Category: Writing

The pair of Australian king parrots were frolicking in the backyard today; making good use of the gloomy weather keeping people indoors perhaps.
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After a night of tossing & turning, and waking up multiple times, today has been another challenging day of migraines, a cold and a general feeling of un-ease.  I struggled through resetting my daughter’s computer through the afternoon. A shower, and a little writing of a quote and doing some calligraphy exercises was all I could muster energy for this evening.  I can only imagine the challenge that people living on their own have when stuck with any illness.

I was keen and eager to record a song and submit it to our open mic session scheduled for this Thursday. I put it off to the last minute (of course!) and don’t have a chance now.

I walk, write, read, watch, ponder… anything to avoid being bored.

Yet sometimes, I have to make time for boredom.

Illness makes you take the time to do nothing.

Today has been mostly such a day.

My daughter and I spent a few hours today on digital housekeeping.  It was the best I could do, with a migraine taking over much of the day.

I’m listening to this cover by Gretchen Peters

 

 

Flu-like symptoms – not CoVID, we tested – have hit the household this week. It’s taken out some of our usual walks, and some of my morning routines as well, given I’m now mum and dad both for the kids who have started going back to school. And this evening, I’m beginning to feel a little sore too; hopefully nothing a stiff brandy concoction and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.

This week I’ve had multiple people tell me about more serious, life-threatening illness that have affected them or their immediate family.

Everything suddenly is in sharper focus – what were high priorities fade away into the background as noise, and who/what is really important and was sometimes unfortunately relegated to another day some time in the future is front and center. Nothing else really matters.

Making sure the important remain important every single day. Life live as if every day were your last. Treat everyone else as if it was their last.

For the last few weeks, I’ve regularly received notifications and messages about people leaving the company. Some were leaving because their roles were made redundant. Others were leaving for opportunities elsewhere. Some others had come to the conclusion that they were done with ‘work’.

I know most of them well. Before the pandemic, I would make the opportunity to talk to people, hear their story, and learn what they did or what made them tick. Being cooped up at home for the last 18 months or so, on a common communication platform at work, meant I could quite easily call and talk virtually. Some were eager to converse. Others chose to ignore. Both were perfectly acceptable responses given the circumstances.

Something I’ve come to observe – by no means a scientific analysis – is every one who’s reached out to tell me of their departure has a new sense of purpose. Or hope. Or acceptance. I sense it in the way they write or the emotion in their voice or the twinkle in their eyes.

I came across an article today on hope, serendipitously it appears. The title was “Hope is the antidote to helplessness”. The

 

The wind picked up again this evening, carrying pollen everywhere – and with it the sniffles. With the CoVID everywhere, anyone with hayfever symptoms now needs a test to rule CoVID out before getting any treatment, unless of course you carry a stock of management medication.

How do organisations respond to symptoms? Do default habits of its human inhabitants take over? How about in these days of the pandemic, when most executives seem to roll in their own bubble, while those on the frontlines have little hope that the real problem will ever reach the eyes/ears/attention of those execs?  Working from home has probably exacerbated the issue too.

Anne Helen Petersen’s recent newsletter on the subject of the ‘back to the office’ made for an interesting reading today too.

Looks like the problems are all over the shop.

So are opportunities.

PS: And very likely the writing today too, reflecting my current state of mind. I’m okay with it.

How long before this keels over?

I spent the day with an infrastructure specialist colleague who works in a satellite office about an hour further up north. Despite us having spoken nearly every day for the last 18 months, it was the first time we met in person, and it was every bit as fun as I expected it to be. I got an education in his area of expertise: the technology, the processes, the tools. I also got a perspective about the people, the motivations and incentives that drive behaviours.

Like the tree in the picture above, for all practical purposes, the infrastructure is functioning and delivering great value to most of those that depend on it. At the same time, for any one observing, the problems at the foundation are visible, the inevitable outcome predictable. Yet, the obsession to maximise returns to shareholders means that there is no room for resilience. A tweet from Ryan Petersen that I saw today, in the context of the supply chain fragility that CoVID has exposed sums it up:

To show great ROE almost every CEO stripped their company of all but the bare minimum of assets. Just in time everything. No excess capacity. No strategic reserves. No cash on the balance sheet. Minimal R&D.

— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) October 28, 2021

I see these frailties in so many areas of everyday life in Australia: healthcare, agecare, childcare.. the list goes on. No money gets invested in these real human needs, and the media rails against the technologists’ obsession with the metaverse or alternate realities.

So many opportunities for anyone keen enough to make a difference, and more importantly, cares enough to do so.

Today was a particularly heavily overcast day, and slightly colder than the forecast weather. The wind picked up a little towards the evening too. My promise to myself is a walk every day, so despite the bleak(ish) circumstances, we got to the beach.  The tide had just turned from its high. The sand was wet. There were a few dozen Scouts & Guides kids with their Scoutmaster building sandcastles and digging trenches.  A couple were walking their dog – or perhaps it was the other way round? The dog was fetching the ball that its master threw every 30 seconds or so, leaving it near his feet and running away again.  A woman just ahead of us was drowning in her music/podcast, earphones plugged in.  My wife was describing her day to me.

Mid-her-sentence, I noticed how the waves were hitting the shore in a pattern I hadn’t seen before. I stopped, pulled out my phone, knowing well that my camera skills would not capture what my eyes were perceiving and took a couple of photos nonetheless, while my wife walked on. I turned back, at there it was, that incredible smorgasbord of color, a painting unravelling in the sky, the perfect moment/ angle/ light.  More photos, none doing the scene I was witnessing any justice.

As I put the phone away, the thought that stuck me was how many such glorious sights I might have missed, metaphorically and literally, for want of a mere stop to look back.

Today’s walk was at the flea markets; for over 2 hours, I trudged along carrying stuff and occasionally loading it into the car. I didn’t bother taking any pictures so there’ll be a gap in today’s daily walk pic.

It was an interesting experience at the flea markets. People had certainly had enough of the lockdown. There was a mood of celebration in the air, the vendors were cheerful, the size of the crowds indicating a revival in economics of that market. The ‘controllers’ were bravely trying to get everyone to comply with Covid requirements – mostly unsuccessfully from my observation.

The last twenty four hours have been exhausting, yet provided some much needed respite from months of lockdown.  Visiting friends, lots of food and drink, festivals and celebrations adding to the sweets-excuses. I need a day or so of fasting to get over this feeling of having overindulged.  The pressure to try out “food I made, you can’t not eat it!” was certainly part of the reason, but my own inability to say no when I was full is to be squarely blamed 🙂

I did manage to listen to at least an hour or so of this conversation between Tim Ferris, Chris Dixon & Naval Ravikant this afternoon, after that overindulgence at lunch. I’m going to have to rewind a bit and listen to it in its entirety.

 

The south of the country, particularly Melbourne, had gale force winds waking them up this morning, damaging homes and pulling down power lines, leaving many disconnected.

Here in NSW, it was the second consecutive day of 30C weather. My table fan fought valiantly, and overtime, to cool the hot wind blowing throughout the day and through the windows.  The heat makes it really hard to even think, let alone do any work. And although it is nearing 10pm, it is still pretty warm here and I’m struggling to find the words to describe the day and the conversations I have had.

Instead, here’s a picture I caught tonight on a walk by the beach, with very little light left in the day. It’s a grainy picture at best, and I’m still not adept at using the “expert” mode on my phone so I had to make do with the default settings.