Category: mental health

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The case for friction

I don’t actually have time to write this out in full, so this is a ‘stub’ of an idea that I might return to. Although, based on previous suggestions that I will return to this topic, I probably won’t as I’ll simply forget and move on, filling this page with mundane crap that’s useless, even to an LLM scraper.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, friction.

I recently read Martin Wiegel’s piece about why we need human artists. He makes the case that they show us a window into a place that invites us to go beyond seeing, to start looking. They are looking for us so that we may see something we’d normally gloss over in our frantic, modern lives.

Read it, it’s great. Even if you don’t come back here, it’s more than worth your time and effort to click through.

Second, I saw this piece from The Guardian, US Edition. Why does everything feel joyless?

It got me thinking about how I’ve never seen a tech leader who looked like they understood joy. They’re all about removing friction, to smooth out the edges of life that catch you in the metaphorical shins, or the weird oddness that can sometimes grab your attention when you should be doing a simple task like stepping off an escalator. Their Modus operandi is to get rid of joy. Surprise and delight, it turns out, is only surprising and delightful if it’s had all the joy sucked out of it so you can ‘transact’ quicker and get back to doomscrolling.

Anyway. Joy. It’s also inherent in Martin’s piece. We’re missing it. No digital experience gives joy in a way that, say, watching a beetle march through grassland, or playing with a dog you meet in the park for no other reason than it wants to and you have the time, or sitting thinking about a line in a book you’ve just read that stopped you in your tracks and requires you to actually think deeply about the words chosen. Or whatever it is that floats your boat. That brings you joy. Those three are activities of mine in the last 24 hours. I could think of more, but you get the point.

They’re pointless in terms of capitalism, or tech culture, or productivity. They’re about observing and thinking about what you’re observing. They’re looking (or doing) rather than getting this stuff off your agenda so you can CRUSH IT, or whatever it is that the LinkedInfluencers do these days.

Joy. Find it. Nurture it. Add the friction that makes you have to experience the things that could bring joy. Don’t seek it out, let it happen.

Start with forgetting to take your phone with you when you next leave the house. Once the jitters wear off, you might find you can start to enjoy the world again. There’s friction. And that’s joy.

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Cutting Edge

This morning I felt the need to make something. Not anything complicated or complex. A simple thing. Something I could point at and know I’d made by hand.

And so I choose to make a couple of stencils. I’ve almost finished cutting out the first one, in between doing other tasks. It’s been fun. I quite liked the high stakes of wielding a fresh, sharp scalpel blade and having my fingers close to it. Working out how to keep them out of the way, just in case.

I printed the logos of Unspun Heroes as a mirror, so that when I cut out the black I could turn it over and have a sharper edge. It’s still very much homemade, but that’s sort of the point. I could have chosen to laser cut it, but it wouldn’t have had the same effect on me. I’d not have had a hand, literally, in bringing it to life. There would have been no friction.

I use that f-word on purpose, as it reminds me of the quote from this week’s Naïve Weekly newsletter, which Connie Liu made in response to the question ‘Why is making things good for self-actualization?‘

“Creating is an act of friction, it’s not easy to do.”

I’ve highlighted it on purpose, as it’s such a simple thing to say and yet it carries immense amounts of weight. Especially given the ai debate where the technology removes the friction almost entirely.

So, it’s back to the cutting out of letters. To making. To intent. To friction.

A reverse of the two Unspun Heroes logos, showing the black type against the white card.
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Hands in the air and shrug emoji

I stupidly started my day looking at social media. And then the news. Idiot, I am.

How did the world get into this shape? Why do we put the least qualified people in charge?

Anyway, it completely fucked me over mentally and I just can’t even.

So the emoji is all you get.

🤷🏼‍♂️

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Not interested, thanks

I’ve always liked the phrase ‘zero fucks to give’. It’s final. There’s no opening for discussion and negotiation. This year, I’ve decided to apply this snappy phrase to what other people think. It’s not about growing a thicker skin – critical analysis of one’s self is important, and if someone else can help you with that then that is welcomed. This is about ignoring the haters, those who seek to undermine or turn me away from doing what I want to do, and generally not getting on board with the whole ‘this is how you should be doing things’ brigade that breeds ‘best practice’ blandness and strict routines.

