I had a busy week with many moving parts that required a little patience and organisation. As someone who struggles with personal organisation and procrastination at the best of times, I was quite surprised with my ability to successfully organise and execute all the required bits within the constraints that were self-imposed. If you know, you know.
Next week looks to be no less busy, and I’m going to be going between many projects over the week.
August and September are an odd time as there is a big lull in activity, particularly economic activity. I’ve been fortunate to have had several training slots fulfilled that have helped me keep the machine turning, as it were.
This lull has recently started turning around to a much busier outlook over the coming months. I’ve been in the position to turn some work down as I wouldn’t have been able to properly do the work to the high standards I set for myself.
It’s been more of a getting-back-to-my-routine type of week.
I had a lot of outstanding work that I had let go of before leaving for a few weeks, and that work had become more urgent and more important, so I set time aside to work on it. I managed to progress well, but a few things still need to be done.
With no notes here, you can probably guess that I have not been around for a while. I took an extended break and have been out of the country for a month. I’m back now and wanted to share some things I had been doing without getting too personal.
I took a bit of a holiday and tried disconnecting myself from the internet and work. I largely succeeded but inevitably did a little work while I was away. This is probably my longest time away from home and work. Honestly, I wanted to get back, but there is a slight anxiety about what I’ll find once I’m back. To no avail, of course, as things carry on with or without you, and nothing is that urgent.
The subscription plan is a response to European Union policies and court rulings to restrict Meta’s data-collection practices.
I say go for it. We might find out what Social Networks are really worth then. I suspect not a lot.
2 September 2023 — French West Indies
I called this post transitions because I had a week that will hopefully set me up for a transition to something good for a while to come. It’s also a week where I have considered moving a few things around and supporting better causes than big technology companies.
I’m probably going to move this blog off WordPress soon and on to something more human in scale. It’s complicated, and I get a feeling of cognitive dissonance when talking about technology and the biggest of the biggest companies. I like tech and have been employed in it for more than 30 years, but whenever you look into the detail, you find that as big tech firms grow and as they can exert their influence, they become more and more about wealth extraction and wealth displacement. Inciting and controlling money into their pockets and away from the pockets of the average person. Astronomical profits from the likes of Apple, on the back of layoffs and hiring freezes, show the true colours of organisations that want more money, not more employment or more engagement in the community. And although they create tools for us to make and sell stuff, the real wealth is in selling those tools. This is probably a topic for another post one day.
Highly personalised ads imply highly personalised data about you. Despite what Facebook/Meta and the intrusive advertising apologists say, collecting, storing and profile-building that information is a huge security risk to each and every individual on the internet. And yes, I know there have not been any “known” breaches reported, but known is doing a lot of lifting in that statement.
After more than five years of extensive litigation by noyb, the German Kartellamt and decisions by the EDPB and CJEU, it seems that Meta finally complies with EU privacy laws:
I spent most of the week organising things for my business and continued with the last bits of research for the paper I’m writing. I’m still a little unfocused and distracted, but I’m getting through it better than I have been lately.
I do often wonder how it works for other people. Do they sit at the computer and start working on what needs doing? Do they have an impulse to get around to working on the checklist they’ve done? I’d love to know because that is so far from how my brain works.
A bit of an up-and-down week, to be honest. I’ve been doing a lot of organising and thinking about how I am going to focus on work and personal life over the coming years. Rather like last week, I have had a number of ups and downs, which seems to be par for the course for me.
My writing of the paper has come along a little with my thoughts and plan more crystallised. I hope to spend a bit more time breaking the back of the writing this week. It’ll be dreadful, but like Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit”.
Despite writing a well-received article on cybersecurity and feeling that I had finally cracked it regarding writing and productivity, it all went to shit.
I took a break as several things have been, frankly, overwhelming.
Without going into personal territory, I seem to live between extremes, with very little in the middle zone. It’s either all excellent or all dreadful. There will be some changes to my working week that I’m looking forward to, but I’m not giving up on the dream of writing and producing great articles and even research papers. I’m finishing an essay for a tourism business school, and with some luck, I’ll finish it in the next couple of weeks.