I need to put something down, or I’m going to snap. I’m already fraying at the edges. This is why I was delighted to find this: https://www.volunteeramnestyday.net/
What an idea. An opportunity to reflect on whether something still serves you, or if it’s time to put it down. I don’t know if I’ll wait to the solstice, but I certainly need to think about how much I’m doing.
Continue readingThis week the theme has been to figure out the first most important thing. I am not sure I’ve got it right, and I won’t get another chance. But that’s true also of the next thing I do, and the next. Life is just one long series figuring out the next most important thing and mostly getting it wrong. Read on. That’s the current next most important thing.
Continue readingI’ve been thinking all day about small kindnesses and how large a surprise they can be. I’m thinking about queer community. I am thinking a lot of things about Saltburn, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Do see it. Tell me which scene you cringed hardest at and I’ll tell you…something.
Continue readingI’m almost a decade into my professional career now, and I’m starting to feel like I broadly know what I’m doing. I know this is a trap, but it’s very tempting. I had a couple of meetings this week where I felt like I was doing really well. I challenged some people in productive ways, and I used my experience from a decade of public service to have valuable conversations. I used my experience of twenty years of relationships and navigating the world as an autistic man to have sensitive conversations.
I am starting to feel like I know who I am.
Continue readingFriends 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.
Continue readingA couple of ideas banging around in my head today. Let’s see if it makes a point, and a meta-point. Can I do that? Of course I can, dear friends. I’m brilliant.
Continue readingSometimes I can see when I’m pulling up roots, and sometimes it takes a storm for me to realise how shallow they’ve become.
Continue readingI was getting annoyed at myself for dropping things so I’ve started putting them onto a kanban. Time will tell if I can keep it up to date, but I’ve definitely found it useful in the past. It’s done for me the thing it always does for every team in which I’ve introduced it, which is stun me at the amount I’m actually trying to juggle at once. This is good. Explicit is better than implicit. Also, if you add a 🎉 emoji to a column in Trello, you get a little confetti shower when you move a card into that column. Tiny moment of joy (which doesn’t make up for them breaking my poweruser flow)
Continue readingA lot’s happening all at once. On the 20th I need a draft literature review ready as a dry-run for my thesis. At this point, my advisor will tell me if there’s enough in my project, or if I’ll need to pivot to something else. The musical I’m helping with is getting stronger all the time. The characters we’ve been focussing on are leaping off the page, their desires and their priorities now so clear that the story spins itself. At work, I’m digging into authentication and authorisation, and rolled out the metaphor I used last week. It seemed to work. And other little corporate things are picking up too.
But I’m still getting over a lingering illness, and so is my partner; and so it means sleepness nights and fuzziness of the brain and being awake at 2am, cuddled under a blanket with a cat, and thinking about the great wide sky.
There’s a lot of technical stuff this week, and no clear thread. Just a feeling of pressure and impending deadlines.
Continue readingWe’re designing a web-based API this week, and it’s reminded me that all design is inherently political. Specifically, we’re thinking about what data we expose. We can expose all of it, and let the people receiving it decide what to do with it. Or we can curate it, with the hope that the people receiving it have a better experience.
Which is better? Which is right?
Continue reading
Caffeinated Punctuation 