Nowhere is this more important to me than here. What I write here is, for the most part for me. I’m not seeking an audience. If I were I’d start a newsletter. Blogging is – aside from fodder for the AI techbros’ machine learning programs – there for me to think things through, to explore, to get stuff out of my head.

I’m using it like ‘morning pages’ (which comes from Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’) to throw out words and not think too hard about them. Unless… unless they spark something that feels worthwhile to follow up on. I want to break the barriers I’ve put up in the past few years, to free up parts of my brain that I have neglected.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in my previous post, I had a meeting where I had a discussion about my process. Someone I’ve worked with a little bit was telling me how interesting they found my methods for engaging with a situation, the questions I pose, how much I listen before I talk, etc. It reminded me of when I was thinking about the ‘How of Work’ stuff from my Formation London days. They mentioned that I did things in a way they’d not seen before, that it was less rigid and more in tune with whatever was required of the challenge in front of me.

In the past, others have said this is a negative of how I work, that I should have a repeatable process. Now, someone was objectively being positive about not having rigidity. At least to begin with.

And so I am not listening to the commentary. Or reading the comments. I’m just doing what I need to do for myself. I’m giving zero fucks, for the time being at least. Because this isn’t written for other people, it’s a tool to get me somewhere else.

You know what? I already feel more confident in my own abilities. I feel lighter. I feel like I want to start doing some things again. Some of the things that I used to do – the silly things, the how-does-this-work experimental things.

I want to fail more again, or not be swayed by success (or perceived success). I want to find my own path once more in the creative aspects of my life. To not be constrained by a prompting machine, or a client brief, or what other people think.

I’ll be happier for it, I reckon.

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Ups And Downs

This past week has been one of some major decisions. Not about work, but about something quite personal.

Back in 2016, I was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. Thankfully, I was able to undergo surgery and extensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy and made a recovery. However, following that treatment, I had some additional challenges.

One of those was the subsequent diagnosis of a rare form of lymphoma. So I swapped one cancer for another.

The treatment I have had to undergo since has some fairly hideous side effects in rare situations. When a side effect is listed as rare, it means that fewer than one in 10,000 people suffer with it.

One of medications had a severe side effect listed: death. Yes! It actually listed that. As I’m typing this, you can be sure I didn’t have such a severe side effect. The rare side effect I did suffer from was crippling depression. In the end I had to stop taking this particular medication because it made me suicidal.

Now, during this time in 2022, I was studying for my MSc, and I managed to achieve a distinction for my module, so even while I was at the lowest depths I was riding some fairly good highs. It took a lot for me to get through that period, but I did. Working, studying and just getting on with living was harder than I can possibly describe.

I stopped those medications in September 2022 and had a period of waiting to see what happened. Well, I got some tumours that required intervention (localised radiotherapy) and then undertook some light therapy over the winter. Basically, free sunbeds from the NHS twice a week for six months.

These really lifted my mood but firing UV rays at your skin regularly isn’t recommended. So, I went on to a type of immunotherapy. Unfortunately, the side effect of this was depression. Culmulative, though. It’s been about six months of this and last week I found myself contemplating not being here. I don’t want to undermine just how dark the clouds in my head were, but equally I knew what was happening and why and so I knew I could get these clouds to lift.

The downside to this is the same as before: the cancer will progress.

However, I’ve gone from feeling permanently exhausted and crushingly depressed to feeling relatively normal. I can consider a future with me in it.

As the UK goes through unprecedented levels of anxiety (some self-inflicted), it’s good to see there can be light at the end of the very dark tunnels. But it isn’t like this for everyone.

This year has been really hard. After being gaslit by a previous client and then not paid a considerable sum of money by them, all while feeling mentally rotten, hasn’t been easy. I’ve fallen out of love with my work, even as I come to understand I am actually not too bad at doing it.

So, I’m going to rebuild my mental health and also work out what to do next in terms of earning money. Or rather, what I will do next in terms of the type of work I want to do – the money is less of a thing. I won’t work beneath my worth, though, but I will accept less than others may for a chance to learn and to move forward.

There’s every chance I’ll end up working in Tesco, which is fine, btw. I’m not a snob about earning money. However, I think I’ve got more to offer than my physical energy. Plus, my ability to work full-time is diminished by my illness and its ongoing treatment. However, part-time or contract or temporary all works.

