As mentioned in the previous post I’ve not been trading as GlencoIS since I took on a permanent employment contract with Wood/Jacobs. Little did I know how busy I would become.
The original scope was – still is – about long-lifecycle release of information from its IT shackles to enable agile – flexible and efficient – future business models, all the more exciting because the contracts have a 20 year timeline within which real benefits and transformative change may actually accrue. After two decades of my own working-from-anywhere lifestyle, the flexibility of working from home using any available IT kit has suddenly become fashionable thanks to Covid19 measures. Busy, busy, busy as I say.
The irony of the long-lifecycle excitement is that I was already semi-retired consulting and planning retirement to focus on writing, with gardening, home-gym and hill-walking as the physical free-thinking release from the focussed mental effort. Particularly galling for me then, that so many on social media are reporting the lack of work from the Covid19 lockdown as their opportunity for novel intellectual & physical projects – whereas for me these are practically on hold. This is my first post on this blog since Sept 2019. In that same 8 month period I’ve done just 15 posts on my main “Psybertron” blog, the one most associated with my writing project. In that same period in any other year in the last 20, there would have been 100 posts or more, 70 being the lowest ever.
Social media – the socialisation of knowledge, good and bad – has been an integral part of the research and writing project since its inception 20 years ago – on several levels too. Not just the reading and writing process, but very much part of the content. It’s my subject matter. So I’m far from being a stranger to social media, in fact I swear by it. (See details at the foot of this page.)
In the current job, in the time of Covid19, I have of course signed-up to our team WhatsApp channel although for predictable reasons – above – I’ve not participated much. But there is an opportunity to change that:
Naturally there is a focus on exercise, mental health in isolation, and an opportunity to turn that into a social-enterprise to raise charity funds. I wouldn’t normally, religiously, have my smart-phone on my person as I move around the house / office, so the idea of a step-counter isn’t really my thing. I’m more a miles / kilometres covered and feet / metres climbed kinda person. To gauge the steps to distance relation I turned-on the (free) Pacer step-counter on Friday afternoon and went for a 4 mile walk and left it on in my pocket most of Saturday, as I mowed, strimmed and tidied around the length of our drive. 8,558 and 14,839 steps respectively. The fact it keeps trying to sell me stuff means I’ll probably not keep it on.
My tracker of choice when actually walking is Strava. A habit which started 3 years ago when doing the Lyke Wake Walk in June 2017. That’s 40M / 60K in one 14 hour slog over the North York Moors up and down all the biggest of the Cleveland Hills. The parts that follow the modern Cleveland Way / Coast-to-Coast (*) long-distance walks are well marked and maintained, but this ancient route is no longer marked on maps or maintained across mile after mile of moorland bog. The long day and dry weather of June needed to negotiate it. Full story and some pictures here. It took a second attempt to do it all in one go last time. [Incidentally the CtC Walk starts at St Bees Head and passes close to the Jacobs Westlakes offices.]
I was planning with Sylvia we might do the LWW again this June, hence some of the recent training walks in Strava. Who knows?