A response to a question posed at the One Team Gov London breakfast
Someone posed this question at our OTG breakfast, and it’s been stewing in my brain since. I had a lovely walk this morning with Morgan and it’s helped to frame and restructure my thinking, and now I’ve got an answer.
I cannot make bricks without clay!
I’d use a budget of that size to start running experiments. Proper experiments, with control groups and academic rigour and results published in journals. And then I’d use that data to make a case for wider change. Here’s a few examples:
Summer hours: what if, for six months of the year, we paid people the same amount for four days as we would normally pay them for five? The ethical implications of this are large — how do we select the team that gets a day off? Is it fair?⁰
Does non-work related development improve productivity? I’m imagining giving one team of people £1,000 per year per person to spend on developing themselves in any way they wanted, another team £1,000 per year per person to spend on approved, work-related training, and another group nothing at all.
Incentive lottery: we’re in the midst of our annual People Survey. It’s hard to get people to fill it in, so what if we said: for every person who fills it in, we will put £50 into a pot and enter that person into a lottery. Then, after the deadline, we’ll randomly select 10% of the entrants and split the entire pot between them. Would it incentivise people? Or would the one person who really cares get rich?¹
I think a culture of experimentation, in an organisation like ours, would be a cool thing to build. So: who’s got £2.3m going spare…?
⁰ The answer is probably “No, but we might learn something valuable” ¹ Caring is a superpower though, so maybe that’s a good thing
Unless you get meaning when you’re born, in which case I got missed out
I am having an existential crisis. Some people have said that we all are; that we’re going through an exotic sprism of wondering what the purpose of everything truly is. We’re reaching for easy answers, and certain people are happy to offer them. Maybe I’m one of them. Let’s see.
Existi-what now?
First — briefly — existentialism.⁰ Suppose that there is no moral law in the universe. There’s no God and no Hell and prophets are just (always) men. When you die, you simply won’t be. You know that place you go to when you’re asleep? That’s where you’ll go forever.¹ The law is not a moral guideline: people have done² terrible things to other people entirely legally.
If that’s true, then we are suddenly, horribly, startlingly alone — not alone before a judge, or the pearly gates, or in prison. Just alone. Nobody can tell you what is a good thing to do. Only you can tell yourself that.
The agony of choice
We are condemned to be free — Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
Well, that’s bleak. It’s the anguish at the centre of being: all the time, you have to make a choice. You have to keep making choices forever, until you die. That’s an option too, by the way. In fact, Camus said the only real question in philosophy was:
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
The point is that you’ve still got to choose. Unless you don’t: there are other structures out there for meaning. Religion, social justice, ethno-nationalism, the hustle, visiting every tube station in the world. If some of those seem absurd to you, you’re right. All of it’s absurd. Some of them are shitty, and if you find meaning in ethno-nationalism you’re going to find there are plenty of people who find meaning in opposing you.
As long as you’ve chosen it, then you are at least living in good faith by seeking meaning for yourself. Living according to someone else’s morals is bad faith, because then your essence is predicated on someone else’s existence. That’s not healthy. What if they turn out to be a milkshake duck?
Meanings! Get your meanings here!
People do, of course. We all do. I do. I go to work and I work hard and I write code and I do my job, and I do it every day, and I’m starting to wonder if this was a choice I made or one that was made for me and I never noticed.⁴ Hence: existential crisis. Am I living in bad faith?
Now: some people disagree with the foundation of this. Sartre says that existence precedes essence: that you are born, and then you become. But don’t we all have some essence? Something that governs how we’d act, what we would do, given the same situation?
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Anyway. I’ve wildly overused both my brain and the word “choose”, so here it is again multiple times. Enjoy this, from Trainspotting, while I go and drink tea and play with the cat. It’s an absurd way to pass the time — but then, of course, so is everything else.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television Choose washing machines, cars, Compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows Stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, Pishing your last in a miserable home Nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life
⁰ As brief as I am capable of being. ¹ Hey, does that mean every time you fall asleep you die? ² And still do ³ In the case of the more extroverted preachers, literally yelled at you ⁴ There is a danger with this stuff that it sounds like self-help aimed at other, equally privileged people like me. I would like to avoid that. Some choices are bad both ways, and people with more privilege will likely have fewer of those. I don’t think there’s a requirement to be happy with your choice, and I also know that’s little comfort. Sorry.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
I’ve got a number of choices coming up, and yes to one choice closes all the others off. I am, as ever, hoarding choices: I am collecting safety nets. This implies a paranoia that I’m going to fall.
