Hayfever has been awful this week or two, surely there has to be a cure for it by now? It’s been a hard couple of weeks, really intense in regards to work we are doing whilst planning for work we need to do, all before the impending end-of-alpha deadline.
Life is great right now, spending loads of time with the kids and wife, making our house our own… slowly but surely.

I still can’t believe I leapt to contracting, but it feels good right now.

What did I enjoy:
Presenting, I love showing the work we did as a team and selling, or should I reword that - SHOWING the value of having a designer in the room to facilitate and bring together knowledge sharing and problem solving under one roof, all tied up into a handy output (in this case an Experience map).

This week is the first week we spoke and got deep with the SMEs, again - having more heads in the room (especially those who do the do) and providing that knowledge is key, and such a valuable key to delivering a successful service.

Again, my old directs (from months, and years ago) all got in touch coincidently to discuss their careers, life at home and balancing it all. Suddenly, with two kids, my wife and I being self-employed have them believing we know what we are doing.. but aside from that, the feeling they give me when they get in touch is huge thumbs.

What challenged me:
Hayfever. Fuck hayfever.

Now we have all these outputs from the workshops, planning what next, what to do with the outputs, who to show, and why to show it (usual questions).

What am I looking forward to next week?
Settling down, getting into the work without distractions of.. dare I say - workshops (although we do have one incoming which I will be leading!).
Prototyping some basic journeys to provide shape and context for review, and more mural flow diagrams for feedback. Sounds much like an earphones-in-and-get-shit-done week to me!

Read of the week:
Depression has played a part in my life, not directly affected but very closely in contact with it, and this one-off tweet by Stan Collymore was the tweet that helped me understand and, I guess, at the least respect (and by respect I mean - I don’t know what I mean) depression during my early days of learning about the illness. It had a great effect on me and I’m grateful, for what is just a long tweet from someone coming through it and getting on the other side. Stan Collymore’s tweet about what he is going through.

Watch of the week:
My film intake has halved whilst I’m in full-on work and dad mode (kids holidays last week!), but I am looking forward to working through my list of films, and maybe putting a web page live listing films and my short take reviews.

Podcast of the week:
I love Full Disclosure with James O’Brien and the episode with Adrian Chiles was brilliant. It made me look at my habits with alcohol, I am not a heavy drinker but his throwaway quote “We are all trying to just get the high of the first pint” is a keeper.

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