Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John‬ ‭11:25-26‬

Sometimes a day hits you when things that are normally easy to do become the hardest things. I mean simple things like getting out of bed, going downstairs and making a coffee. That's the nature of depression.

When it happens you have to find ways of getting through because giving in to it can be crippling. Giving in can be the start of a downward spiral, a spiral you don't want to be in and that can take a long time to get out of. That's a place you don't want to go. Instead you have to find a way to push through, to stop the down from taking over. What that looks like is the tricky part, but for everyone there is way of doing it.

The desire to tinker is strong in this one.

I have this problem when it comes to my blog. The more I start to post to it, the more I want to tinker. The more active I am on the site, the more I notice little things I don’t like and want to fix. The more I post to it, the more I want all my internet posting to originate on it. It’s like an illness.

It’s something I’ve always struggled with, and I confess it’s a side to blogging that I enjoy. The trouble is, the more I tinker the less I post. The more I craft the design, the less time I spend writing.

It's a battle, although one I'm sure I do not face alone. It's not just the battle of a blogger, it's a battle of a designer. Most of the tinkering I do is design related, little details and quirks in my theme which I notice but very few others will. I also know from experience, that I will get to the point where I've caught the little tweaks I need to and they will be fixed. Then it's just a case of resisting the bigger things I'd like to do. Or at least knocking off the major ones first, like finding a way to post photos here and on Instagram, displaying them in a way I'm happy with. The key though, is to keep the posts flowing. Keep to my challenge of posting everyday, and getting through the tinkering stage until I get to the point where I'm just posting each day and all my published content originates here.

Or is it just a pipe dream? Should I just keep posting and ignore the little bits that nag?

But I know I can't just ignore the nagging. I'm a designer, I like details and its in my nature to keep refining bits until they're gone. To keep crafting until they as close to perfect as can be, it's just important to keep the perspective, to keep in mind that perfect doesn't exist. It's about getting things to good enough whilst keeping on posting each day and building momentum so that the writing takes over the tinkering and becomes a creative outlet in its own right.

At the start of last week I set myself the challenge to blog everyday between then and the end of the year. Yesterday I didn't manage to post to this site, in some people's eyes I've failed the challenge already. Maybe I have, but it's not going to stop me carrying on.

These types of challenges are great to do, they add an extra bit of impetus to get going on something you want to do. A little bit of healthy competition goes a long way. But yesterday life happened, two friends got married and the day was rightly taken up celebrating that. There simply wasn't time in the day to sit down and write a post for this site, it was an exception to the norm and that's ok. I realised this early on and gave myself permission to have a day off.

A few years ago had I set myself this challenge I would've let it defeat me. The chain would've been broken and I would've let the day off turn into two, three or four days, before giving it one last effort and then stopping it. Over the last year and a half I've learnt that sometimes it's ok to give myself permission to say, it's just not going to happen today. As long as it doesn't turn into a regular occurrence that's perfectly OK, I just pick up where I left off the next day.

It's been an important lesson for me to learn, perfect is unattainable and being somewhat of a perfectionist it's a difficult thing to accept. Now in the context of this challenge, had I realised earlier in the week when I started it, I'd have written an extra post in the week so I had one in the bag and didn't break the chain. In the context of real everyday life, it's a far more important lesson to learn. I've had to learn how to give myself permission to say this is ok, this is good enough and I'm ok with putting it out there.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s only the second day of the challenge I set myself, to post to my blog everyday from now until the end of the year, and already I’m asking the question of what do I write about.

I would imagine it’s a familiar story to anyone who’s decided to undertake such a challenge. Going from barely writing or posting to your blog to posting everyday it’s only natural to find yourself wondering what to write about. If I hadn’t been here before it would be a big worry, it might even be so discouraging that I would just abandon ship straight away. Whilst this morning when I decided it was time to write today’s post I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted to write about I know that if I keep going and posting each day I will eventually end up with too many subjects to write about. It’s the nature of the beast, the more you do it, the more ideas you have.

There are a number of different tactics that I’ve come across over the years that are aimed at helping you come up with subjects to write about. Unsurprisingly none of them have ever worked for me, but there is one thing that does. I know it works because I’ve demonstrated it in other parts of my life, be it reading my bible or doing the work for my freelance business.

