It is the Summer Solstice apparently so it feels like a good time to reflect on the first half of my 2026.

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TL;DR 

It has been a bit on the bleak side.

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The Good

It hasn’t all been bad. I started the year very excited to be back as a ‘real’ Civil Servant at GDS and to be working on a big, high profile data initiative. The team is lovely. Talented, committed, determined and just cynical enough for me to fit in with. It has also been nice to spend some time in the offices in Bristol, Manchester and Whitechapel. I needed to get out of this flat.

Govcamp in Birmingham was great fun. So was Camp Digital in Manchester (albeit a little overwhelming so soon after my extended health related break – see ‘The Ugly’).

I wrote a couple of blogposts that proved popular (the AI one particularly so) and gave a fun talk at ProductTank Bristol.

Pretty chuffed to be having conversations with a publisher about maybe writing a book as well.

Less work related – my Paris trip was fantastic, this year’s Upfest was spectacular and I scored tickets to see JAY-Z in September (back in Paris.)

The Bad (…well sub-optimal anyway)

The aforementioned excitement about being back in the Civil Service and working on a high profile initiative has been tempered somewhat by the clouds of uncertainty that had surrounded all things NDL until very recently and a level of scrutiny and oversight that makes my natural inclination towards openness extremely difficult.

The broader Political uncertainty doesn’t help either (see ‘The News’).

Nor does the ongoing internal restructure/re-org driven by the merger of NDL with the Office of the Chief Data Officer. It is one of those times when two things can be true in parallel;

I think the merger and re-org is the right thing to do for the organisation

The merger and re-org are pretty unsettling to me personally

All of this combined with my health issues and subsequent absences (see ‘The Ugly’) have made it really hard for me to get anything like the kind of momentum or make the sort of impact I’d have hoped for. I’m coming up on 100 working days but it feels like half that (at most).

Oh and having to cancel my trip to Japan really, really sucked.

The Ugly

I think it has been pretty well established that I’ve had a rough time health wise. The whole being at ‘Death’s door’ does provide a new perspective. 

The current status looks something like →

• A confirmed diagnosis of Type 3c Diabetes
• Ongoing tests to confirm initial diagnosis of Chronic Pancreatitis  
• Suspected PTSD from the trauma of the initial time in hospital 

I was off work for six weeks (two of which were spent in hospital). This now actually feels not long enough in hindsight.

The insulin maintenance, dietary restrictions and blood sugar monitoring are all something of a cognitive strain. Combined with the bad sleep, a new tendency towards being extremely thin-skinned, easily frustrated and more than a little Emo it is all pretty exhausting.

[I think part of the reason I enjoyed Paris so much was it was four days where I did nothing but please myself, on my own schedule and basically spoke to nobody else. All the art, sun and baguettes were just a bonus.]

Honestly the pancreatitis attack followed by the ketoacidosis just days later still feels like putting a ‘hat on a hat’.

Also the fact the medical professionals cannot work out why any of it happened is definitely part of the reason for my bad sleep. Alongside some paranoia about living alone when something so severe happens. Not something I’ve ever worried about previously but it certainly makes things harder/scarier.

Anyway it has genuinely been an ‘Ugly’ period and while I am mainly okay day to day I do feel irrevocably changed by the experience. Unable to quite get back to the ‘me’ before it all happened. 

Fingers crossed that the second half of the year is less eventful!

Onwards.