On the road to Brexit

I’ve been wondering whether I should write a Brexit-diary. The idea is to document the last 3 months of the UK still being part of the European Union – so, from 1 Jan 2019 till 29 March 2019, 11:00 pm GMT (with a nice countdown at the end hehehe ). I wouldn’t be commenting on the news / political developments (= horrific), but more from an everyday individual’s point of view (for example, I’ll soon be planning and then putting together a survival box, as in the event of a hard Brexit there will be food shortages etc.).

Depending on how things pan out, it could turn into some kind of dystopian Memories of a Survivor / A Woman in Berlin type thing, or something like Samuel Pepys Diaries (Great Fire of London etc.). I could document how the chaos (in this case, brought about by a maliciously  incompetent Government) impacted an individual who lived in that environment at the time. Or I could just celebrate all the contributions that Europe has made to the world and to Britain (thank you Romans! I love you).

We’ll see. I have currently switched off from the news (as Xmas time is upon us) so it may be good to leave that headspace clean and clear. Reading the news is correlated with negative health outcomes, and I’m not getting any younger 😀

 

I’ve leveled up!

Recently, I leveled up in the game called life. That is, I suddenly felt I’d achieved an enhanced or higher understanding of something that, previously, had been beyond my grasp.

Medium has a good article of what it feels like – 13 things that will happen when you ‘level up’ as a person – although it’s nowhere near as dramatic or all-encompassing as described in there.

If the game of life has 10 levels, then I’d say I’ve reached level 6, although there are still a couple of boss fights and missions left on level 5 😛 .

I then thought about what a person on level 1 or 2 might look like, and the Underground Man in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground came to mind.

He is very spiteful and self-obsessed, and ‘continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would help him avoid the problems that torment him’.

Level 3 would possibly be someone like Donald Trump – not quite as narcissistic as Underground Man, but still largely an arsehole with little care for other people. While Donald Trump is strange and creepy, unlike Underground Man, he doesn’t seem to hate himself. This makes him a higher level than Dostoevsky’s flawed protagonist – you’ve got to love yourself, even if you’re a dick.

Who could be a level 4? I don’t know. But a level 10 is someone like the Dalai Lama.  Although I’d prefer it if he wasn’t on social media (I get it – he’s a ‘brand’). His interview on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was very good though.

How far can I / you go?

If I’m level 6 now, I wonder how long it’ll take to level up again. I was on level 5 for quite some time, I think (10 years?). This life game I’m talking about is not just about professional and personal advancement by the way, but also your mindset, and getting a deeper understanding of what life is all about. Spirituality without religion.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach level 10 – I think I’m too flawed for that. But it’s satisfying to know that there is still more to do, and MUCH more to learn (I’m currently on a side-quest).

How far can you go?

 

 

 

How I came back

I stumbled across someone’s old school online community blog a few months back – a guy that worked at the BBC in the early 00s and who has been blogging since 2005. It reminded me of my own blog, as I had discussed things like Facebook in 2007 (when they launched brand pages), in 2009 (when they started advertising), and in 2011 (when they tried to get me to set my homepage to Facebook).

Zero Intention:

I had no intention of restarting this blog but two reasons caused me to do so:

1. Seeing a young YouTuber’s YT channel (19-year-old)
2. Thinking I have a role to play (I am part of an older online culture, web 1.0 if you will)

When reading back some of my old blog posts, I used to approach and interpret the Internet largely through a media angle. Partially because I originally had a cultural studies / media background (rather than a business and management one), but partially also because ‘in those days’ it wasn’t as commercialised as it is today (this blog didn’t use to have ads when I wrote my first post on  21 July 2006.)

Now I see everything through the ‘Marketing’ angle, even the draft title for this blog post was a click-baity SEO headline! So. I always wear my marketing / brand / blah blah head. I can’t look at digital media neutrally any more – I existing in the matrix so to speak (as a personal brand).

I need to take a meta–angle. It is quite difficult to have a ‘voice’.

Archive publication:

I also thought it would be useful to make the site available again to be crawled by the search engines (this means they’ll be shown in the Google search results pages).

There is some useful content e.g. in relation to the time when I did my PhD (this blog originally documented my PhD journey, see e.g. the PhD Viva (= oral examination) category. The category list on the right admittedly is rather chaotic!

I may have even have time to do some more tidying over the summer 😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surfacing (2018 WTF)

Wow. It is 2018. Not blogged (here) for 6 years.

Bye for Now

Image by Bill Cammack via Flickr

I’m going to go into hibernation for a bit regarding this blog, and start deleting some of my online traces where this is possible. The plan is to end up with one website dedicated to my PhD, where I will then also integrate my twitter eventually, as well as – maybe – a blog in the future. However this won’t be a daily one like I’ve attempted with this one.

The reality is that my life is pretty steady right now – I know where I’ll be living, working, and who I’ll be dating for the foreseeable future. I have no desire for change.

Hence, I will focus on the things in my offline life and enhance them, and make them better and better. There’s not much room right now for social media, or ‘web 2.0’ (apart from maybe twitter, but that’s micro and not intrusive upon my life!).

The other point is that I think the backlash against social media has begun (see for ex. Bobbie Johnson’s Why I’m finished with Social Media). Brought on partly by the credit crunch, but also the fact that companies will realise that they’re have to make money out of it somehow, then they’ll introduce some shite, and users will desert. I’m not a doom-monger, but I’ve always been kinda right in my vibe about the internet. I might just be starting a new trend here 🙂