One Man's Notes

Strawberry feast.

Strawberries in cupcake cases

This is a good read (ha,ha) in light of @manton’s new trial bookshelf feature here: Why I’m deleting GoodReads and maybe you should too.

I’d be happy to shift across, as the feature matures. Sadly the GoodReads import crapped out for me after three books.


Nature really doesn’t understand the rules of storytelling


This week I have more good old-fashioned phone calls than Zoom or Teams meetings.

It’s such a relief.


Lovely afternoon down on the beach.

Shoreham Beach, afternoon, 11th May 2021

Look at me, updating node.js from the command line like I have the first clue what I’m doing.


I think I’ve found a way to articulate the discomfort I’m feeling in my work:

  • I’m passionate about journalists, who are generally a good, passionate bunch
  • I’m less passionate about the journalism industry, and the serious number of structural issues it’s unwilling to address.

Current status:


For creativity to thrive, digital needs to learn its place


“Normal people—with regular lives and real jobs—have soap operas and reality shows. People who are Extremely Online have Substack.”

Source: How Substack Soap Operas Change the Media Business by Helen Lewis


Millennials are hated for being defiantly uncool

“From the 1970s to the end of the 1990s young people were allowed just two modes of expression: irony and smoking.”

I’ve never smoked, so I’ve had bonus time to work on the irony.


I just managed to lose a cup of coffee in the living room.

How’s your Monday going?


Wow. Just found a classic example of misusing “proof links”. A writer on Medium making certain statements, and linking to “prove” them, but the pages he links to don’t back it up at all.

Credibility hacking. 🤦🏼‍♂️


It turns out that our local church uses some rather dated tech…

Floppy disks being used for a church organ.

Hmmm. Does anyone have any idea why my micro.blog site wouldn’t pick up an analytics code put in the Footer section of ->Design? It seems to have stopped working when I installed one of @cdevroe’s themes. 😕


Always worth taking time out to feed our feathered friends.

Bird feeders in a back garden.

Bottoming out

On Wednesday morning, I hit a low. My family has been lucky during the pandemic — none of us have caught the virus (as far as we know), and we haven’t lost anyone. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been an impact. For me, the main impact has been on my mental health. 

The near-destruction of my business a year ago has shaken me profoundly. It’s eroded my sense of self-confidence more than it should have, and left me prone to bouts of bleakness. I hesitate to call it “depression”, because I don’t have a diagnosis, and I know people have it a lot worse than I do. But it’s there, I need to acknowledge it and learn to live with it, because I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. 

Some frustrations that morning — a couple of pieces of work I thought were in the bag turning out to be far less so — sent me spiralling downwards. One situation in particular felt like a very personal rejection, and was probably what triggered my bleak mood. I can still feel it haunting me a couple of days later. 

I had to pull away from social media — Twitter especially — for a while, because it’s not good for me at the best of times. I toyed with the idea of starting to look for a job again — something I haven’t done seriously for nearly a decade.

Living self-employment

And then, I remembered that I am self-employed, and that I am so for a reason. I really am my own boss, and I can take time off if I need it. I declared the rest of the day a mental health day for myself, and took myself off to Worthing to do a couple of chores. 

Once they were done, I gave myself permission to just wander, explore. To see new places I hadn’t seen before, something I haven’t really done in over a year now. I followed the main street in Worthing far beyond where I’ve every gone before, and after I passed the tertiary retail and the empty units, I started finding some interesting wee shops off the side-streets. 

Found, a shop in Worthing

Badgers Books in Worthing

And, my goodness, did I feel better afterwards. I hadn’t realised how much I missed exploring for its own sake, going new places and finding new things.

That made me realise that maybe I need to rebalance my time again. As a natural result of the pandemic-driven downturn in my business and the lockdowns, my world had pretty much shrunk to my work, my family and my neighbourhood. It’s not any slight on those three — all of which I love — to say that I clearly need a little more than that in my life right now. 

Perhaps, if I invest a little bit more time in things I enjoy, and in some of my personal projects, I’ll be a lot less vulnerable to bad days in the the day “job”. 

It’s certainly worth a try. 


Zero for two so far on ATT


Want: Hexagonal garden office on stilts.


The beach is going for drama this afternoon.


I have done a democracy. 🇬🇧


Having one of those days where I wonder why I bother with the stress of being self-employed.

It’s been nearly a decade since I had a full-time job. Maybe it’s time to go back.


It’s lovely to see the vegetation sprouting again on the beach — a sure sign that summer is on its way.

Shoreham Beach in spring.Shoreham Beach’s vegetated shingle starting to grow in spring.


Dear Substack writers,

It is not compulsory to have an opinion on the Basecamp mess.

Yours,

Adam

(Who has just deleted several lukewarm takes on the subject from you all…)


Looks like there are security updates for Apple things out — urgent ones, too.

Looks like I’ll be updating all the family devices while I work this morning.