There are many things that I’ve gotten better at choosing my response to, but at least one thing that generates an immediate reaction. If I feel my agency threatened, I give a reflexive and strong rebuttal that’s often inflammatory; hardly the response a Stoic should choose. In this context, I define agency as: The capacity of an actor to choose their actions. It’s ironic that … Continue reading React vs respond

Talking about families today with my beloved, we hit again on the importance of the narrative you choose for yourself. Yes, you choose the narrative that you wrap around events that occur. Optimism doesn’t always win out, but it’s the better long-term choice. It encourages trying again, levelling up, and self-determination. You can win and there is progress to be made. Tomorrow is another day … Continue reading Narrative – how do you do you?

Near the top of a mountain, well away from tarmac roads and the light from our towns and cities, a clear night-time sky is a joy to behold. Wrapped up well, the wonder of millions of pin-pricks of light take us out of ourselves to be entranced by the scale of a universe we barely contemplate day to day. A perfect backdrop to be reading … Continue reading Stars, they are such a pleasure

I’m helping a friend out this weekend, serving as his pit crew in a 24 hour mountain bike race called the Strathpuffer. I’ve an old duvet jacket that’s been a comfort for many years and has had holes patched up with black sticky tape – I’ve brought it to wear as it’ll be freezing cold through the wee hours of the morning. The sticky tape … Continue reading Make do and mend

Change is a constant that we can count on. That’s not to say it’s always positive, but change is inevitable. One of the byproducts of that is often growth and renewal. If you’ve grown sluggish and hadn’t noticed, hardened unhelpful attitudes without thinking why, got stuck or had things go stale in all sorts of ways, a good shake-up can be the spur to positive … Continue reading Go Out Of Your Way

To have meaningful discussion, it’s important to be able to disagree. That’s not the same as accepting someone being disagreeable all the time! I felt unwilling to contribute to a discussion yesterday as I didn’t feel comfortable disagreeing with its instigator. By coincidence I read a great post from Wait But Why a little later, highlighting how political polarisation is taking away people’s ability to … Continue reading Discourse and disagreement

The news is, there is no news. I expected to spend the second half of 2019 getting fitter, but I didn’t really. I did get healthier in mind and spirit, which is good as I didn’t realise how unwell I’d become. Time to get healthy in body – not by pushing myself to do something I don’t like, but by indulging in exercise I really … Continue reading Fitness update

My beloved has a passionate interest in the Victorian era and especially it’s more macabre and grotesque aspects. They find the freak shows of the time both repulsive and fascinating – from a scientific perspective the anatomical anomalies induce curiosity, while the notion that people point and laugh at those from different cultures or battling unfortunate circumstances is offensive. Quite rightly, most of society find … Continue reading Freak shows are still with us

Rare that a day goes by without my worrying that algorithms are increasingly taking over. Not in the Skynet (Terminator) sense, or even the NSA’s SKYNET. In the much broader sense, the business world is encouraging algorithms even where it doesn’t seem appropriate, or (at least) a complex algorithm is required. Recruitment, certainly in the rank and file of software development, is very big on … Continue reading Simple algorithmic thinking

By happy coincidence, I’ve watched Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker – an exercise in the story telling I have in mind here. I’m not saying the story was well told and I don’t want to critique the film (I like these posts fairly short); but the narrative was a redemptive one across many layers. Life is often tough and is, I think, objectively uncaring … Continue reading Story telling – the fourth pillar