Friends I keep asking you to stop me doing things and yet, here I am, doing things. I’m disappointed in all of us. Let’s try harder next year to stop me doing things.

In the new year, I think I’ll be moving off my current project. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I am hopeful that I’ve identified a development opportunity in a neighbouring team that I can do for a little while. It’ll be good to stretch myself a little bit. I’ve noticed that, since my team grew, I’m a little out of sorts. I don’t quite know where I fit any more. I know what I can do though, and what I’m good at. What I’m good at is fixing things, and documenting the fixes. This neighbouring team has been a sort of start-up, and now they’re looking for someone to come along and tidy up the things that are working but aren’t documented. The aim is to improve the system without having any downtime. It’ll be fun, if it comes off. If not – ah well. I’ve got something really juicy to get my teeth into at the moment: I’m writing proper deployment pipelines. I’m going to reduce the complexity of my current system, in one domain, by about 60%. I can’t tell you how. It’s incredibly dull, unless one day I can get a talk out of it: in which case, incredibly interesting.

This week in the MSc I’ve been getting my head around plain English. I’m really enjoying it, and it’s lovely to see GOV.UK getting a shout-out – even if the author spells it gov.uk, which is a cardinal sin. You can tell the old GDS people by the involuntary winces that flash across their faces when they see it written lower-case. The lecturer is really enthusiastic about people writing clearly; expressing complex ideas in simple ways; and not writing too much. This has shocked at least one person on the course, who at last count had a literature review 5,000 words long. I am amazed and delighted by this person, who has decided that they are going to write a PhD thesis and are completely unbothered that this is not a PhD programme.

Delight has been a common thread this week, actually. I have been delighted by all sorts of things. I have been delighted by my friends, who have been doing a sterling job of cheering me up when I’ve needed it. I have been delighted by tiny acts of generosity at work. I have been delighted by the notification from an account I follow on social media that told me that today the sun rose a little earlier and set a little later. I was even delighted by a wind that hit 40km/h and almost blew me down the street.

And that’s not to say that there haven’t been things that were not delightful. I have had numerous frustrations. Only that this week the delight outweighed them, and I can’t tell if there really were more delights or I am noticing more things that delight me.

I was especially delighted by my dear friend Kate, who took three or four rough ideas I had about a song and turned them into a banger. Just an absolute banger. It’s so strange, to see an idea I had – an idea which in turn builds on hers – turned into something musical. I am not musical. I once guessed where middle C was on a piano, and that is the peak of my musical education. And yet Kate has sculpted these ideas into something remarkable. Friends, I cannot wait for you to see this thing performed. I cannot wait to hold a signed copy of the book in my hands.

Next year is going to be a difficult year. I’d like to end on a hopeful note, but I can’t yet. It’s just going to be difficult. I’m going to lean on some of you a lot of this year, more than I have before, more than I’ve earned, perhaps. I hope that’s alright.

See you on the other side.