1603: snow liveblog

Two weeks in and already this year's going pretty well. I'm sticking well enough to most of the stuff that I've been trying to do; I feel like I've given myself enough things to do that I feel pleasantly occupied, like it's pushing me slightly but I'm not overwhelmed.

Throughput

• I'm back on that BJJ–I had a good run of it in early 2023, but the back half of last year was a mess of family stuff and illness and accidents which stopped me going despite moving offices to one literally next to the dojo. It's really good to be back—I went twice this week—though I'm testing the tensile strength of my gi a little with my Christmas weight 😅
• It snowed! Didn't settle but the Argus had a liveblog and that's what matters.
• After not turning into a productivity blog, I'm not turning into a lifestyle blog but: shaving with a safety razor is pretty good. Giving it a go on a friend's recommendation and while it's a bit more fuss than my electric razor, it's so much closer and doesn't seem to irritate my skin all that much—which is good as it's pretty sensitive 😭
• Been talking to a friend about doing a new podcast—we have a date set for recording the first episode! Very exciting.
• Work's been busy as we've had a big contract end, which is nice—this was our first big contract as BDCo so it feels like the end of chapter 1. We've got a bit of a break to focus on some internal bits, and as part of that I've been talking to my old friend Luke who is doing some cool Design Bits for us!
• Another old friend got in touch the other day to ask for some help in thinking about their career directon, and we ended up talking for about an hour. They said they found it really helpful, which I was glad for, but this, combined with some support I was giving a friend around routines and organising their day, made me realise I really like doing that kind of thing? Toying with the idea of setting up some sort of pro bono life/career/productivity coaching. I don't want to make it a job necessarily but I'd like the opportunity to do more of it.

Output

• Oh no, I'm turning into a productivity blog
• One of my fairly frequent "I listened to a podcast and I had a thought about something" posts
• One of my fairly frequent "I'm concerned about the corrosive effects of technology on society" posts
• One think I wanted to do more of this year is video stuff, and I've finally made my All Change For Brighton highlights video after years of thinking about it

Input

• Honestly, I'm mostly just playing chess. I really want to get back to Alan Wake 2, though.
• Finished Machine's Last Testament; a qualified thumbs-up. Moby-Dick continues to be excellent, I'm still not sure How To Read A Book and I'm about to start on Tade Thompson's Rosewater.
• Started watching Mad Men in advance of the Relentless Picnic's rewatch pod, the first episode is pretty much exactly how I remember it, but I understand it's one of those Sopranos/Breaking Bad "takes a while to bed in".
• On the opposite end of the spectrum, after setting up my NAS media server I was digging through old hard drives and I found a bunch of Steven Universe,  which I would've been watching as it came out, nearly a decade ago. I still really rate it as far as cartoons go, real warm bubble-bath viewing.
• I've been doing Nate Kadlac's 80/20 design course, which is a) a good introduction to Figma (photoshop with a few decades' less built-up cruft and nonsense) and b) an excellent introduction to the very basics of design for thoroughly un-design people like me. I'm not going to be doing anything super-fancy any time soon but I can at least think a bit more about what fonts I use.

Keep it real! Over and out.