Category Archives: Writing

My 3 Words For 2018

3words2018

Continuing the tradition I started back in 2010 (see past years), here are three words that describe themes I intend to focus on this year. They aren’t “resolutions” as much as areas of activity. “Themes” is a good way to think about them.

HEALTH

Carrying this one over from last year… because sadly not a great amount has changed over the past 12 months. I have let my weight creep up to where I am about 30 pounds over where I should be (and where I was back in 2011). I haven’t been exercising. I have some dental issues to take care of. I want to be around with my wife and daughters for a long time… and we each only have one body. I need to focus on this in 2018.

WRITING

You’ll notice that the last time I wrote on this DanYork.com blog was … one year ago! I have not written on Disruptive Telephony since March 2017 – and that was the ONLY post in all of 2017 on what used to be my primary blog. Only 4 posts on Disruptive Conversations, 0 posts on Code.danyork.com, 1 on Monadnock Curling Club, and so on….   I posted 9 times on CircleID , but they were all short pieces about events, activities, deadlines, etc. And I only published 28 posts on the Internet Society’s blog during the whole year.

The reality is that 2017 was a challenging year for my writing in that I spent an insane amount of time focused on the launch of the Internet Society’s redesigned website in September (which involved work through the end of the year, of course). Everything else got pushed aside – including all of my own writing.

In 2018 I hope to change that. There are a great number of stories inside me just trying to explode out. There are some reflective “thought pieces” about the current state of the Internet that I so dearly want to write. There’s a book I’d like to update. I have several new book ideas I’d like to move forward on.

For me, I write because if I don’t write… the stories build up inside of me until they want to explode like a pressure cooker without a relief valve. Writing is my relief valve. I need to do it.

My work responsibilities will still be significant around our web sites, but I’m hoping that somewhere in the midst of all the madness I can make the time to get my voice out there.

CONNECTIONS

Like perhaps many people, I’m finding that I’m communicating with a large number of people, but not necessarily connecting with people. I don’t mean that in the LinkedIn “I have XXXX connections” form, but more in the deeper relationships and knowledge about other people.  I want to deepen some of the connections I have this year, both with people online and also people locally and “offline”. Some of that is actually meeting with more people face-to-face. Some of that is just carving out the time to have deeper and more meaningful conversations. In the end, the connections we have between us – and the community we have around us – are what is so vitally important to us all. 

That’s what I am thinking about for this year… what about you?

Still Struggling To Write Consistently…

I will write a blog post 776px

As a writer, it is incredibly frustrating when you find yourself NOT writing. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a kind of pressure that builds up inside you. It keeps building and building and building and BUILDING… and if the pressure is not released through writing then it comes out in other ways. The way you treat others. Your health. Depression. Frustration.

I’m in that state today – if you look at my danyork.me site pulling together all my writing and audio, the number of days I’ve been actually writing or creating audio is a bit sparse:

Danyork blogs oct18

This post will only be my second post – in the entire 18 days of October!

Across all my blog sites, including my work sites… where I am paid to write!

And yet… I have no one to blame but myself.

I have a loooooooooooonnnnnnnnggggggg list of topics I want to write about. There is no end. In fact there are several series of posts I want to get underway.

But it’s that effort of putting words on the screen. It is starting the writing – and not being distracted. By appointments. By meetings. By email. By social media. By… life.

It’s also the finishing of the writing. I have all sorts of blog posts that I have started, but I haven’t made the time to go back and actually finish the posts. (And sometimes that means just saying they are “good enough” and hitting the publish button.)

It is the act of focusing. Of being present.

If writing is to be a priority for me, by my own choice – then it is the act of prioritizing writing.

This is not a new problem for me. I’ve in fact been writing about this issue for many years. Here’s a sample:

And even though I write those “self-help” posts, primarily as a reminder to ME, if I’m honest about it… I’m still struggling with it.

We’ll see.  And hey… with this post at least I’ve written something today!

Starting To Write On PacketPushers.net

Packetpushers 776x330Because clearly I don’t have enough places to write, I’ve decided to start writing over on PacketPushers.net. You can find my first post on my profile page there.

I’ve long been a fan and listener to the excellent PacketPushers podcasts. If you are into networking of any type their shows are quite educational and enjoyable. (See the most recent shows in the right sidebar of packetpushers.net.)

Last year Russ White encouraged me to consider writing on Packet Pushers and connected me to the folks there to be set up as an author. They gave me an account… but then I’ve simply been way too busy with all the other writing I’ve been doing.

While at IETF 96 in Berlin last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with one of the two main hosts, Greg Ferro, and have a very wide-ranging conversation that I published as an episode in my The Dan York Report podcast. As part of that, I said to Greg that I’d see about starting to write there.

Greg also said they are perfectly fine with RE-publishing content that originates elsewhere… and this intrigued me. I’m already doing that with posting some of my articles to CircleID (although I’m also writing new articles there). I’m also experimenting with cross-posting to Medium now and then.

Packet Pushers has a strong community of people involved with networking. For a good number of the topics I write about it would be a logical place to also post my articles to encourage further discussion and get more engagement.

We’ll see how that all goes. I greatly appreciate the Packet Pushers team for giving me the space to write there… and I would again encourage you to not only read the site, but also listen to the podcasts.

My 3 Words for 2011 – How Did I Do?

