I have to be honest this week it has felt a bit like I am crawling into Christmas. I’ve picked up some sort of lurgy from all the trains, tubes and buses through November and early December and while thankfully it isn’t my Covid hat-trick it is also pretty draining. My always lacklustre immune system has been even less proactive since the double dose of Covid (and the always helpful diabetes) and it has really given up this time.
So this week has been shortened – I already had today booked off and Wednesday I wasn’t able to get to London for a couple of workshops and some Christmas drinks as I just felt to rough to face the trains. I spent the day under a duvet watching Christmas movies and writing Christmas cards.
Monday I spent a big part of the day sifting job applications for an Agile role. 40 people applied but I have to say it was a frustrating experience as so many of them simply did not really read the job description or application guidelines. So many were generic CVs and barely considered cover ‘letters’ (more like cover Tweets in some cases – 280 characters does not a cover letter make.) Thankfully there were some quality applications in the mix but yeah…frustrating.
I worked out of our Bristol office for the day as I needed to (finally) return my UKHSA laptop etc. I don’t know what it is like on other days but Monday was a bit of a ghost-town – more like the earlier days of lockdown life. That said it is a good location if I need to meet people on town and close to a sandwich shop I really like so I suspect I’ll visit it more in the new year – if the buses in Bristol get sorted. Public transport is properly at crisis point in the city these days – more ghost buses than running services and as such everything is overcrowded and edgy.
Did more talking about blogging this week – we have this great commitment to Firebreak weeks in DDat (here is an old GDS post about the concept) and while I think it is great that people get their ‘hack’ on and try things out I’m keen to encourage people to think about using the time to do a bit of writing – collaborate on draft blogposts, bounce some ideas off people, think about the stories they want to tell. Anyway I’m going to pitch that as an idea on Monday.
I’m sure other things happened but it was a broken, bitty week. Next week I am interviewing for the roles we sifted on Monday, doing the last Product community session of the year (which I need to think of something ‘fun’ to do at) and it is the Cardiff Christmas meal. Though I have a feeling the rail strikes might mean that is a non-starter – there aren’t actually any strikes on Thursday but the two days before and two days after there is national strike action and the disruption on the Thursday looks considerable. I suspect I can get there okay but getting home might be a roll of the dice and an Uber from Cardiff to Bristol is not appealing!
As soon as we hit December my TV viewing becomes pretty festive – even if this year I have to balance it with the football! I’ve watched all the below since my last weeknote 🙂
Digital by Default 