I’m not sure what’s going on at the moment in terms of the sectors I work in and the economies to which I pay attention, but people seem to, on the whole, be doing less work. Those who work for themselves as freelancers, or in agencies, or cooperatives (like WAO) seem to be finding it increasingly hard to land clients and contracts. Those who are employed seem to be battling restructuring and layoffs in their working lives.
You know, now could be a good time to organise. Usually, that word is used in the sense of “uprising against our oppressors.” While I’m not against that idea, I mean more along the lines of there’s plenty of things that need doing and fixing in the world, how about we get on and do them?
It’s difficult when you’re under-employed or unemployed. It’s easy to take it upon yourself and feel like you’ve done, or are doing something, wrong. But if lots of people are in the same boat, perhaps the problem is systemic? Perhaps this is a really good time to do something different?
We all need to put food on the table. But maybe we could dedicate some time to coming together to collaborate on long-standing issues that need fixing? Just an idea.
We’ve now exchanged contracts on the house we’re buying, and will be moving next weekend. The sense of relief Chez Belshaw is palpable as things are never sure until this stage. We would have liked to have moved earlier, especially as the Easter holidays for the kids end tomorrow, but I’m continuing to channel my inner Epictetus.
This is the end of my second week off work. Last week, I felt better after having a cold, or Covid, or something during the last few days I was at work. This week, I’ve either caught something different, or what I had’s come back with a vengeance. It’s weird: I ran Monday and Wednesday and went to the gym on Tuesday; everything was fine. Then from Thursday to today I’ve been sick. I could do without it, to be honest.
I’m not a great patient, so I’ve been drinking full cafetieres of coffee and getting my MSc assignment done. It is indeed written, although weighing in at 6,500 words instead of the 4,000 word limit. While my tutor says she’s never known anyone be penalised for going over the limit, I should probably spend a couple of hours cutting out some waffle. It’s due on April 23rd, but ideally I’ll submit before we move house.
Without replying to anyone, I’ve glanced at work emails and Slack as a distraction from writing, and noticed that Laura published a post we collaborated on before I went on holiday entitled Examining the Roots: Unpacking the foundations of Verifiable Credentials. It looks like she’s also published the next couple of episodes of Season 9 of our podcast, The Tao of WAO.
Erm, other things to report? I saw Dune 2 with my son at the cinema last night. Visually absolutely incredible, but it didn’t really do anything for me on a visceral level. Perhaps, as I mentioned on the journey home, it’s because I’m now at an age where I don’t identify with the main protagonist. Or maybe I just find it difficult to sit still for almost three hours.
I wrote a pretty niche post about exporting blog data to a format to make it easier to use with LLMs like ChatGPT. I published some things on Thought Shrapnel. I bought a Pixel Fold for less than half of the list price and installed GrapheneOS. I packed and moved some boxes. I took my kids to football and basketball training/games. (My son’s basketball game was particularly exciting, coming back from 20 points down against the team he used to play for, to draw in the last few seconds.)
I’ve nearly finished Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. It’s pretty good, although it doesn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. Definitely useful to pass on to others, though, which is one of the advantages of buying dead tree books. I’m also reading one of the most recent Jack Reacher novels, and although the early ones are clearly much better, they’re an easy read and way to switch off.
Image: two boxes stacked in the living room of our current rented house, with clothes drying wherever we can find space.
The author, walker, and mountaineer Robert Macfarlane tells of keeping books of poetry by his bedside. As a reader of, and also listener to his work, it’s evident that this habit influences the lyrical quality of his own writing. I’m re-experiencing The Old Ways at the moment, first having been gifted the audiobook version by my friend Bryan Mathers a few years ago, and then having it bought for me in paperback by my wife.
I find it good to revisit things, particularly those I enjoy. There’s a quality to rediscovering half-remembered stories and turns of phrase that can be quite different to encountering something for the first time. Turning them over in my mind a second (or a third, or a fourth time) I realise that they’ve become part of how I understand the world.
Finally succumbing to a Spring cold this week, I’ve been reading instead of exercising. I picked up Tiziana Terranova’s After the Internet: Digital Networks between Capital and the Common which someone recommended recently. It’s an excellent example of how experience can be reconceptualised by theory. Unable to highlight a book that has been printed on a dead tree without indelibly marking it, I resorted to taking photographs of the pages.
Here, for example, is the first page of the introduction:
Before the 2020s brought the world to a (temporary) sudden halt with the first taste of a truly planetary epidemic right before it reignited the fuse of a potential nuclear world war, there were the 2010s — the accelerationalist years. The second decade of the 21st century witness the precipitous crystallization of a massive worldwide infrastructure — one that has brought together technologies of communication and computation, connection and calculation in unprecedented ways. The infrastructure which today constitutes the dominant manifestation of digital connectivity does not seem to be quite what previous decades called “the internet,” rather, it appears as a complex of privately owned online services that call themselves “platforms”.
It takes a while to reflect on the significance of events both in one’s own life and in the history of the world. After the Internet is a series of essays written between 2009 and 2020, but the introduction is worth the price of admission alone: a masterpiece of reframing by an academic and activist. I highly recommend it.
Barring unexpected events, I will compose Weeknote 16/2024 from our new abode. This is later than we wanted, but earlier than the vendor initially offered. The move will come at the end of three weeks I’m taking off work in April, a time in which I must turn in the End of Module Assessment for my first MSc Systems Thinking module.
Sitting here, typing this before everyone else rises, three weeks seems like an eternity of opportunity. I want to cram it full of walking and camping; visiting places I have and have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing. I want to make decisions about and plan my new home office. I want to get all of the extraneous things cluttering my current office sold on eBay.
But I am still ill. A vessel for a temporary malady that Laura tells me Germans call frühjahrsmüdigkeit, or “spring sickness”. Despite my best efforts to keep fit and strong, events both on the world stage and closer to home have worn me out. I must rest.
There are not many things I will miss about this rental property when we move out. Built in 1661 as a coaching inn, the property is Grade II listed. Somehow, presumably because of the materials with which it was built and the secondary glazing, it manages to boast both stiflingly-low air circulation and poor heat retention. And yet, it does have some redeeming qualities. The thickness of the walls means that I can creep out of bed and make my way downstairs unheard, carving out a slice of early morning to read, and think, and write. It also has a cavernous cellar, which was originally where the coach and horses would be kept. I may come to miss the view looking south-west over the river, an ever-changing, weather-dependent treat when emerging from the bathroom with the blinds drawn and my contact lenses newly installed.
There is not much else to report from the front lines. Work has wound-down for me while my wife’s new role has ramped up from a standing start. My son has found himself a part-time job and, in typical fashion, committed to virtually all of the days of his Easter holidays. My daughter was involved in a football match for the under-15s East Northumberland team, a school lockdown, and a futsal tournament. Both received excellent academic reports.
Next week, I’ll be up at St Andrews University for the open day, that institution currently being top of my son’s list of future destinations. I’m hoping to be back to exercise before we make the trip, perhaps even spending a night under canvas. Over and out, then, for another week.
Photograph taken while finishing off this postusingLento