2011So as 2011 enters its final hours, it’s time to take a look back and see how I did with my “3 Words For 2011“. As a reminder, they were:

  • CONTENT
  • PORTFOLIO
  • LIFESTYLE

Well, to start with, they – and most all my plans for 2011 – were rather subsumed by an extremely unwelcome fourth word that dominated my year:

CANCER

Yes, indeed, the defining thread of 2011 has definitely been my wife’s diagnosis and subsequent battle with breast cancer. It truly did consume the entire year – she had what was otherwise a routine doctor visit in January that started raising questions… and then her last chemo treatment was in early December.

In between, of course, were horrific months dealing with tests leading to the diagnosis in May, then the operation in July with the long recovery, and then the pathology reports of invasive breast cancer and then the start of chemotherapy in September and all the nastiness that followed.

She’s not “done” now… next month she begins five years of a daily hormone therapy called Tamoxifen as well as one year of an every-three-week infusion of a drug called Herceptin.

But in theory we’re through the worst of it. We hope.

So looking at 2011 through the cancer-colored lens, just surviving was a beautiful thing… but how did I do with the words that were to guide my activities? Let’s see…

CONTENT

My big goal was to increase the amount of actual writing I was doing across my blogs and other sites. Unfortunately I don’t have a count for 2010 to know how my writing exactly compares, but I know that I did write more this year. My total was:

Given that I was manually tracking all those entries across several different blogging platforms, it could certainly be off to a certain degree… but it’s probably in the general area. Through the first half of the year I was writing more and averaging out about 2 to 3 posts each day. I had aimed to get at least one post out every day of 2011, but that goal feel by the wayside in March and then with all the cancer happenings it never really became a goal again.

Still, I’m pleased with a good body of work out there for 2011. Some of it shorter content… some of it the longer, deeper pieces I love to write. There’s still a ton of stories left untold that are sitting in my queue… but I did get a good bit out.

Add to that, I believe, 51 podcast contributions to For Immediate Release. I seem to recall Shel & Neville taking one show off… and I don’t think I missed any of the weeks. (And if they didn’t take a week off this year, then it was 52 contributions.)

Plus, I published another book, this time with O’Reilly, “Migrating Applications to IPv6“. The idea was that this was to be primarily an “ebook” that could then be frequently updated… which, given everything else going on, didn’t happen (updates), despite my best of intentions. I’m looking forward to making some updates in 2012.

Where I had hoped to do more in 2011 was with photography and videos. My camera traveled with me a good bit… and I shot lots of photos… I just didn’t have a whole lot of the curation/post-production time to then get photos online. 2012! Ditto video.

PORTFOLIO

I made some progress on this… I haven’t really publicized it yet, but I’ve been aggregating my content from across various blogs into a new site at:

danyork.me

It’s my attempt to bring together all my content into one central site. There’s still much I would like to do with that and it’s still not working the way I want, but it’s a start.

I never did move my main blogs off of TypePad… perhaps 2012 will be the year I finally make that happen. And I still would like to improve how this site (DanYork.com) presents me…

LIFESTYLE

This is one where I did make serious progress. I had wondered a year ago if running would be something I really continued.

I did!

In fact, I ran 5 miles yesterday morning and will probably go for a similar run tomorrow. (Today’s a resting day.) Over the course of 2011 I probably ran 400 or 500 miles… hard to know exactly as I’m not tracking all my running (such as on the treadmill).

I also ran in 6 actual races, including my first-ever half-marathon in September.

2011 also marked the time when I brought my running gear with me on every business trip and speaking engagement – and actually RAN!

Wellllll… except for the trip to Orlando where I left my shorts back in New Hampshire! On every other trip (including multiple trips to Orlando), I managed to get out and run at least once if not more. New York… Miami Beach… Toronto… San Francisco… Orlando… Virginia… Austin… I was quite pleased with this, actually, because it’s so easy NOT to run while traveling.

So yes, running has become part and parcel of who I am.

Outside of running, there were some other lifestyle changes, too. Some tweaking of what we eat. Trying to do some more of the offline things I enjoy. Adding curling back into my life. Continuing to try to find that balance between the work I love and the family I love… The sudden job change from Voxeo to the Internet Society also brought some lifestyle changes, too.

Outside of the cancer chaos, or perhaps because of the chaos making me think more about priorities, 2011 was definitely one of thinking about – and acting on – lifestyle changes.

More changes to come, I hope, but this was a big part of 2011.

What’s on tap for my 3 Words for 2012? Well… I’ll write about that soon… 😉

Welcome to DanYork.com

Welcome to DanYork.com, the home of Dan York on the web. The reality is that I don’t write often here on this specific site (danyork.com) as my writing is usually found on my various focused sites, particularly these five:

Disruptive Telephony Disruptive Conversations
Code.DanYork.com Voice of VOIPSA
Deploy360 Programme

You can visit danyork.me for a stream of all my latest writing across all my sites.

For an explanation of those sites and the full list of sites to which I contribute, please visit my blogs and podcasts pages. The best way to track what I am writing or doing is probably to follow me on Twitter where I am @danyork and tweet frequently. Feel free to browse around this site since you are here… look at my photos… scan my presentations… check out my books… sign up for my newsletter… or just generally learn more about who I am. Thanks for stopping by!