Mentally I’ve been all over the place this week. Up, down and sideways. That said I am ending the week in a reasonably positive frame of mind – that might be because my Bristol Beer Factory and Malaysian food orders got delivered though 🙂
After the wintery weekend I finally got to test out my foot and venture out into the world a few times this week. It is amazing how excited I got just walking past the end of my driveway. Thursday I even risked a shop for bread and milk. Liberating.
It isn’t plain sailing. My knee hurts, my left calf has basically wasted away and my gait is a mess but it is worth it.
Our Welsh Gov project team had a great set of meetings on Monday – a really helpful session with the central design team at the WG before our team spent the afternoon together comparing notes, testing ideas, prioritising plans and generally doing that good scheming. I really felt like it was one of those days where things start to come into focus and the picture of the product really starts to form in your mind…even if that picture is still in crayon until we research more and flesh out some of the needs…but it feels ‘real’ now.
There is a LOT to do and learn but things are accelerating.
I am having to dust off that Civil Service corner of my brain as I am speaking to a Gateway Review team on Monday! Been an age since I did that.
The next few days were a bit of a case study in attention deficit – I was easily distracted, constantly context switching, shifting my focus from the micro to the moonshot by the minute and generally giving myself mental whiplash. Tuesday and Wednesday were exhausting and totally self-inflicted.
I did some bid work, helped out with some recruitment, wrote a linky blogpost, ‘chaired’ our Product/Delivery group catch-up (which was actually great!), caught up on some admin and generally did the helicopter product person bit across the Welsh Gov work and elsewhere. I never felt like I wasn’t busy but at the same time I was all too aware it was a lot of activity that didn’t amount to that much in the grand scheme of things.
I have a suspicion that a combination of breaking out of my selfish ‘fix my foot’ bubble for a minute and actually really letting the world into my psyche combined with some announcements at work about upcoming changes just knocked me off kilter and it took a while to get my mental balance back.
Thursday and Friday were better.
My parents had their first jabs this morning. Phew.
I arranged some really useful meetings to discuss ID verification with DVLA and DWP (thanks in a large part to the power of Twitter).
A blogpost I forgot I wrote over Christmas was published and I was quite proud of it.
Had a really good 1-2-1 with James (our CEO). Sure mainly we gossiped but there was some constructive stuff in there as well.
I had a couple of meetings about the aforementioned work changes which I found helpful and somewhat calming.
One of my team, working on a really challenging project, got some great feedback and I was positively glowing with pride.
Sorted another couple of bits of contractor recruitment.
Generally as this working week comes to a close I think it definitely sagged in the middle but rebounded nicely come the end.
Despite being such a geek with a major comic book addiction I don’t usually enjoy animation but the new Star Trek: Lower Decks cartoon that has landed on Amazon Prime is pretty funny. I wonder if you have to be a bit of a Trekkie to really enjoy it (or if you are too much of one it annoys you?). Not sure – but it works for me.
Digital by Default 