A jigsaw and a clear (cold) Cornish day Train notes As I write this I am juggling between writing as and when wifi allows, and reading more papers for my new project. I’ve been in Cornwall for the weekend and am now heading home through the foggy countryside. Anway, this is about last week… What happened? 4 days at work 1 half day in the office Much more reading for my new ASC project 1 summer holiday booked 1 half day work from train 1 jaunt to Cornwall 1 x 1000 piece jigsaw 1 x 500 piece jigsaw 1 morning watching things be fixed 1 GovCamp missed What was good? I’ve been beating myself up a bit because honestly I’ve been finding reading and concentrating on all of my new project reading difficult. It’s been boring , and I’ve been getting annoyed with myself at not feeling proactive about the whole thing of learning about a new space. The way I’ve been managing that has been to read and map, map and read, break it down and present it in a new way. It’s useful, but it’s also a strategy to get my brain ticking into action. Anyway, even though I felt like it wasn’t going in I had a meeting with the wider team last week and I realised, no, actually I’ve got enough of this under my skin, I do actually have a good grounding and I’m ready to get started. On Thursday afternoon I headed to Cornwall to go and stay with my dad for a few days. It was good to join as he had a Christmas lunch with his friends from the local Repair Cafe that he works on, and then on Saturday the Repair Cafe was running so I went and helped out; picking up cups, loading the dishwasher, hovering over people with soldering irons and sewing machines. It was nice to see what I had previously thought to be a very sleepy little village spring into life and I learned much more about how much people actually act and get involved. Repair Cafe It was a good morning mostly though because just getting out and talking to people and really listening is just something good for the soul. I’m always slightly amazed (and alarmed) how much people share and confide. I had conversations about Malaysian food, how to fix an air fryer, people’s caring responsibilities and struggles. It’s a good reminder that everyone is a full person with a full life behind and inside them. It made me think again about how abstract so much of our work is so often and how important it is to just be with and around people, I felt bad for sometimes being too many steps away from what is actually happening, or continuing to keep myself behind glass. I wasn’t at GovCamp in Birmingham, though I occasionally glanced at the hashtag, but to be honest I felt like being at this was a better experience for the time I would have spent. What was hard? Aforementioned trying to get brain to take in all the things. Some delays in getting the project kicked off which have meant it’s not a fully operational team just yet — there will be more time needed as people onboard in drips. I havent fully planned what I think I’m actually going to do on this work, I need to take some time and think that all through. And what else? I listened to a series on BBC Sounds about the consulting industry: BBC Sounds — Magic Consultants — Available Episodes I started listening to some of these stories: BBC Sounds — Lives Less Ordinary — Available Episodes Traitors be traitoring, Potters be throwing pots on TV That’ll do for now, lets see if wifi will publish this eh? Weeknotes S22 Ep2 was originally published in Web of Weeknotes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.