Phil Bowell

Excited for this to arrive today! Big fan of @austinkleon’s other books.

Really encouraging morning at church seeing three of the youth get baptised, followed by an afternoon hanging out with my fellow youth leaders planning the a future youth weekend away.

Trying to limit myself to only having two books on the go at any one time this year. One fiction and one non-fiction. Part of that will mean deciding to stop reading a book if I’m not enjoying it or getting anything from it.

How good would it be if we could attach Shortcuts to notification types? For example, if I have a shortcut that makes it easier for me to add purchases to YNAB, I could attach it as an action to Apple Pay notifications so that with one touch the shortcut could take the value and vendor, fill in the right fields and let me categorise the transaction. It would be so useful.

On a somewhat related note, I have two draws of DVDs that I never use. I feel like I should get them on to some storage and make them easier to watch, but not sure if it’s worth the effort or cost.

Had a productive yet restful Saturday, managed to sort out a load of paperwork and do a grocery shop. Lots of my flat feels pretty organised now, but I still have a few black holes that become dumping zones. Those need to be sorted and reviewed.

Had to reset my Apple ID password, now things aren’t syncing in iMessage. Not a good experience.

Took the church youth out bowling this evening, great fun had by all as far as I could tell. Got my best score in a while so I’m pretty pleased!

Over the last year I’ve been using YNAB to help manage my finances. It wasn’t all plain sailing, I had to start fresh on it a couple of times, but it certainly helped me steward my money more wisely. Going into 2018 I had one big goal: get rid of my credit card debt. On 31st December I made the final payment and for the first time in a long time I head in to a new year debt free. As I setup some new categories in YNAB this afternoon, it was incredible how freeing it is not having something there nagging at you.

My Apple TV seems to have gained some new flyover screen savers, some particularly interesting ones of London and a great one flying over Italy at night.