the moment to respond to other posts or to recent events… but I want to keep a schedule queue going so that my content is appearing regularly throughout the year. You do not need to hit the Publish button right now… and I want to work on that this year.

BALANCE

Finally, I've made some lifestyle changes over the past year… I've made a job change which also has brought some changes… I'm looking in 2012 at how to find a bit more of that ever-elusive "balance" between work and personal life. Beyond all that I do at work and online, I'm also a father of two daughters, a husband to a wonderful woman, a son, a brother, a friend, a community member… and many other roles.

This past year has once again reminded me of the incredible importance of all of that.

The challenge, of course, is that when you absolutely love what you do… when "work" is not a chore as much as almost "play"… well… it's hard to shut down the brain sometimes and let it go. Something I've always struggled with… to give that marvelous gift of being truly present with those around you.

So while I've made some changes in 2011, there's definitely further I can go… 

Those are my "words" for 2012… we'll see how the year goes. What are you going to focus on this year?

In keeping with what I started last year, I thought I would again share my “3 words” for this year… these aren’t goals, per se, but rather three words that I see as guiding my activities for this year. Here they are for 2011:

CONTENT

Last year one of my words was “WRITE”, and my objective was to increase the amount of writing I was doing across my various blogs. I did that in 2010… writing across my various blogs at a higher level than in previous years. This year, though, I want to do more… and not just writing online articles. I want to get more of my photography online. I want to create more videos in my YouTube account. There are a couple of audio podcasts I’d like to create. I’ve got a number of plans already underway… you’ll see more of that coming out in the days and weeks ahead…

PORTFOLIO

One of the challenges I have with all that content creation is that it is now occurring across a range of different sites. I list some of them on my danyork.com/blogs.html page, and the “One Day of Content Creation” events that I did in July and December show the type of posts I publish. I also have a couple of other sites lurking out there and I’ve spun up a few new ones recently. While I purposely have been creating very focused sites, I want to tie them together a bit more. I’ve been aggregating most of the content in my Friendfeed account, but lets face it, Friendfeed: 1) isn’t under my control; 2) isn’t heavily used any more; and 3) may not be around for the long term. So on one level I want to aggregate my content (or links to my content) in a central place that I can point people to… and I also want to link some of the sites a bit more together for encouraging cross-site visiting. (This latter item may come if I can finally make the move in 2011 to ditch TypePad and move all my sites over to the WordPress base I’m building.)

There is admittedly a second level to the word “portfolio”. Given the public profile I have, particularly in the speaking space, I have needed for some time to have a better “home page” that explains what I do and what I can offer people / conferences / businesses, etc., again in particular with regard to speaking. Launching a redesigned danyork.com in 2010 was a start, but I need to do more.

LIFESTYLE

Finally, in 2010 one of my words was “HEALTH” and I did make that a priority… losing 45 pounds and turning (to my utter amazement and amusement) into a runner. In 2011 I want to take it further… it’s been 6 months and daily exercise has become part of my routine… I want it to be hard-coded into my lifestyle, i.e. it’s not just a passing fad but something that becomes part and parcel of what I do and who I am. On the running front, I want to run some races and see that I can keep it up, even through our winter. Beyond running, though, I want to get back into some of the other outdoor activities that used to be more part of my life… and that’s all just a question of priorities.

Beyond the exercise, there are some other lifestyle changes I want to make, just to have an all around healthier life. More to say on that in the future.

What about you? What are you planning to do differently in 2011?