I’m in Manchester today helping another department out with recruitment. it’s nice learning about what other bits of government are doing. I also figured I could take the afternoon off as holiday to see some of my mates from the Co-op. an unforseen bonus of this trip though is that I could swap some Top Quality Virgin Trains Bants with Andrew. a year of sharing a 200 mile commute really sets up a friendship for success.
enjoyed this piece by Jessica Harllee who reflected on good challenges vs bad challenges on leaving Etsy. it’s dead easy to stay in situations because it feels like a failure to leave them, so thinking about good challenging x bad challenging seems like a good idea. it’s OK to decide something isn’t good for you and to want to do less of it. mistakes happen ¯_(ツ)_/¯
there was a moment midweek that I had my headphones on listening to a Paul Woolford remix of Higher Love by Whitney while I was at a board, alone, sorting post-it notes into themes. I felt happier than I had done in a long time [in a purely work context]. put down your screens!
the counter to my happy post-it sorting rave was the evening that I got home so frustrated by everything that I sat down and drew some pissed off graphs in my notebook. graphs! who knew they were a way to express feelings. only line graphs for now, but happily Jeremy gave me back my copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information so maybe my emotive graphs can get a bit more sophisticated soon. The Visual Display of Qualitative Information amirite??
in Italian on Wednesday I learned about different words for different illnesses. yesterday I developed mal di gola (a sore throat), and I still have it today. I imagine I’ll have a proper raffreddore (cold) before long and may need some pastiglie (pastilles) or perhaps lo sciroppo (cough syrup) to make myself feel better.
didn’t go to either the cross-gov design meetup or Meaning Conference yesterday. 100% rookie error.
thanks Nat and Phil for the weeknote shout outs! I’m enjoying some of the just-for-RSS content of this strange weeknote revival in what I think of as my ‘internet scene’, and look forward to joining it soon. miss u Google Reader.
finished Wilding by Isabella Tree this week. it’s a book about how she and her husband gave up intensive agriculture at their farm at Knepp in Sussex and let nature take over their land, to try to recreate an environment long gone from the English countryside. now I’m obsessed with incorrect baselining (who says nightingales want to live in woodland? maybe it’s that woodland is all we have to give them and actually they prefer scrubland!) and what built systems can learn from ecological ones (if anyone has any more reading on this, lmk, I’m here for it). looking out the window on the train to Manchester and there’s flooding everywhere on farmland, and I’m like, yo, maybe y'all need beavers or more scrubland or to let your fallen oaks stay on the ground to build beetle populations. (obviously I’ve got no idea what the land needs. sorry farmers for trying to woke-splain you, I’m just excited by learning about a new thing.)
I’ll be returning Wilding to the library tomorrow (it cost me 50p to bring it in from another library, aka A BARGAIN aka use your local library, people! they’re so good!) and picking back up The Mushroom at the End of the World, which is about “capitalist destruction and collaborative survival”, all via the lens of matsutake mushroom picking. Catherine read it months ago, I am very lucky to have a live-in thought leader <3