Have I so little faith in myself?⁰
This presentation is somewhat at odds with my behaviour at work, and to a certain extent who I am. Somewhere between what you’ve read and what you’re about to read, I am.¹
Onwards!
These things happened this week:
1 Stacktech 4; an annual conference of government technologist types. I was made grumpy by a panel of 7 people representing four departments, of which 6 were men.
I was made grumpier by looking around at the room and realising that this was better gender representation than the audience itself.
I then got even grumpier as each department talked about their Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings. One department talked about their two distinct PaaS offerings. Luckily, we had a good discussion later, and I came round to a completely different perspective: build as many as you want, as long as they’re lightweight and we all understand that we’re going to trash them within the decade.³ Or we just accept that we’ve already got government-wide PaaS offerings — from the market. We don’t need to build our own if someone else has already built it.
The conference was split into lectures in the morning and unconference sessions in the afternoon. There was a really good, frank discussion about security and the difference between a caveat (such as SENSITIVE) and a classification (OFFICIAL). I learned a few new things, and I’m thinking about whether there’s a need for a talk on this subject for people who still aren’t sure.
It was also a really startling insight into when policy has to be user-centric and could even benefit from user research: government security classification policy was written by people who dealt primarily with SECRET and TOP SECRET information. Such material almost always comes with handling caveats — such as EYES ONLY, which indicates you mustn’t lick it⁴. They assumed that users at lower security levels would understand this as well, and so threw in SENSITIVE as an example. It made sense to them, but not the users, because (all together now):
A stick figure saying “You are not your user”
2 Interview! I had one, and it was a lot of fun. I love interviewing, because it’s feedback on where I am and how I’m doing. It forces me to be critical and analyse my own strengths and weaknesses. I also get to meet interesting people doing interesting things, and that’s always interesting.
The job itself seems immensely stretching, and an opportunity to get really stuck into something complicated and messy. There is also the possibility that it’ll be a horrible poisoned chalice, because the challenge is steep and the mess is truly messy. Regardless of whether I’m offered the role or not — which will force even more self-reflection and deciding what I’m doing and where I’m going. Hey, that’s a neat segue into the next thing!
A member of the Bluth family, from the sitcom Arrested Development, on a segue
3 Preparation for the Future Leaders Scheme continues apace. Those of us in GDS who are through to the interview stage had a briefing from senior staff, both of whom came from the policy profession. The advice was really valuable on a general front — how to structure interview answers, what to be thinking about before answering, and how to hide things like nerves.⁵
I also talked to Michael, who offered some really valuable and tech-specific advice on how to approach these interviews. Essentially, it boiled down to admitting that you’re ambitious and at least having a good idea of how you’re going to get there. Have you thought about the steps you’ll have to take? Do you know what you’re bad at?⁶
I know what I’m good at. In fact, I’m wondering if that’s why I’m finding myself drawn to it: facilitating. James kindly allowed me to facilitate the One Team Gov London breakfast this week, and it felt joyful. Facilitating is performative, and I am nothing if not a massive show off.⁷
Harold Ziegler, who is my inspiration
I know that I like to show and to tell, and that I’m reasonably good at seeing people and moving the conversation forward and making sure everyone gets a voice. It’s also an opportunity to force behaviours through social cohesion and acceptance: I asked people to raise their hands before they spoke, and although a couple of people laughed everyone still did it. People don’t want to rock the boat unless it’s important to them, so small requests that don’t (generally) attack the core of someone’s being will be accepted.⁸
4 Public sector digital heroes roll call! Morgan as always forcing me to think more critically about what I want to do. Dan for playing chess and also making me think critically about what I’m doing right now. My director David, who kindly set me up a coffee meeting with someone I’m aiming to be soon. James for his phenomenal bravery. Sam for being thoughtful and generous, and everyone at breakfast who was open and honest and vulnerable. And the motley crew who put together a conference on digital two years ago and are coming up through the Civil Service together; challenging and growing and drinking on Wednesday evenings together.
You are all inspirations to me.
