I haven't written here as much as I thought I would this year. Mostly I just kind of forgot and also reminded myself that this is really here for when I want to write something rather than feeling obligated to. Still, I thought I'd have written a bit more but there you go, maybe 2024 will yield more inspiration. This year has been something else, especially the last few months. Lots of things going on, and lots of introspection. Where all that will go next year remains to be seen, I have certain hopes but ultimately some of that is beyond my control and one things I have been really focussing on is concentrating on what I can control, which is myself and how I respond.

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With the watery end to the fourth Ashes test match, I feel ever so slightly sad that its outcome makes the fifth test slightly less compelling. Sure, with a win (or draw), Australia can secure an outright Ashes series win in England for the first time since 2001. With this hanging over the match, England still need to win to avoid a series defeat, something I'm sure they'll be keen to avoid. However, had we seen a result in Manchester, the fifth test at the Oval could have been for all the marbles.

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It's been quite a while since I last posted anything here which is pretty typical and I'm fairly sure on the old WordPress blog there was at least two or three posts that started out with a similar exclamation. In any event, I've not posted anything since February and every time I looked at my site I kept on telling myself that I should write something soon, what about, I wasn't sure but it's not like nothing's been happening. There's been a few small trips, football season here in the ACT has started alongside school for the kids and the resumption of extracurricular activities; including some new ones.

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So 2022 ended just over a month ago. I've been a little tardy in writing anything but to be honest, I didn't particularly want to go over the vagaries of the last year. That's not to say nothing interesting happened just that I couldn't motivate myself to write anything about it. Realistically, life is moving ever onwards without much change but I did pickup a new car last month after our X-Trail got to the point where it was just not worth the money fixing the things that were wrong.

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For some obscure reason I thought the World Cup final was this coming Wednesday, it wasn't, it was last night. Even if I'd realised the correct day I still wouldn't have tuned in and not in some sort of pseudo-protest, I just want to sleep. Still, it was good to see Argentina and by extension Messi, seal the win. I've been an admirer of Messi and how he's played football for many years and to see him finally succeed on the World's biggest stage feels fitting, especially as it's his last. You could say it was destined to happen that finally, after so many attempts, the only accolade eluding him would finally be his.

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I was very unsure about this years' World Cup, mostly for its hosted location, Qatar, and the very known issues it has with human rights, gay rights and, well, just rights in general. I appreciate the need to respect other countries culture and way of life and I believe that, to a great or lesser extent, Western nations have meddled too much in the affairs of other countries. That being said, that doesn't mean a competition such as the World Cup which, in my opinion, is meant to be one meant to unite all nations and all walks of life, should be in a country that it, itself, does not abide by. This also throws a unique curveball with the USA among the joint hosts for the next one and their record isn't exactly squeaky clean either.

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