Thirty-Five

Today, I turn Thirty-Five.

Overall, my 34th trip around the sun was a year of change, and personal development. I thought of a photo to highlight it was outside my co-working space as a reminder to how far I’ve come this year.

Yes, one thing that was huge was my decision to go freelance. It’s been a largely positive six months, but not without it’s downs. I had a massive, massive freak out earlier this month – as in “Where will more work come from?” kinda freak out. Luckily, or strangely, I was without work for a period of time. Strange as it’s the first time in six months I actually had to get out and look for a bit of work. Luckily as it’s my first time. That moment’s has largely passed, but it freaked me out a bit.

Also, I’ve made a bit of a conscious effort to avoid social media. I’ve been getting down and depressed with it, what with the Brexit things happening and me being so vehemently opposed to it. It can swallow you up and after spending time reading various things that didn’t go the way I hoped with this whole Brexit nonsense I decided to use lists within TweetDeck, remove the Facebook & Twitter app from my home screen from my phone and switch off email notifications for a period of time per day. I say that’s been a huge help.

Alas, I cannot take the next step, as rather unfortunately I do seem to pick up a large amount of work through social media, so going completely off grid is not going to happen just yet. But it’s a start and it’s improved my mood immensely.

But yes, back to the B word, at the time of writing, I lose my freedom to work, live and love anywhere in 27 countries. Something may change in the next few days, but it’s getting mightily close. Growing a business with the fallout will be a challenge next year. I think I am prepared. Or as prepared as I can be. But I cannot help and look at my friends in other countries, or people with ways of escape, and cannot help but feel envious.

Regarding the things I love, I’ve done a lot of travelling when 34. Probably as a subconscious effort in losing rights. I had 6 trips abroad in my 34th year (which I actually lost count, whoops), which featured one new country (Belgrade, Serbia). One such trip was especially fun – Brussels in Belgium in the beginning of January as I pretty much kept it a secret. I don’t know why, part of me enjoys the thrill of running away, but I went to Belgium for a long weekend. Here’s me next to a pissing statue.

I also completed my goal of visiting 100 grounds before the end of the last season, a total that has largely stayed static since then (I’ve since added Eintracht Frankfurt & Prescot Cables to that list). I have bought a Switch (which I love), and started stockpiling some nice retro treasures (I now own for some daft reason every NES main line Mario Game in their original Japanese boxes, and some PS1 games). Yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So, without further ado, here’s my now yearly Rhys With-A-Spoon/Reese Witherspoon comparison.

	Rhys (With a Spoon)	Reese Witherspoon
Age	Nearly 35 (Up 1)	Nearly 43 (Up 1)
Oscars (Nominated)	0 – No Change (0 – No Change)	1 – No Change (1 – No Change)
Books Written	1 (No Change)	0 (No Change)
Marriages	0 (No Change)	2 (No Change)
Children	0 (No Change)	3 (No Change)
WordPress Plugins Written	11 (Up 1)	0

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