You are my emergency box of kittens
⁰ Evidence so far suggests “Yes” ¹ My favourite thing about english is that “I’m” is a contraction of “I am”, but if that sentence read “Somewhere between what you’ve read, and what you’re about to read, I’m” your brain would fumble around looking for the next word.² ² I hope your day isn’t as ruined as much as mine was when I discovered this. ³ This did not go down as well as I would have liked ⁴ This is not true. Please do not tell people I told you this ⁵ I will never not be annoyed that nerves are a negative sign, but they are. I don’t get nerves any more, because I did a lot of interviews as practice. If you read these notes, and would like to do some practice interviews, then let’s organise it. It’s painful, but in development we say that if it hurts, do it more often; do it so often it becomes painless. ⁶ Can you think about it without getting sucked into a negative spiral? ⁷ That’s literally true: I am nothing if I’m not showing off ⁸ There is sometimes someone who will get jolly cross about this, and say it’s infantilising and they resent being treated as a child. I don’t yet know how to deal with that kind of reaction Edited to add a reader suggestion:
The response to people who think being polite is "infantilising" is "fuck off", tbh. But then I'm probably too willing to die on this hill because I get overly aggressive (probably not the right word) when I see people being spoken over.
This week has been reasonably quiet as I bed myself into my new team. However, there have been a few developments. Let’s talk about those.
1Something funny first: a startup with the same name as my ex has put adverts on a bus that goes past my office as I leave the building.
If this were a film, the audience would be absolutely livid at the sheer heavy-handedness of the director. Unfortunately this is not a movie; this is real life. Coincidences happen and hearts break and, well, not everything works out in the end.
It’s a funny story though.
Funny, but sad, but funny
2I have a date for an interview. Actually, I’ve got a date for two. The first is the development programme my organisation offers. They ran a session to prep us for the interview, and it was all going well until I asked — half-jokingly — if senior leaders wear jeans.⁰
The reaction was almost visceral: apparently, they don’t. But the worst thing was that the person next to me said, “Oh sure, it would be nice if we could bring our whole selves to work…” and then tailed off.
The heck with that. If I’m going to be a leader, everyone I’m leading gets to bring their whole self to work. I’m torn, though. I can play the stupid game and cosplay as Office Guy™, if that’s what’s required to help them perceive me as a leader. On the other hand, do I lack integrity?
Is it better to do the pragmatic and uncomfortable thing, or the idealistic but (perhaps) less successful thing?¹
The other interview is for a job I applied for ages ago. It’s a level transfer to a different department, doing something completely different. I’m pretty happy where I am, but I’m still going to the interview. I’m trying to work out why. I don’t know what I’d do if someone offered me that job, and that’s annoying as well.²
A man holds a balloon that’s filling with coca-cola. It might not be a balloon.
3My new team is really nice. It’s been going a while though, and so I’m still desperately trying to get up to speed on the acres of work. It’s also in a different language to the one I was working on last week, so it’s taking a little while to get back up to speed and shift my mindset back onto a Pythonic way of doing things.
At the same time, I’m writing up a couple of pages to brief someone on the Secret Project. I’m aiming to get it finished soon; I’m worried I’m wildly overdoing it and should get some feedback on it soon. Part of my problem is not having clearly defined user needs, but I guess that’s why the feedback loop needs to be tighter. The lead time is enormous though, because this senior stakeholder is so incredibly busy. It’s like trying to turn an oil tanker; actions I take now might not feedback to me for weeks.
So I’ve bitten the bullet and sent it. More on this as we get it.
4That’s actually all this week. Since you’re all getting off early, you should go and read these weeknotes because they’re much more interesting:
⁰ They do, because I can see one from where I’m sitting
¹ This question of whether it’s better to be on the inside of the outside is definitely playing on my mind at the moment because of reasons
² More and more as I write this I’m more aware that I’m not as settled in my mind as I’d like to be. I’m still trying to get away from something, but since that’s me, moving around won’t help
Loads of things happened this week, and they’re big, so let’s get cracking
The firebreak project
I’d like to write a One Team Gov blog about this experience. It was very interesting and I really enjoyed it, but I’m not sure that’s an entirely good reason to do it. All the same, there might be some lessons to share.
The short version is that a friend and colleague asked me to help out, I spent four days with their team, and in that time we built a prototype product with a workflow that crossed different user journeys.
