Weeknote 25/2021

It seems unbelievable to me that, here we are, almost at the midpoint of 2021. As ever, it’s easy to look back with different lenses over the past six months, depending on whether we’re thinking about physical, intellectual, or emotional energy being expended. I’ve simultaneously been nowhere and everywhere, it seems.

This week has been a particularly quiet one in terms of the number of hours of paid work I’ve done. Fewer than 20, in fact. Some Catalyst Continuation support, podcast recording, fixing things, doing some usability testing for OpenLearn, and meeting with people. Hannah’s contract hasn’t started yet, due to bureaucracy around the way that the NHS procure services, so it feels a little bit like we’re in limbo.

I could do with getting my teeth into a decent-sized bit of work, to be honest. I enjoy consultancy, but project tend to last a few months at most, whereas I want to be thinking about actions taken now and the effects they will take a year from now. The grass is always greener, I suppose.

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This week, I wrote two posts here:

• Specialization is for insects
• Walkways lined by abandoned gestures

I posted daily to extinction.fyi, updated eink.link after someone suggested a new link, and published the following on Thought Shrapnel:

• Decentralised organising
• AI for auto-generated landscapes
• 95% of fish are ‘dark fish’
• UK government survey into climate change and net zero
• Is the self-censorship the most dangerous form of censorship?
• New network of sleeper trains
• Why going slowly speeds teams up
• How to stop being a perfectionist
• There’s a word for everything
• Lobsters and octopuses are sentient and feel pain
• Leadership is contextual
• How becoming a father changes men

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I’m planning to go away for a night’s wild camping on Sunday night, as the weather looks like it should clear. One thing I really do miss about pre-pandemic life is getting away from the place that I both live and work for a few days at a time. You need critical distance from the places and people you love to be able to appreciate them properly.

It would be remiss for me not to mention that my family spoiled me last weekend with gifts and attention on Father’s Day. I jokingly pointed out that it fell near my ‘half-birthday’ — and low and behold, a couple of hours later I was presented with half a chocolate cake…

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Image of route planning using an OS map.