Weeknote 09/2023

I’ve been tired this week, mainly because I’ve started running every day. It’s already had an impact in terms of my fitness, as when running the same distance on the treadmill at the same speed my heart rate is lower.

In six weeks’ time I’m walking the first half of the Pennine Way, a 268-mile National Trail that officially starts in Edale, Derbyshire and ends at Kirk Yetholm, just inside the border in Scotland. However, I’m going to walk it north to south instead, as the endpoint is only about an hour away from where I live. It also means that I’m dealing with the hardest day when I’ve got the most energy.

I was weighing up whether to try and do the whole thing in one go, which would take around two weeks. It was my daughter who persuaded me not to, as she’s away on a school trip and otherwise wouldn’t really see me for three weeks. I’m not entirely sure when I’ll do the second half of the trail, but I’m planning to break at Middleton-in-Teesdale.

---

Work-wise this week I’ve been:

• Planning a session I’m running with Anne as part of Open Education Talks next week. The session title is Integrating Open Recognition into Program and Course Designs and we’ll be finalising the slides we’ll be using on Monday.
• Continuing to work on projects with and for Passbolt, Greenpeace, and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
• Facilitating online sessions: KBW Community call, OSN Open Recognition working group, and the Member Learning group of workers.coop.
• Meeting with a couple of people and giving them encouragement/advice to start co-ops as part of CoTech Digital Candle sessions.
• Attending an IRL session run by the Rural Design Centre Innovation Project about setting up co-working spaces in Northumberland.

Laura‘s still away and I’ve been working with John a fair bit.

---

This week I wrote on this blog:

• Wake me up when you’ve stopped talking about microcredentials for workforce development
• Coworking spaces should be run by cooperatives

On Thought Shrapnel I wrote:

• There are just bodies, just us
• Smoking as an analogy for unthinking phone use
• Living your best life

I didn’t send out my monthly newsletter as I seem to have lost motivation to write it. This is curious, as I’m not the kind of person who usually needs motivating. I need to reflect on this a bit more.

---

Next week, it’s a pretty normal week. It’s still the football season so I’ll be watching plenty of that on TV and on the side of pitches watching my kids play. I’m also going to do more planning for my walk and hopefully get a holiday booked for after my son’s GCSE exams are finished.

---

Photo from last week’s monthly Sunday dinner out at The Blackbird, originally a 14th-century castle built due to conflicts between the English and Scots.