I’m still shaking from presenting it to senior people over Youtube, because we’ve got competing networks and silos. It worked, thank goodness, and feedback has been really good. I’m pleased to turn it over and get started on my new project on Monday.
MAPCAMP
I like mapping. I think it’s a genuinely transformative tool. I mapped out the Secret Project on the way home from Map Camp and showed it to someone who’s never seen one before. They got it at once, but they are very clever. I’m excited to share it more widely and see if other people get it too.
However: Map Camp itself was very heavy on the chalk and talk⁰. There was almost no opportunity to ask questions or discuss, and very little practical opportunity to try out what we were learning. Maybe that’s a function of it being highly context specific, but all the same by the fourth speaker my butt was asleep.
Static: a visual representation of how my butt felt
James Findlay and Janet Hughes represented for government, and Janet’s talk in particular was really incredible. I also got to chat to former colleague Chris, who’s been doing phenomenally cool things.
Secret project (that will hopefully become less secret really soon, but let’s be honest I’ve got expectations to manage and I really don’t want to fart this up)
Not SECRET in the Civil Service sense, but secret in the ‘let’s not talk too much about this until we’re sure it’s going to happen,’ but: I’m writing strategy documents! I’m making maps! I’ve written too much oh god it’s just reams and reams of paper, a tsunami of word vomit flooding out of my laptop and splashing onto the floor…
I don’t know how to do this, so I’m going to get my policy colleague to repay my firebreak favour and help me write in a way that’s not, y’know. Like this.
More updates as I think it’s appropriate to include them.
It was October 3rd:
Mean girls remains the most important satire of the tendency of revolutionaries to become dictators since Animal Farm, do not @-me thank you
I’m through to the interview stage of the Future Leaders Scheme!
endless screaming as I try to prepare for an interview and convince them I’m not a potato
I’m really excited about this. It’s a bit of a vote of confidence in me and my potential. It’s also the first time I’ve ever actually felt that I agree with this assessment.
Yeah, self-doubt. I have a lot of it.
I have breezed through almost everything I’ve ever done with absolutely zero interest in being particularly good at it, and therefore no idea whether I have potential. This, though, is something else. I think my firebreak work has had a massive impact on this: I’ve had a whole week of positive reinforcement and I feel positively reinforced. I am quite good at this thing that I do. I am also really, really aware of how much better I could be and I care about getting better.
It’s exhilarating.
⁰ Not everyone knows this phrase, so: a chalk and talk is a lecture given by a professorial type in which one sits and tries to listen as they monologue. You watch a bee and by some auditory alchemy the voice transmutes into the sound of the bee, until it’s just a single droning hum that’s slowly filling your head, filling it until it’s heavy, until it’s so heavy it starts to sink onto the desk that feels cool and firm and somehow right, and then you blink, and everyone’s packing up and somehow an hour has passed.¹
This has been an intense but very gratifying week. A lot, a lot of things have happened. Here are a few.
1We’ve put a lot of code into production, and the publishing tool that content designers use to make step by step guides looks and handles much better. The changes we’ve made reduce the barriers to entry for new content designers to make the guides. This, in turn, should make it easier to scale the platform up and make more guides that cover huge, cross-government journeys. Things like how to apply for student finance in England and what to do when someone dies. These are important, valuable things and I’ve been so proud to have worked on them.
What to do when someone dies: An excellent, recently launched, easy to use, step-by-step guide by the UK government. https://t.co/mafO2qLc0Q
Worth making a note of this resource to ease for loved ones some of the stress and deliberation at a difficult and delicate time. https://t.co/zsN1knEOcH
2I made a decision to stay at my current organisation for a while longer. I was offered a secondment, and although the role seems exciting and useful to develop my career I want to stick at this first. It’s my first paid developer job, and I want to stick at it for longer than four months. I felt really bad turning down the person who offered and I think I was more brusque than I would have liked. I’m not sure how to be better at that. Ask people to offer me things more often?
I only made the decision after speaking to a lot of people about it, and I can’t express how grateful I am to all of them for letting me bounce arguments off them. Every day I’m made more and more forcefully aware than I don’t do this enough, and I’m making a conscious effort to have lunch and meet with people more.
I refuse to bottle stuff up any more.⁰
Someone smashing a bottle with a baseball bat
3I got confirmation that I’m moving to a new program at work. It’s going to be an interesting shift; I’ve already met the team and they seem like very cool people.
