Hey. It’s been a while. I’ve missed you.

I have a new role in the vague yet menacing government agency I work for. I’m not going to write about it because there is only so many times I can write about drafting policy and being in meetings and saying “Oh, sorry, I was on mute/Sorry, I think you’re on mute/I appreciate your position, but let’s consider…” before it becomes boring. That’s to say nothing of the national security implications of people finding out that working in a vague yet menacing government agency is terrifically boring. We’d lose an entire generation of would-be spies and intelligence analysts –

– a brief note on the difference between officers and agents: an agent is someone you recruit to work on your behalf. An estate agent, a publishing agent, a talent agent. A secret agent is someone you recruit to work in secret on your behalf. James Bond is not an agent but an officer, and he may recruit agents and work through them, but is not himself an agent. This has been a public service announcement on behalf of your friendly, local, vague yet menacing government agency –

– who would go and do something terrible like become bakers, or butchers, or ballet dancers. So instead these weeknotes are going to switch to a combination of my personal feelings and some completely fictional accounts of my work. I’m going to do this as an unblocking mechanism, for when work on The Book is going badly/not going/going suspiciously well.

For this reason, I won’t be adding this season to weeknot.es because they’re not the right format. The people there are being honest and open about the work they’re doing and how they’re feeling about it, and this – you can feel it already, can’t you, the gravitational pull of the surreal that keeps tugging the words away from reality – this isn’t that. It’s honesty but a couple of layers deep, or real feelings put in a blender and turned on high.

So, that’s my intention. I don’t know if I’ll stick to it, but here goes.

If you’re wondering if this counts as fanfiction: it totally does. It’s where I started. It’s what got me good at writing. I’ll understand if you’re not interested and choose this time to switch out. You don’t owe me anything.

One last thing – on a total whim, after being frustrated by strategic consultants who don’t seem to do much that’s useful, I’ve set up a domain and a mission statement for a business I’d like to run. It’s called the anti-strategy, and I’m open to feedback.

Thanks. See you back here for episode 1.