{"id":1431,"date":"2014-07-21T07:39:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T07:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2014-07-21T07:59:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T07:59:50","slug":"taking-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/21\/taking-stock\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Stock"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend marked two months since I last wrote anything here. It\u2019s not exactly by accident.<\/p>\n

In my 2013 round up post<\/a> I mentioned there had been some very bad news in the wider Parkes family. It took a little while for this to fully sink in but it made me think about exactly what\u2019s important to me and how I prioritise certain things.<\/p>\n

There are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week and I want to spend as much of that time with the people who are important to me, enjoying life and doing things I enjoy.<\/p>\n

Of course there is still that balancing act between putting in the hours at work because enjoying life costs money!<\/p>\n

What that has meant though is tweaking how I make use of time and shifting priorities around certain things. Writing here is an example. If I\u2019ve got an hour free and the choice might be between writing something or kicking a football in the garden with the kids then these days the blog post loses every time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pretty simple example but it stretches across into work too. We\u2019ve had a particularly busy period recently so I\u2019ve done my best not to increase my own workload by getting involved in certain things and drop other areas altogether. (I have a bad habit of not being able to say no that I\u2019ve been trying to work on for some time)<\/p>\n

I’m also effectively off Twitter at the moment – I check there a couple of times a week at the moment as I’d find myself “having a quick look” and before I knew it an hour was gone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s working out ok at the moment.<\/p>\n

So this post is really going anywhere else but it\u2019s something I wanted to get out of my head. Doing that here has worked pretty well for me before. \"Smile\"<\/p>\n

If you do want to take anything away then please do believe when I say you have no idea what could happen tomorrow. Terrible and tragic things can and do happen to good people. Make the most of the time you have with the people you love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend marked two months since I last wrote anything here. It\u2019s not exactly by accident. In my 2013 round up post I mentioned there had been some very bad news in the wider Parkes family. It took a little while for this to fully sink in but it made me think about exactly what\u2019s<\/p>\n

<\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"yoast_head":"\nTaking Stock - Andy's Techie Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andyparkes.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/21\/taking-stock\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taking Stock - Andy's Techie Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This weekend marked two months since I last wrote anything here. 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