In similar work moves, I’ve got confirmation that I’ll be working at the Ministry of Justice during firebreak, which is the one-week gap we have between missions. I’m only there for four days, as I’m attending Map Camp to see swardley on Wednesday, but I’m incredibly, over-the-top-excited to work in a really different context on a fairly green field product. It’s come about at the urging of a friend and colleague² with whom I worked on a conference. We all wrote a lot about that, too. Make things open. It makes people friends.
In my organisation I’m changing floors and for the next week I’m changing organisation. I’m going to do my best to blog about the work I do, because I think if everyone took one week after every 12 and went to another organisation to offer to do something interesting, we might do more interesting things.
It might even inspire people to wonder what a system where people were free to move across the wider organisation in search of interesting projects might look like…
4Future Leaders Scheme update!
I’ve been nervous all day about it and never heard back. Now I’m nervous and frustrated. Boooooooo!
5It might just be the Piri-Piri spice or the slight end of term feel that comes from the close of the quarter, but I’m feeling more than ever how lucky I am. I earn enough money to rent a place by myself and own a pet; I inherited a chunk of money so I’ll own a property. This isn’t the normal state of affairs for my generation — if I were to start from nothing now and had to save for a deposit I think I’d be 40 before I could purchase.
So I’m writing this to keep myself honest. I have worked hard. Where there have been opportunities I’ve taken them. But if hard work made you rich horses would be millionaires. The avalanche of my success certainly contains a snowflake of hard work, but the rest of that thundering mass of snow is pure dumb luck.
Don’t let me forget that.
⁰ You better believe that despite writing weeknotes I still bottle up a load of shit and struggle to let go of the hero narrative which, let’s be honest, is the mainstay of capitalist societies and (not) incidentally the image boys¹ are given from every angle at all times
¹ and people socialised as boys
² Is it rare for those two words to go together? Why?
I am doing a lot of things at the moment, and this is a reminder for me and a request for you to prevent me from doing more things. The list as it stands:
My job (more on which momentarily)
Helping with some technical support for a mentoring program
Writing The Book
Planning four days with another government department on a high-intensity project that will limit my ability to do other things
Creating a workshop around the themes in The Book
Supporting a colleague to learn how to code
Applying for an MSc, the duration of which I will remain single so as to avoid having an emotional crisis in the middle of exam time⁰
Worrying
Possibly more corporate objective things
Hum. Alright. Don’t let me sign up for, volunteer for, or apply for anything else. Please tell me off if I do.
Things that have happened this week
1I had a really good, really exciting first meeting with the policy person on the product I might be working on during firebreak. I’m hoping to get a blog out of this; it’s a bit of an odd use for firebreak but I’m deliberately targeting it towards some machine learning stuff so that I can get some more experience with that particular branch of statistics. It overran and I was late to a data strategy meetup. It was well run; Kit in her element (on a chair, overseeing) and a lot of people discussing and talking.
What came out of it was — well, if I were being uncharitable I would say it was the same vague nebulous wordcloud of good intentions. The contents page of every data strategy ever. But on the flipside, it did cement that those are the things we’re all thinking about when we write this stuff. That’s worth thinking about, and what was on the periphery might have been more interesting than the core. I’m not sure. I don’t think I got much out of it. I think I was hoping for more focussed ideas. And maps, obviously, because they’re my day and night, moon and stars, waking and sleeping at the moment.
At least it’s got me thinking about how to communicate what I think I know to more people.
2Speaking of, what is it that I know? I swing wildly between confidence and scepticism in my own belief that I can do maps, and maps are useful. The session reinforced the fact that a map can’t tell you what a strategy is, it can only tell you what your strategy possibly ought to be. I might sketch out a rough strategy map for data, if I can find out what the aim of the strategy actually is. Is it to use data better¹? Is it to get companies to use our data to build shit? Is data the point, or is it a supporting element?
Your strategy has to have a point. Even if you’re exploring a new space. Especially if you’re exploring a new space!
All of this is coming out of The Book. I have a half-fleshed out scene where the team has been absolutely taken out in a paintball arena because the other team had a map and they didn’t, because I am nothing if not a hack with a heavy-handedness comparable to André the Giant.
