I realise I say this most months, but February felt simultaneously short and packed.

Maybe it’s the combination of a 28 day month, half-term, illness and trying to maintain momentum across a lot of different workstreams, but the month vanished faster than I’d have liked.

As I look back on the month, my overriding immediate reflection is one of disappointment. I ended up getting ill with gastroenteritis – or “stomach flu” as my US clients call it – for a week in the middle of the month. That’s what lies behind that sense of missed opportunities.

I don’t get ill very often and am not great at resting, even when I know I should. I also find it really hard given the work I do – as when I can’t work, my clients don’t get what they need from me and that makes me feel like I’m letting them down.

I lost a couple of planned work days to sickness this month, which put some pressure on in the last week to catch up. My clients were, without exception, entirely supportive while I was unwell, so I do know that this pressure is coming from me, not them.

As well as just not being able to get stuff done for clients, I also missed a big launch event for my client The Actors House in London. We’d been organising this for a couple of months and it was a key opportunity to raise awareness of the venture among investors and supporters. I’m very grateful to my Extra Brain colleagues for stepping into the breach and helping make sure the event ran smoothly.

The disappointment was also down to the fact I’d booked a couple of days off work so we could get away in our motorhome for a short break on the south coast. We delayed getting away for a day because I felt unwell and then I got worse while we were away, so in the end we were away for a night and didn’t really get the break we wanted. We’ve booked a few days off work at Easter so will try again then.

Once I get past that sense of disappointment about February, I can actually see a lot of progress in the month in my clients’ businesses and on my own stuff.

We’re doing a major system migration this weekend with one of my fractional clients, replacing a shaky Clickup instance with the Productive agency management system. I wouldn’t usually do a big system change this early in my engagement with a client, but in this case it’s the right thing to do to get clear visibility of what’s going on and make some big leaps forward on workflow standardisation.

My new venture – Team Wakeman – is starting to take shape nicely. The v1 website is now live and the lead generation programme is starting to roll out. The buzz of getting the first inbound lead call booked was a good reminder that I really do enjoy the excitement of finding and winning new work.

We’re still in the very early days but I’m getting an increasingly confident sense of what it could become and we can blend human thinking and AI to create business operating systems with founders. A conversation with former colleague Ronald Ashri really helped me think about the technology side of things.

Away from work, our project to build a new house in rural Kent is starting to get quite real. We spent a couple of days out at self-build shows, meeting suppliers and learning a lot about different aspects of what building an ecologically friendly, modern house involves. I love that we’re doing a project together to build a house that we’ll live in for the next 15-20 years at least. We’re both learning a lot and are excited about what we might be able to create.

Yesterday we completed on the purchase of the plot we’re going to build on. That was a big step forward and makes it feel very real. Our current home is now on the market and selling that is the next big milestone on our critical path for the project.

It’ll come as no surprise to those that know me well that I’ve got a lot of detailed planning spreadsheets to work out how we can pull this off. It’s an 18 month project from here on I think. I’m determined we won’t end up like many of the people on Grand Designs – we have a budget and timeline and I’m staking my professional reputation on hitting it!

Cycling this month
50.1 miles – mostly indoors and a bit of Brompton commuting. Hoping for better weather in March to get some outdoor miles in.

Running this month
15.7 miles – illness and too much work. Did most of these miles in the last week to prove to myself I was recovering from being ill.

Music this month
I have a soft spot for old school 90s, so this live set from Slipmatt soundtracked some work this month.

Podcasts this month
A real work focussed one this month. Been trawling through the back catalogue of Trenton Moss’s Human Powered. Loads of great agency tips and stories in there, plus Trenton’s relentless energy and passion.

Reading this month
I read Crypto Confidential: An Insider’s Account from the Frontlines of Fraud by Jake Donoghue this month. I’ve read a couple of books about the crypto wave, but this was an eye-opening insider account of the world of crypto. Fascinating and mind boggling at the same time – as someone that works inside lots of businesses I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that happened.