So, I’m looking out for interesting things to do. Alongside Unspun Heroes, of course. That’s continuing while I have some money to throw at it. And if not, it’ll go into hibernation until such time I can put some funds towards the next release.

I’m hopeful 2025 has more ups than downs. A reversal of 2024, so far.

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What’s More Important Than Making Mistakes?

Learning from them.

What’s more important than learning from mistakes?
Making them.

What isn’t important are sarcastic comments from people with zero constructive criticism.
Ah, the joys of studying out loud.

Destroys confidence and motivation, actually.

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A Weekend Away

I had to take a couple of days off writing.
From everything.
Because I felt stressed.
Worried.
Concerned.
Scared.

There is a list of people vulnerable to Covid-19.
There is a list on the UK Government website.
It’s not a big list.
But it is very specific.
Very.

And while I consider myself to be vulnerable.
Because I had a double lobectomy in 2016.
And have had pneumonia 12 times since then.
The last one just over a year ago.
And it almost kills me every time.
I don’t make the list.

To date that’s been fine.
It’s just that people are talking about the lockdown being eased.
And my immediate family will be expected to go back to work, to school, to living their lives.
Yet they’ll also be living with me.
A vulnerable person who isn’t on the list.
Which puts them in a difficult position.
And opened up some dark thoughts.
For them, too.

My GP says I should practice social distancing.
I was told this via text message.
They wouldn’t speak to me.

I’m now trying to see if my oncology team can help.

And yet a part of me just thinks that I should face up to what might lie ahead and accept that my time could be a lot shorter than it would have been without this pandemic.

The problem is, as David Berman points out in his final album, “All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind.”

Anyway, that’s that.
I’ve also had some great news about an opportunity I can’t talk about.
Nothing cryptic.
It’s work-related stuff.
Confidential and all that.
And other work things continue to drag themselves forward, not matter that the pace is glacial (although with global warming, glacial pace might soon be too swift for this context).
You can’t sit still waiting.
There’s a chance to make a dent in things for a while yet.
So I’ll do my best to get back to writing every day.

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Silence, Please

About 5 minutes ago, I sat in silence with 35 other people on a Zoom call.

This was part of Steve Chapman‘s ongoing anti-podcast, Sound of Silence, in which he shares two minutes of silence with a special guest.

It sounds like the worst thing you could listen to, but if you think that you’re wrong.
It’s actually the opposite.
There’s a real human connection that happens, and it’s very much like a meditative exercise.

We were paired up, three times, with a random person, so that we could also experience silence with someone on a one-to-one basis.
I had met all three of my pairings before, yet I don’t think we had ever previously shared silence.
It was anything but uncomfortable.
And it wasn’t as hard not to utter a word as I thought it might be.

I heard birds tweeting in the background.
Monastic silence in another.
The sounds of children playing, wood being mechanically sawn, coughs, sniffing, shuffling and cars whizzing past.

Yet between us, nothing passed.
Nothing audible, that is.

Something definitely passed between us, though.
A sense of connection.
A sense of shared experiences.
A sense of our humanity.

Thanks Steve.

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Twitter

I stopped bothering with Twitter account about a year ago. I felt that it had become a place that wasn’t very welcoming. Lots of political things were occurring and the world was a different place.

In hindsight, I think I probably just needed to be ruthless with my follower list, to ditch people I know in real life and include more voices from people who were outside my comfort zone yet who were able to bring in ideas and commentary that could be useful. I needed to actually bother to put in some effort.

Almost a year on, I have re-added a profile picture and background header image. It’s a small step. I even looked at my old timeline (which I put into a list) and realised that there is a lot of culling to do and rebuilding as if it was a new account might be better than trying to trim back what was there.

I’m certain Twitter is still a hideous place to spend lots of time; LinkedIn definitely is. Facebook, for sure. For me, at least.

However, as my personal lockdown is likely to be a lot longer than most people’s so I think having a window to the world that isn’t through media connections or my front room windows might be beneficial.

Or I could find myself shutting it down within days.

Only time will tell. I’ll start the rebuilding at some point.
Although I won’t be adding the app to my phone, I’ve learned that it’s better to limit how you connect.
Desktop only for me.