André holding that 12cm tall can looks photoshopped. It’s not. He was amazing.
So it’s progressing. It’s hard, harder than I thought it would be, but it’s such an enjoyable way of spending three evenings a week that it makes it good. Thank you to everyone who’s endured my ranting on this as I try to refine, in real-time and on the fly, what the heck it is I’m talking about.
I’m also writing a workshop on it and I’d love to present. If you’re looking for a semi-interesting away day speaker then I’d love to talk to you or your colleagues. At the moment there are three swears and two Star Wars prequels references. These can be increased/decreased depending on the audience’s view on what’s appropriate for the workplace.
3I may be moving programs to another product GDS delivers. It’s a really exciting shift, from a massive program to a smaller one. It’s going to be a good opportunity to clarify the amount I’m doing and reduce some of the extra-curricular stuff if necessary.² I’m keeping my line manager, which is good because he’s absolutely brilliant. I don’t know if he reads these, but I hope he does. Thanks.
The way it’s been managed has been really good, and a friend who’s been observing some of the ways we do things here seems to be impressed as well. I’m hopeful they’ll take some of the best practice to their next department and get to implement it. Having recently attended a recruitment event for another department, I think there’s a lot of stuff that we should be encouraging colleagues to do around community-building and how powerful it can be.
A succinct summation of my #weeknotes this week
4My corporate objective has very suddenly picked up again. I’m absolutely overjoyed that it’s moving forward again, but I’m frustrated that it wasn’t through anything I’ve been doing. It just seems to have happened out of the blue. Still, I’m excited to see what impact I can make with this.
(Look, I know what I said about picking up other things. Let’s see how it goes and how much of my time it’ll take up. If necessary, I’ll drop something else because this is my baby³)
I thought it had stalled forever, so this is obviously very exciting to me. I’ll need to brush off my talk on automating the hard stuff and review all the amazing work colleagues have done in this space. What comes next? I have a meeting booked that will hopefully result in a plan. Then I expect there’ll be some hard decisions for me about what I need to let go.
5Feedback time. I need to find out how I’m doing, so I’m trying to seek feedback. I’m putting more effort in than I ever have before, and asking for feedback on really specific things. In that vein, I’d really like feedback from you readers: specifically, has this blog changed the way you’ve thought about something? How did it do it? Alternatively, if it didn’t, why didn’t it?
That’s all. I’m meeting a friend for a coffee and he’s walked past my desk twice, so I’m going to give chase.
⁰ Reading this back it seems passive-aggressive. It’s not. It’s just a sad.
¹ For some value of “better”, and indeed “data”
² “If”
³ Not my actual baby, as my attitude there is closer to this person’s:
My last weeknotes were only on Tuesday, so these will be brief. I say this at the outset, knowing full well that by the time you and I reach the end it could feel like longer.
Onwards!
1I wrote more words than I’ve ever continuously written, and it’s like edging over an enormous canyon. There are so many more words that I could pour into this thing and still never finish it.
I’ve seen a lot of family this week — more on that later — and mentioning that I’m writing a book has been a great opportunity to practice my elevator pitch.
“The second worst book ever written”
is a good hook, but then I need to get into the details and it gets fuzzy, because
“using maps to represent distance along a diffusion curve with a second dimension in terms of customer-facing value, using as metaphor climate and tactics, in order for you to produce a cogent and coherent strategy”
is less accessible. More work to be done. Writing a book is apparently not simply writing a book.
2I’ve started playing chess again, and I am having to learn it properly. There are a number of openings that you’ve just got to learn, although there’s an exciting new form of chess called Chess960 which forces players to be more creative. It looks very interesting; so far I’ve only played one match of that type:
The positions throw you off, but I found it a very enjoyable variant and closer to what I’m trying to learn and put into The Book, which is the idea that context-specific gameplay is more important than copying someone else’s ideas.
The state of the board at the end of the match. Black’s two rooks and King were placed there originally
I started looking at chess again as a way to meet people, but if I’m honest the first club I went to was just a lot of dudes who are very intense about the chess. Maybe I should stick with it.
3A friend of mine flaked at the last minute, which absolutely knocked me for six. I thought I was less emotionally raw, but apparently all it takes for me to question my self-worth is someone turning down an invite to spend time with me poking around in museums. I’m annoyed at myself at how deeply it affected me. On the flip side, though, I’m kind of glad to feel something: I was worried about numbness and drawing back. This is painful but good.
