Weeknote 36/2019
It’s all been happening this week: back-to-school, wedding anniversary, publishing the very last episode of a podcast I published with my late friend, Dai Barnes, and… referring myself to counselling for anxiety issues.
I don’t want to shy away from talking about the latter issue, as I know for a fact that it’s something that affects many people. Men in particular are bad at discussing it, due to some misplaced notion of manhood whereby your inner life is all plain sailing.
In my case, I’m pretty sure my issues, which come and go, seem to be triggered by things relating to my teaching career. I’ve now not been a teacher (nine years) for longer than I ever was one (seven years), so it goes to show how much this stuff can have an effect on you.
Anyway, a good friend of mine had some real breakthroughs around an unrelated issue through counselling, which was a prompt for me to get something done. I guess the grief I felt with Dai’s passing was the proximate cause for getting something done about it, but it’s been brewing for a while.
In other news, as of today, I’ve been married to my wonderful wife, Hannah, for 16 glorious years. We took the opportunity earlier this week to go away for a night and had a thoroughly great time. It’s part of the marriage journey to see people at their best and their worst, and she’s seen a bit of both this week. I’d like to publicly thank her for her love and patience.
From a productivity point of view, some forms of anxiety can make you a dream employee. So long as it’s not the stifling and debilitating kind, your brain constantly reminds you that things need doing and you’d better get them done sharpish otherwise the world’s going to end. It never does, of course, but weirdly my personal angst hasn’t been causing me professional issues.
I’ve got plenty done in the three days I worked on MoodleNet this week. Most notably, I created a new version of the overview slide deck we use to introduce the project, with an accompanying screencast. I also tidied up the MoodleNet wiki, creating a scenarios page and adding more detail to the roadmap.
In terms of Thought Shrapnel, I wrote an article which I was pretty pleased with (and for which I found the perfect image!) I also recorded a microcast and roundup of links I’ve found interesting this week. I’m taking a break from Twitter, so I won’t be posting links to my work there for a while.
Next week, I’m back to the usual routine of taking Wednesday as my non-Moodle day. We’re potentially going to be without three members of the team for various reasons (holiday, moving house, etc.) so it’ll perhaps be a quiet one.
Photo taken by me in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Monday night. It turns out to be art by Prefab77 whose work is described as “fast, hard edged and stripped down, a dark world of Gangs, Goddesses and Groupies, woven into a pure, rock and rebellion”. Nice.
