This has taken me longer to sort out this year than it did for 2018 but here, finally, for you delectation is my 2019 in numbers.
Once again these figures have been culled from a number of sources including Exist, last.fm, Audible, Swarm and a couple of spreadsheets that I keep.
Healthily
I managed 124,000 more steps in 2019 than I did in 2018 but that was still almost a million less than I did in 2017 so I need to up my game a bit for this year.
For reasons I am not entirely sure about the stats for sleep didn’t record in 2018 so I have nothing to compare with for this year but 101 days in bed and 98 days asleep does sound like a bit of a waste!
Talking of waist (see what I did there?) I managed to trim two stone off my weight in 2019. Partly this was deliberate through reducing my calorie intake but it was certainly help by the exclusion diet I went on mid-year to try and rid myself of migraines. That’s a topic for another blog post some time but with so many foods off the menu the pounds literally dropped off and I looked and felt so much better for it.
Bookishly
It was a new record for books “read” in 2019 but as you can see from the chart above the trend for me is very much towards electronic consumption. While the number of ebooks remained static at 17 the number of audio books almost tripled. This is in part because when I would have previously listened to music or podcasts (on public transport and my daily walk) I now listen to audio books. Audible tells me that I listened to 11,107 minutes of audio books in 2019.
This year I particularly enjoyed the Vinyl Detective books by Andrew Cartmel, Philip Pullman’s original Dark Materials series and David Nicholls’ Us which I polished off in a day.
The full list of books I read can be found here.
Musically
Proving that I am nothing if not a creature of habit my top six most listened to artists this year were almost exactly the same as last year. Only Dire Straits dropped off the list to be replaced by new fav Steven Wilson. And, according to last.fm, my top artist and album was again Marillion and their F**K Everyone and Run. This comes as no great surprise to me whatsoever as I have had a bit of an obsession with Marillion this year trying to get copies of everything that they have ever released.
I actually listened to almost exactly the same number of tracks in 2019 as I did in 2018 (within 40 tracks). Actually this number is clearly well under what I actually listened to as the tracks played on vinyl and through Alexa are not recorded so the really number is considerably higher than the 4,000 recorded.
Gig attendance was down in 2019 with only five which was half the previous year. It does look like this year will be better as I have already booked to see Paul Carrack, Steve Hackett, Steven Wilson, James Grant, Crowded House and the Are You Listening? Festival.
Moviely
Films were also down this year as I only managed to watch 38 as opposed to the 68 managed the year before. Partly this will be because of the number of TV series we have been enjoying such as Stranger Things, Bosch & Lost in Space. What this also meant was that was the the number of films I watched in the cinema was almost as many as I watched at home.
Here are some of the films I particularly enjoyed in 2019, in no particular order:
| Captain Marvel |
| Shazam! |
| Stan & Ollie |
The full list of films watched can be found here.
Productively
I made it a target to wean myself off Facebook over the last year and I am glad to see I have been successful. I have been very concerned about what they are doing with our data. While it may be a case of shutting the door after the horse has bolted I still wanted to take some positive steps. Similarly I have also moved from Google Search to DuckDuckGo and from Chrome to Firefox.
Some might see it as a bit odd to limit the data that I am willing to give to Facebook, Google et al and then publish a blog post with all manner of personal information but then who’s going to a) read this and b) go to the trouble of monetising it? (Famous last words).
One thing that continues to have a big impact on my life is the task management app Remember the Milk which once again I know I wouldn’t have been able to get through 2019 without. I’m not entirely convinced by the large number of tasks completed but it was a lot.
Socially
Oddly I don’t feel the same about Twitter as I do about Facebook and so, consequently, I am an active tweeter. 2019 was no different when I was sending on average three tweets a day. By far my favourite tweet has to be this one of my delightful granddaughter with a penchant for Apple products.
In amongst all this reading, tweeting, listening and walking I also managed 45 blog posts on here, another 31 on my tech blog at Spoken Like a Geek and a smattering for WorkInConfidence.
And Finally…
So there it is my 2019 in numbers and graphs. And here, according to Exist, is my average day. Sounds about right to me!