Showing up every day.

So here I am, showing up. A new sheet in Ulysses, my headphones in and I’m writing. In fact through the course of writing this post I’ve already come up with the topic for tomorrow’s post. There it is in action. Showing up today has triggered the process. The more you do something the more idea’s you have, the first step is showing up.

I've written 442 posts on this site. The first one was written on 17th January 2011, that's five and half years ago. It equates to around 80 posts per year and about 1.5 posts per week. It's not bad going, but it could be better.

During those times there's been many spells of inactivity and many spells of multiple posts per day, this is what I would like to change most about my site, the inconsistent posting patterns. Last night I found myself browsing the web in a way that I've not done for a long time. I ended up on a rabbit trail of personal blogs, one that started with a site I subscribe to that I kicked off into safari on my iPad. It felt like rediscovering the internet again. This was what got me into the blogging scene way back in 2005 when I started my first blog. There was a line in one of the articles I read that resonated with me. It was feedback that the author received regularly,

Stopping blogging regularly was one of people's biggest regrets. I certainly wish I hadn't stopped. Or I should say, I wish I hadn't let the habit slip.

Since I started blogging way back in 2005 I've had two main sites. The first site, which sadly is no longer in existence, lasted from 2006 until this site started in 2011. It was my first proper foray into internet publishing and as a result I didn't really think too much about what I would post. Topics were wide in range but naturally reflected my personal interests, something which I feel has been lost a bit on this site. Which is somewhat ironic given that this is the site which bears my full name in the url.

With that in mind it’s time to declare that this is the first post in a new challenge I'm setting myself. I want to recapture the joy that I had when I first started publishing on the web. It was something I enjoyed and did everyday, and so, that's my new challenge. I want to post to this site everyday until the end of the year. Some will be links, some will be original writing, but all of it will reflect me and my interests. I'm going to try my utmost not to pick and choose too much of what I write, I will simply write and post each day from now until December 31st.

As I was leaving the coffee house this evening something made me look up, this was my view. As I snapped the photo I was reminded of something I once said to the student group at church. It was a small phrase to remind them and prompt them to keep their life in perspective. Look up, look back, look forward. To look up at God our father as the first thing we do in life, to look back at what he did for us through Jesus' death and resurrection and to look forward in that knowledge and security that trust and faith in him brings.

We’ve done it. All of us. Good job everyone. We’ve made it through January and we’re into February.

I always find January a bit of an odd month, it’s full of the initial hopes and dreams of the year ahead, yet it’s a hard slog. We spend the first week getting back into the swing of things, the second week doing our utmost to get new patterns of behaviour, thinking and habits off the ground. The third week pushing through the struggles of motivation, or lack there of; and the final week looking towards pay day to give us a glimpse that the slog has been worth while; and then before we know it, we’re into February.

February always feels like a month of transition. The weather and days start to show glimpses of spring, the evenings get noticeably lighter and we start to look forward to summer. Those new habits we tried to establish in January either live or die. We either stick by them and they become established, or they whither and die while we slip into our old established ways. Admitting defeat we move on convinced we’re never going to accomplish what we want to this year, resigning ourselves to another year of nearly but not quite.

Let’s make this year different. We’re a twelfth of the way through the year, and there’s 11 more months to go. It’s never too late to establish new habits, or find the focus we need to move on and make the year live up to the hopes we had at the start of January. Change doesn’t happen in 4 weeks, it takes work and turning up everyday to make things happen. The 21 days that it takes to establish a habit has only just passed, keep turning up and those days will turn into 42 and a well established pattern of behaviour.

I write this post as encouragement to myself as much as to anyone who reads it. Don't give up, focus and push through. Turn up and do the work, you never know what you can achieve, I’ll leave you with the words of Chef Gusteau from the Pixar film Ratatouille

If you focus on what you left behind you will never see what lies ahead!

Today marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place which is known world wide for the atrocities that our Jewish brothers and sisters faced during the Second World War. Atrocities that I didn't know the depth of fully until I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on my first visit to Israel a few years ago. Reading through the account of the holocaust in that place made me feel physically sick, I knew from my history lessons at school that it was a massive operation but I had no clue of the depth of it. No clue of how far it went in terms of the dehumanising treatment the Jews had to endure.