Speaking of friends: hurrah for a bonding moment on a train going through cryptic crossword clues. I picked up a book of cryptics from Bletchley, and they’re just a horrid mess of the very simple⁰ and the absolutely bloody impossible¹. It’s more obvious to me now why people who can do these had the sort of corkscrew minds required to do the work of cracking codes and ciphers.
If you have any ideas, please write in
4I mentioned my referral to someone in my family, and they said: “Oh, sure. We always thought you might be on that spectrum.” They didn’t want to explore it further because they were worried about the stigma.
I feel two slightly contradictory feels about this. The first is gratitude, because if I am, I know for a fact that having that label in school would have got me even more bullied than I was. Kids, or at least kids I went to school with, were nasty and vindictive, and autism has always been something I’ve seen mocked.
The second is annoyance, because if I am then knowing slightly earlier than now might have been helpful because then I could have found tools and coping mechanisms earlier.
In any case, no word yet on the outcome of that referral. The flowchart for treatment has a whole world of “No” in it. They called it a step by step guide though, which fits neatly into my back-to-work thinking as I prepare for work tomorrow.
5Last thing, I promise. I’ve been approached by a couple of people about spending some time on secondment with them. I’m really, really excited about it and I’m going to be speaking to my line manager tomorrow. In other work news, the person I was mentoring on technical things passed their test and will be joining my organisation! Lots of fun and I’m hoping to continue mentoring them on the technical stuff so that we can develop together.
That’s all. My only Netflix recommendation this week is Daniel Sloss’ two specials, Dark and Jigsaw. I really don’t agree with his overly idealistic ideas about love and romance, but it’s very funny material delivered by a master of the genre.
Hello again. I’m currently on leave; leave I took with the express purpose of writing The Book. I am, in fact, not writing the book. I’m writing about me. I need a break from characters and plotting.
Onwards!
Things have happened
1Two friends got married, and what’s super-exciting is that they got married to each other. The memories I have are either very clear or super-fuzzy, but here they are: the bride squeezing the groom’s hand and mouthing “Don’t you dare cry,”; an outbreak of snuffling tears from 120 people as an opera singer raised her voice to the rafters; a moment of shared joy at cracking a cryptic crossword clue despite being more than a little hungover. Ice cream. Belly laughs. A flurry of green confetti that flew up with a laugh as the bride grabbed a handful of her dress and whirled. Conversations that paused 3 months ago and picked up again without a phrase missed. Love. Everywhere love; for friends, for family, for lovers.
Oh. And there was a wedding dress with pockets.
2I’ve been referred to our local autism services. I’m still processing this. I’m processing it out loud, and now I’m second-guessing if this is symptomatic or a thing I do; and if there’s overlap. It’s become a weight on my mind and my actions. I don’t like it.⁰
Recent events have certainly made it clear to me that I’m not 100% neurotypical. I don’t know how to deal with it, especially because at the moment I don’t even have a diagnosis. It may not be that. It may be something else. But anyway: I’m now full of anxiety about things that might not happen. This is affecting me in all kinds of ways, ways I suspect I’m not as aware of as other people are.
3I have working code in production. People are using a thing that I built. It’s working. I mean I assume it’s working, I’m on leave and haven’t looked at my emails. This has been an incredibly interesting product to work on, and if I move teams I’ll still have learned loads and I’ll always be able to point at something and say I did this.
4I attended a jobs fair for the Cabinet Office’s Private Office Group. I don’t think I’m cut out for Private Office proper, but there were a couple of really interesting roles in background jobs that I’m strongly considering making my next move. I’ve got an end goal in mind and an idea of the next steps I need to take. We shall see.
I saw my ex there as well. It was…odd. It was odd when someone asked us how we knew each other and we both laughed because we hadn’t thought about how to answer that question. It was odd because we kept an eye on each other and I let them know when I was leaving, except that’s what you’d do if you saw a friend at an event. Except of course we’re not friends. We’re something more, and also something less.
