Dan’s Weeknotes 2022–09–25

Hi there. I hope you’re doing well.

I really fell out of the habit of writing for a brief moment there.

It’s been an odd month. Didn’t feel like I had anything to say.

But the thing is that writing weeknotes is the lowest barrier to entry for me for writing, and the act of writing leads to more writing¹. And there’s writing I’d like to do. I note that I haven’t kept up the intended momentum for our data playbook for a start.

Come on, Dan.

What’s been going on? Looking at last time I wrote about energy levels and hey I felt better after a break but damn it’s back to being fairly low energy already.

I haven’t been feeling well the past few days. Back to school viruses I think.

Also I was really anxious on Friday — I felt a panic attack coming on and thankfully I managed to get ahead of it and avoid it.

Convinced I was going to die. Felt I couldn’t walk from A to B. Holding my neck to distract myself. Unspecified pains and more. But you’ve had this before so try to breathe yeah? I wouldn’t have been able to do that a few years ago.

Not sure why it happened in the first place though.

Not enough sleep perhaps.

Too much time on Twitter which is like opening the floodgates to a bottomless reservoir of howling pain perhaps.

Social media commentary aside what’s going on in the world perhaps.

Some difficult family stuff perhaps.

Probably a combination of all 4 and more besides perhaps.

What is it with the total lack of consequences for people in public positions of power when they do something that’s objectively bad²? Or as I write that I think maybe it’s the erosion of the position of facts as a thing that’s important? Like “You did this” “No I didn’t” “But you did though” “No” “Ok then” “Actually I did do that I’m really sorry” “Sure no bother”. But then I write that and it’s consequences again. Or is it no longer being able to hold people to account for whatever reason? Actually that’s about consequences too right?

Something is very very broken and I can’t put my finger on it. I workshopped the paragraph above to try to work it out and it’s still no clearer. And I think about the past.It would have been fine to present a position and a counter position based on ideology or faith but in so many situations that’s just not where we’re at now is it? What happened?

I think I’m puzzling through this because dragging it back to the work (which is being Head of Data Science at Citizens Advice) we’re seeing compelling evidence week on week about just how bad conditions are in society at the moment. It’s an odd balance of fascinating and terrible. “Oh wow this graph is amazing, but also it’s awful”.

I want to draw it back to the facts point because that’s where the itch is. Here are the facts, for example look at this unprecedented and ever-increasing demand for advice about food banks. Where does that go? Where are the consequences³?

Maybe that’s it. The lack of agency to fix the big problems you see but that you’re too small to address.

Looping back to add a fifth point to the “why am I anxious” passage above perhaps.

All this aside work is fine. A fair few highlights in the last month. Very happy to have Rory (Associate Data Architect) join the team. Quite a bit of grinding through problems that shouldn’t be there but they slowly seem to be getting sorted. Recognising my own role in that grinding which is taking a step back and establishing some focus (or at least I hope that’s what I’m doing).

Facilitating quite a few workshops. Hey, that’s fine I enjoy that.

Also getting to a place where I can have a question to ask of our data, look at our data products for maybe 15 minutes, and then present with confidence on what we’re seeing for about 5 minutes. Couldn’t do that even a year ago. Next up: Getting people who aren’t me to do this because this is altogether not my core skill set and so I think it’s feasible to expect anybody to be able to do it.

But that is something that’s been on the ‘to do’ list for a long time and like so many things on that ‘to do’ list I just need to get it moving.

I’m curating some good data conversation work. That feels in the right space for what I should be doing. The trick is picking up where there’s an interesting story to be told. Not interesting sorry, rather valuable. Looking back at the calendar I had a really rewarding triad coaching session with colleagues Nana and Kayley where (in my opinion) our respective differences made it a particularly valuable use of time. And three data conversation sessions have come out of that as well.

That’ll do. Thanks for reading.

Also

Really enjoying ‘She Hulk: Attorney at Law’

Finally finished my Big Green Bookshop book club subscription and I signed up for a new one

Welcome to Wrexham is great

I was initially underwhelmed by the This is the Kit album ‘Off Off On’ but it grew on me in a big way — the back half is incredible. And I’m going to see Rozi Plain next year too

Been listening to this Factory Floor record a great deal

Queen Elizabeth II died and at the very least I feel a significant punctuation point in my life

I made some nice sandwiches

Footnotes

¹ I nearly wrote “writing begets writing” but then I had a word with myself

² Nothing specific. All over the world. Many examples

³ Reading back, unspecified ‘consequences’ could come across a threatening and that’s not what I mean. mMaybe standards in public life aren’t any worse than they used to be, it’s just that it’s easier to prove things