Sadly in today's society we are again seeing the rise of anti-semitism. It takes different forms, whether it's through the BDS movement or jihadi attacks in both Israel and Europe, this is what they are and to call them anything else forgets the beginnings of moments in history like the holocaust.

Today is a day we must remember, especially in the current cultural climate, and stand side by side with our Jewish brothers and sisters. As a child of Christ I have an even greater responsibility to stand with Israel and show them the love their Messiah has for them.

Ever since I got my first iOS device, a 2nd generation iPod Touch, I've been on a quest to work out the best way to take notes. I've tried a shed load of different apps, Simplenote, Evernote, Notesy, the built in notes app, NVAlt… in fact if you can name it I've probably tried it. I've always read with interest articles on note taking setups, how people use them, how their go to app on their iPhone works so well for them, and I've always struggled to figure out how or why that is.

You see I've tried so many times to get into the habit of using an app, or a suite of apps, to make my notes in. But for whatever reason I've never been able to stick with one. I'll go through a spell of forcing myself to use them, to form a habit so that my first thought is to use my phone or the Mac app, but they never stick. I can never get to the point where I can declare, so and so is my goto note writing app.

Except, now that I think about it, I can.

My goto for notes sits right beside me on my desk. In fact for the whole of my working life it's sat right next to me on my desk, or in my back pocket. What's it called?

Well it's called paper, or a notebook, and I make my notes on it with a pen. Try as I might I can not break the habit of using a physical notebook to make my notes.

The habit stretches back to my school days. I always had a notebook, or the back of my exercise books, which I would doodle and scribble in. Then when I was 16 I started a Saturday job in a family run hardware store which further ingrained the habit. I always needed a piece of paper and a pen in my pocket, to make a note of measurements, stock numbers, phone numbers, delivery addresses, you name it and it was on my note paper.

Then when I started uni the habit continued, my sketch book was always with me. I'd use it to make note of ideas for projects, to record comments from crit sessions with my tutors and when I got the odd freelance job, to make notes from client meetings. The way I use my notebooks has barely changed since then. When I meet a client I take my notebook and my iPad, but it never feels natural to pull out my iPad to make notes (I use it to show work). It does however feel natural to pull out a pen and jot down some comments.

There's something about the convenience of a notebook and pen that an app and my iPhone just can't break. The technology, which on the surface presents a far more superior experience doesn't seem to be able to break the hold a nice notebook and pen has over me. With my iPhone I can make a note, I can tag it, it's automatically dated and I can search to easily find what I need. It should be the best way of making notes. Except it isn't.

Tapping out a note on my iPhone, just doesn't give me the mental connection that I need when making a note of something. It may be less efficient, in the sense that it might take me a little longer to find a note because I can't search for it, but I do (generally) remember where on the page I wrote it and over time I've developed little quirks to help make things stand out. Tasks get a little box to the left of them, if I think it's important when I write it, it'll either get a star or often a box drawn around it. Information gets segregated on the page by lines, but more often than not, the simple act of writing it down is enough to commit it to my memory. It's something which, in this digital world we now live, I fear we will lose. Processing something in an analogue manner can have a far more lasting effect than doing something digitally.

There's also something rather nostalgic about using a notebook and pen. I have every single notebook from my professional life as a designer on a shelf. I can pick them up and look back to a certain moment in time and have an instant connection. I can remember where I was, who I was with and what was going on in my life at the time. Some of them are all neat and look like they've barely been used from the outside. Most of them are nicely worn, weathered with age they bulge in the middle. But I think most importantly, they present a physical instance of the work I've done in my life. The vast majority of it is created on my Mac, sure some of it's printed, but the ideas and beginnings of it all are in my notebooks. You don't get that with a list of files on a computer screen, you don't get little sketches or doodles that seemed like nothing at the time but which turned into a substantial piece of branding. The throw away moments that are so commonly created in a notebook don't even get considered in a notes app. Those are the very moments I can't give up, the very moments I won't give up. They're the very moments that bring the best out of me and my pen and notebook are the most powerful tools I own.