5I’ve written six thousands, two hundred, and seventy-six words of The Book. It is to date the second largest piece of continuous writing I’ve ever done, and will eclipse the first — my undergraduate dissertation, a piece about which I have extremely mixed feelings — by tomorrow. I’m feeling really good about it. I’m writing about 1500 words per day, and it’s absolutely pouring out. That’s not to guarantee quality. In fact it’s almost certainly pish.³ However, at least it’ll be written. Then comes the editing, but at least there’ll be something to edit.
That’s all. It’s been a weird week, and this period of leave is going to be weirder as I find myself on a roll and type til 2am. I couldn’t do that if I had work or a partner, and there’s a weird, fierce, sad sort of joy I’m getting through doing it. I’m not sure it’s healthy. But it feels good.
Here’s a thing I didn’t say at the wedding but had to tell someone, because the couple had sonnet 116 and I love it; I do, but I’m a joyless, cold-hearted suckfest and you have to realise it was read wrongly, the rhymes that should have rhymed did not, and look just listen to Ben Crystal do it with today’s pronunciation and the original and try to tell me it’s not better the way it was, the way it should be.
⁰ Ah but what if that’s symptomatic! A strong preference for order is definitely on the list.¹
¹ On the other hand, plenty of people feel anxiety about impending decisions over which they have no control!²
² Yes, this is indeed the single, looping track my brain has been playing since I got the letter.
It’s finale week. A lot of threads have tied up, so I’m going to take two weeks off and review how I’m feeling. I might still publish stuff though since the recent flurry of reads on my non-fictional-fiction have given me a warm feeling about my own writing.
Onwards!
Things have happened
1I applied to the Future Leaders Scheme, a development scheme my organisation runs for people at my level of seniority. I found out on Wednesday that, thanks to multiple revisions of my statement from Morgan, Jenny, and others, I got through to the second round. Now it’s time for soul-measuring⁰ and testing my judgement. Should I pass those, I’ll get a regular old interview. I’m not certain I’ll be successful, but I’m really excited nonetheless. That’s definitely the big arc for the next season, if I get in.
2My code is so close to production I can taste it. I’m learning a lot, and that means it feels like I’m moving slowly and not delivering value. I should be happier that I’m learning things, and to a certain extent I know this. For example, I’m now comfortable enough with the language that I’ve offered to do a practise code interview with a friend’s mentee. Remotely. We live in a cool if moderately dystopian future.
3Relationship chat: so two months have passed and we’re…friendly? There’s loads of history but, at the same time, we’re sort of becoming friends again like we did so many years ago. It’s a very odd experience. I’m so happy about it: she is completely brilliant and having her support — and being able to support her — feels great. There’s still a huge grey area where affection for a friend could trip and fall face-first into the shark-infested waters of deeper affection, but I think we’re successfully avoiding that. That’s going to be a complex and evolving storyline over the next season.
I’m in a shark cage of emotion, and it’s probably best to stay in there
4Flat purchase is going ahead. I’m going to have a flat! In Zone 4, so far from central that I think it’s in another county.¹ I’ll have borrowed huge amounts from both the Government and a bank, but it’ll be 5.2% mine and that’s the important thing. It has been a long, boring, drawn out process involving a butt-ton of paper. There must be easier ways of doing this.
5It’s a small thing, but I took an hour out to help a colleague in a different team do some data analysis. They opened with “Let’s work with their API”, which I negotiated down to “Let’s do the analysis with tools we’ve already got”. We worked collaboratively and ended up using Google Sheets to meet all the user needs. It felt amazing and reminded me that we can do small things, things that seem simple, to make our colleagues lives significantly easier.
I also restrained myself and, instead of using some kind of bleeding edge serverless do-dad, actually met the user need. Go me. This must be maturity.
6My corporate project is building momentum. Hopefully this means another meeting next week with the next layer up to convince them to release some funds. In the meantime, here’s a peek at the prototype I made. It may still come to nothing, and it really has hammered home that I’m completely incapable of letting go of things, but: I’m angling to build a service, and the service might look like this:
Doesn’t it look…completely boring and useable?
This season has been rough, with that massive, mid-season upheaval. Some aspects of that event might make it into my writing in the next few weeks: with hindsight, parts of it seem so corny, so obviously directed by a heavy-handed hack director, that it would be impossible not to laugh. Stay tuned.
I love you all, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
⁰ Psychometric tests measure your soul, because your psycheis your soul. A psychopomp is a guider of souls. There. That’s a thing you know now.
Caffeinated Punctuation 