I think sometime this week was 100 working days in this role (if you remove all of my sick days). Usually I’d try and write some kind of retrospective to mark the milestone but honestly this week I’ve been feeling pretty disappointed by the whole experience – even accounting for the health scare (and England losing).
I had such high hopes and was so excited about the chance to get my hands on a big, public service data initiative a decade after the last one but it just hasn’t worked out and I’m going to depart with a real feeling of missed opportunity. I’m also watching the whole reorganisation play out through my fingers a bit – putting aside how it influenced my decision to leave (which is not easy) it is still just difficult to understand some of the logic and it really shows zero love for the Product (or Agile Delivery) professions. I’m trying to not get sucked in beyond making sure my team and colleagues have my support in any way I can provide it but it is hard not stick my size 12s in.
Another milestone I missed a couple of weeks ago was my Silver Anniversary (i.e. 25 blooming years!) from when I consider I started my life as a professional public service product person (even if it wasn’t called that yet.)
I was the Economic and Social Research Council’s first Website Manager. First time I worked with a Content Management System, managed suppliers, introduced accessibility and ‘user’ testing (it wasn’t user research or even usability yet!), wrote a content strategy and more. Set me up for a long, winding and mainly wonderful career.
25 years!
I’ve had a couple of conversations this week about what I might do next. I think I am narrowing in on a plan. I certainly know what I DO NOT want to do and what I do want to do is coming into focus. It is definitely the coaching / advising / community / people stuff I enjoy way more than anything else now (with a dash of pastoral / wellbeing overwatch for team members) – and where I think I can be most helpful so I am going to bide my time and try and find something where I can go all-in on that. I suspect that will mean a job title with Coach in it – I’ve even updated my ‘Just Jukesie™’ website.
Some of it is driven by a broader goal. Assuming my health has stabilised enough and I’ve managed to save sufficient shillings I want to take a(nother) sabbatical for a few months when I turn 55 in March 2028. I was thinking of just doing it now – celebrating the fact I am still here – but I think if I don’t get straight back on the horse work-wise after this experience I might just not ever want to return and I really can’t afford to do that!
I watched Nolan’s The Odyssey this morning. Now everything I know about Greek mythology comes from Ray Harryhausen movies, the Ulysses 31 cartoon and Wonder Woman comics. I definitely haven’t read any Homer (unless it is Simpson) so I have no idea if it is a faithful adaptation but what I do know is that it is a genuinely spectacular piece of film-making. It looks and sounds remarkable, the action scenes are thrilling and there is some wonderful acting – especially from Robert Pattinson, who is so twitchy and unlikeable it is going to be hard to see him as anything else in future.
Now the dialogue is where it can get a little bit 😬 – sometimes it feels a bit like when they try to make Shakespeare up to date – apart from where you really cannot. It certainly bugged me occasionally but it was a tiny thing in a huge movie. One where I barely noticed the runtime. No checking my phone, no popping to the loo. Just clued to the screen.
Digital by Default 