Weeknote 35/2022
Our kids are back to school next Wednesday, so I’m in a liminal time between coming back from holiday and feeling like I’m ‘properly’ back at work. In addition, this past week included a Bank Holiday, which Team Belshaw spent a good chunk of at Lane7 in Newcastle.
A lot of what I’ve done this week has felt like catching up with things and end-of-month admin. I’ve followed-up potential work, had some conversations which may or may not lead to something, did some thinking with Ivan and Mayel about Bonfire user research, and got my head into existing client work.
I’ve been thinking recently about tracking my fitness, and asked if there was a Fediverse instance dedicated to exercise? It turns out there isn’t, so I’m currently looking into creating one. (That post features an image I created using DALL-E 2, which I’ve had a lot of fun with this week!)
I was hoping to go camping on Friday night, to recapture some of the microadventuring magic from last September. However, I had a weird… ‘turn’ on Friday morning. Without going into undue detail, my vision, hearing, balance, and co-ordination were affected for about 5-10 minutes after waking up. After that I was fine, but understandably felt a bit delicate. Going camping somewhere without mobile phone signal didn’t seem sensible.
Thankfully, that incident didn’t stop me doing some sprinting on Saturday, and going for a run and to the gym today. Talking of the gym, our 11 year-old daughter has joined as she wants to develop her upper body strength to hold off defenders. (It might sound young, but she’s tall and mature for her age.) She’s got her second trial for Newcastle United’s new Emerging Talent Centre on Friday, and yesterday won player of the match as she scored two on her league debut for her new team.
Next week is almost back to normal, although it features the kids going back to school, our 19th wedding anniversary, and my wife Hannah working her new pattern of four days per week. She’s changed teams for NHS Digital, and so took the opportunity to reduce her workload slightly. I’m going to get my head into some user research for some work that WAO are doing in collaboration with Happy Porch and Common Knowledge for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
Photo of the arcade machines downstairs at Lane7 in Newcastle
