Weeknotes w/c 12 April 2021 s2
How much knowledge about the day job have you accrued since you started work? Its a fair amount, I should imagine. I have been thinking about this for a while now. My first ambition, aged 7, amazingly, was not to be an accountant. I wanted to be a writer and create a library of books. I spent hours filling up notebooks with tall tales of wizards and crazy schools and all sorts of stuff. I have been thinking this week about how I might share what I have learned through writing this week. I don’t know if people read books and manuals in the same way any more. I am not quite sure whether to start with content, audience or style. But its definitely fun playing with the concepts. I’ve been scribbling and messing about and think something will emerge.
I have been experimenting with google forms this week. I have a project where I needed quick feedback. Respect to google — its easy to start with it and allowed me a lot of flexibility to create all sorts of options. I liked the challenge of balancing the user’s ease of use with my data requirements behind the scenes. I’d love to hear if there are any more resources out there on feedback gathering to help newbies like me.
I also pitched for a piece of work which I didn’t get. But I feel rather sanguine about it really — I had an ear infection (thankfully better now) which impacted on my ability to “zing”. No matter how hard I tried I wasn’t fully present, if you know what I mean. But I’m glad I was able to turn out a decent performance despite the weird sensations. I’ve learned over the years its about being consistently good, not moments of brilliance. So its all good learning really.
Book of the week
I devoured Jon Sopel’s UnPresidented this week — the story of the 2020 presidential race in America. It was still a breathless read towards the end, despite the fact I knew how it ended! It did add to the retrospective coherence of a very strange time. There are lots of vivid stories in an what is an engaging read. The standout section for me? It was his extraordinary interaction with a white man from the midwest. In a chilling scene he absolutely insists that there large areas of the UK which are no-gos for white people, and simply won’t have it when Jon Sopel points out the truth to him. I think we know what media he had been consuming.
