Watching the American Presidential election campaigning isn’t uplifting for me. Hearing the de facto Republication nominee speak is acutely dispiriting. Trump’s populist mocking of Parasite’s success at the Oscars does serve a lesson though. Trump doesn’t need universal approval, but he does need support and having foregone rational argument he must play to the gallery. It’s a formula that brought him victory and draws large … Continue reading Leadership isn't winning

My beloved is, in their words, in ‘limbo’ at the minute. It’s difficult for them and is bringing up a sense of ‘running out of time’, which I’m doing my best to help with. Perhaps oddly, I was reminded of helicopter underwater escape training I went through many moons ago. The simulated craft hits the water in the dark, there’s some deliberately disorienting flashes while … Continue reading Helicopter crash simulation

It’s an important question any time you’re trying to improve something. In software, developers very often use the phrase “it works on my machine” and this can be maddening to a user experiencing a bug. Except for the lazy developer, what the phrase really means is “there’s something different between my environment and yours, that’s responsible for this anomalous behaviour”. Working out the difference is … Continue reading What's the difference?

I read an article yesterday about the role some former landfill sites now play in helping maintain Britain’s biodiversity. It’s great to think that this is happening, but it doesn’t take any of us off the hook for considering the environment much more carefully. More slowly than I’d have liked, I’ve cottoned on to how important the order is of these three words: Reduce. Reuse. … Continue reading Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

It’s obvious, but I know from talking with good friends yesterday that I’m not alone in often struggling to. There are obstacles. There’s a better time. The path from start to success isn’t clear. It’s tiring and you’re already tired. You’ve tried before. There might be a host of good reasons, but once you actually start you can work at overcoming them. They’re probably not … Continue reading You have to start

I’ve acknowledged that I can be very sensitive to feedback. I genuinely welcome suggestions for improvement, but feel strongly that how the message is delivered is important. Some people either don’t care how their message is received, don’t recognise the importance of that (which isn’t universal), or actively seek to an uncomfortable feeling alongside their message. Right now I have a particular messenger in mind, … Continue reading It's expected so go through it

Yesterday I was reading about a writer who hung a plaster angel statue above his desk, carrying a message of “Remember Death”. About this, he writes: Something about this particular reminder got through to me, as if I had never linked the two words together before, had never probed the meaning of either one alone or truly considered the imperative mood, and I had to … Continue reading There may be no tomorrow