A day off mid-week. How nice and how needed! It’s finally another sunny day, though I have to admit I’m not spending it outside just now. But at least I’ve got the window wide open, while sitting at my desk typing this.
Work was super busy this week so far, hence my Hooray over the day off mid-week. I expected to be a bit busy, as I had to take over some time-sensitive jobs from a colleague who’s out on vacation at the moment. I though we had done all in preparation for it together last week, but once I started with it, it turned out…. there was and is still lots to do. The usual meeting and organising and my own work still need to be done as well. Yesterday – when another colleague was already off for the rest of the week, there was some urgent issues to be solved in one of their projects. I’m their proxy this week, so I had to try to take care of that as well. At least our counterpart in another department – which is even more swamped at the moment than usual – haven’t lost their good mood. Have I mentioned recently how grateful I am that we – in my team / department and most of the people I need to work with elsewhere – get along well? It’s so so important for morale and everything. So are days off mid-week.
I’m determined to use my phone a bit less and definitely stay off social media more this month. A day off at the start of the month is a good place to start with new routines, I hope, as I operate less on auto-pilot than I do on regular mornings at home. Over the last few months maybe I’ve began to get quite a bit of my political / social issue commentary from Instagram. Which is not a bad thing as such, but I feel like I need to / should still read a few longer pieces in print or online newspaper or magazines.
I bought those last weekend and have been reading various sections of both so far. I used to buy newspaper in print every once in a while, but should make it more of a habit. Read more news away from the screen, where I still use my various subscriptions or online access to some newspapers and of course newsletters which link to even more online sources. I don’t think either print or online is a better way, I just have such a lack of impulse control that being in front of a screen reading stuff, too often come with the distraction of “just quickly doing this or that online” as well. Let’s see how it goes.
The news as such: Often quite depressing, aren’t they? As my favourite – and by now Olivier Award winning – new musical “Operation Mincemeat” puts it so aptly: “The world’s a mess.” And I try to find my “small flashes of joy”, but it’s hard to do that from the news. I have lots of thoughts and emotions about a lot of what I read and see and hear. Still (again?) it’s nothing I could put into eloquent words. Or any words that make sense. The world doesn’t make sense and I sometimes envy the people for whom that doesn’t seem to be an issue and they speak out anyway. Just in equal part some of those people also enrage me, because I feel like they are not seeing the whole picture and them speaking out doesn’t help anyone, on the contrary. Another reason to step away a while from “soundbites” as in tweets or on Instagram Story slides.
A potential flash of joy? A new Frank Turner album out on Friday. Also on Friday there will be the pre-sale for tickets for show 3000 (!!!) in February 2025. I’m not still quite sure if I really want to be at that big party, but I will try to score a ticket anyway to keep my options open. It would be cool to mark that milestone, but it’s going to be such a HUGE affair, that I’m not sure I’m really going to enjoy it. I assume there will be a UK before that and I definitely want to go to a few smaller shows as well. Depending on the tour dates it might not be feasible for me to stay till show 3000 and even less so to come back from Germany a week or so later. Anyway, it’s fun to make plans, isn’t it?
My first show was #1447, which means I’ll have been along for more than half of that journey. It feels wild! But I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Now who’d have thought that after all,
I Still Believe, Frank Turner
Something as simple as rock ‘n’ roll would save us all?
